IF ANN COULTER WERE IN CONGRESS SHE WOULD BE STEVE KING (R-IA)

I don't know if there's a correlation between IQ and degree of rubber stampness among Republican congressmen but Steve King (IA-05) couldn't be more of a rubber stamp Republican if he tried. And in the last month he's certainly proven he's one of the most ignorant and just outright stupid individuals to be permitted to freely walk up and down the corridors of Congress. (But can he do it while chewing gum?)

Last weekend King-- who appears best when he is mixed up with Long Island's Republican congressman Peter King, a notch of two higher up the evolutionary scale, though by any reasonable standards, the bottle of the barrel when it comes to New York elected officials-- stuck his hooves in his mouth again. Having barely recovered from his nonsensical (public) claim that his wife would be safer walking around Iraq than Washington, DC, Iowa's dumbest congressman decided to forgo fart jokes yesterday and instead make fun of the physical appearance of one of the most accomplished a respected political journalists in Washington. Discussing the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi at Iowa's Republican convention, said, "What occurred to me that morning is something that I imagine a lot of you have thought about and he's probably figured it out by now. There probably are not 72 virgins in the hell he's at and if there are, they probably all look like Helen Thomas." Helen Thomas is 85 years old. And Steve King is no gentleman. In fact, he's a gross pig. Of course his cheap frat-boy humor (which reminds me-- King was the numbskull who characterized the Abu Gharaib torture as "hazing"-- caused gales of hootin' and hollerin' and there were delegates snortin' like barnyard animals-- I mean it was a Republican Party Convention.

Although Congressloon King has refused to comment on his rude outburst, he had a flack who works for him issue a half-assed apology. Joyce Schulte, King's Democratic opponent in November, spoke more for what America is really all about when she said "Mean-spirited remarks are beneath the dignity of any self respecting congressperson, and remarks about another person's appearance are even lower. I hesitate to even use Helen Thomas' name in the same document with so vile a wretch as al-Zarqawi. But I want her and the world to know that Iowans are not insensitive buffoons who make fun at someone else's expense."

The 5th congressional district, though, is... well, a bit less evolved than places like Des Moines, Waterloo, Davenport, Iowa City, Ames and Dubuque. King's district is the extreme western part of the state and contains two actual cities: Council Bluffs and Sioux City. It's the least financially well-off district in the state, the whitest and has more hogs than any other congressional district in the entire U.S. (no doubt accounting for Congressloon King's manners). It is also the reddest district in Iowa and Bush had 57% of the vote against Gore and 60% four years later. King won his seat in 2002 with 62% of the vote. It's a very tough district for Democrats. King is well known locally as a bigot who hates Blacks, gays, immigrants, feminists. If you have already guessed that his espoused favorite form of government would be theocracy, you have figured out Steve King. The NATIONAL REVIEW hails him as "the great right hope." The most extreme right wing member of the Iowa delegation, King's voting record is an abomination. Looking at a list of the most far right congressmen, he falls way towards the bottom of the Republican caucus, right between Steven Colbert's friend Lynn Westmoreland and Chris Chocola, Indiana's looniest-- and least popular-- congressman.