Gee, The GOP Sure Has Changed-- Or Has It?

New polling shows that while normal people are aghast at Trump's treasonous behavior in Helsinki and his supine posture towards Putin, Republicans overwhelmingly approve. A CBS News poll shows that 83% of Democrats and 53% of Independents disapprove of how Trump handles Putin, while 68% of Republicans approve. Similarly 89% of Democrats and 67% of Independents believe the U.S. intelligence community on Russian interference , while only 51% of Republicans do. 87% of Democrats and 57% of Independents are concerned that the Russians will interfere in the midterms. 61% of Republicans-- traitors in the same way conservatives were during the American Revolution, siding with the British against the Patriots-- are not concerned about Russian interference with November's coming elections.

A new poll from Axios is even more brutal when it comes to the nature of Republican-- dare say it-- TREASON. What do you see here in another American battle pitting Patriots against conservative shits?

"This poll," wrote Mike Allen, "foreshadows the coming national drama. Every piece of data, and virtually every public action of elected Republican officials, shows Trump will have overwhelming and probably unbreakable party support, regardless of what Robert Mueller finds with his Russia probe. Americans are split on whether the allegations of Russian interference are a serious issue (50%) or a distraction (47%). This breaks cleanly along party lines, with 85 percent of Republicans seeing it as a distraction and 85 percent of Democrats seeing it as a serious issue. Among Independents, 56 percent see it as a serious issue."

And it isn't just Trump and the Russians that highlights exactly what Republican-- voters, not just their elected officials-- have become. Yesterday, writing for HuffPo, Christopher Mathias, reported that Republicans aren't concerned at all that Iowa Congressman Steve King is a white supremicist (a polite-ish way of saying a neo-Nazi). Mathias wrote that "it's not surprising that the eight-term congressman from Iowa retweeted a neo-Nazi. King has a long history of making terrible, bigoted comments."

What is surprising, and concerning, is that a sitting U.S. congressman can unapologetically promote a neo-Nazi’s propaganda on Twitter without real political consequence. Over the past month, none of King’s fellow Republicans have pushed to censure him or expel him from Congress. None have called for him to resign. Mostly, they have stayed quiet.

Republicans have rebuked King in the past, sometimes forcefully. But they’ve also never really punished him, and have been inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. (“I’d like to think he misspoke,” House Speaker Paul Ryan once said after King tweeted: “we can’t restore our civilization with other people’s babies.” King later clarified that he had not misspoken, and had “meant exactly” what he said.)

King is still chair of the House subcommittee on the constitution and civil justice. He still sits in the subcommittee on immigration and border security. He’s still co-chair of Republican Kim Reynold’s gubernatorial campaign in Iowa. Over the past month, he’s received thousands of dollars in campaign donations, including from Koch Industries PAC. And come time for the 2020 presidential election, Republican candidates will likely come begging for his endorsement, just as they did in the last election.

  Although the National Republican Congressional Committee, the Republican National Committee and Republican politicians have taken time to denounce or un-endorse the frightening number of neo-Nazis, Holocaust deniers and other assorted white supremacists running for office as Republicans this year, they’ve remained silent about King, helping to normalize his ideas and deem them acceptable.

When a HuffPost reporter on Capitol Hill Tuesday asked King about his retweet of a neo-Nazi, the congressman said all of his tweets are “true and objective.” On Wednesday, when the same reporter asked King if he is a white supremacist or a white nationalist, the congressman didn’t deny the allegation.

  “I don’t answer those questions,” he said. “I say to people that use those kind of allegations: Use those words a million times, because you’re reducing the value of them every time, and many of the people that use those words and make those allegations and ask those questions can’t even define the words they’re using.”

So we have defined the words, and all the evidence is there: King is a white supremacist.

White nationalism is aimed at preserving or maintaining a white majority in the U.S., said Jessie Daniels, a sociology professor at the City University of New York, HuffPost columnist and author of the books White Lies and Cyber Racism.

Daniels said King “definitely” qualifies as a white nationalist. “He’s been upfront about the fact that those are his views,” she said.

King is obsessed, for example, with demographics — and the perceived threat Muslim and Latino immigrants pose to the white, Christian majority. For this reason, King has taken particular interest in Geert Wilders, a noxiously Islamophobic Dutch politician who has advocated for fascist anti-Muslim policies, including a ban on Muslim immigration, and a ban on all mosques and Qurans in the Netherlands.

  ...King himself has a history of making his own wildly anti-Muslim proclamations. Just last month, speaking on Breitbart radio, King said that he didn’t want Somali Muslims working in Iowa’s meatpacking plants. Muslims often don’t eat pork, and in King’s twisted interpretation of Islam, the only reason Muslims would want to handle pork at meatpacking plants is to send non-Muslims “to Hell” and “make Allah happy.”

King has said the U.S. government should spy on mosques and that Muslims should have to renounce Sharia law before entering the country.

And he once promoted a debunked and paranoid conspiracy theory-- from the extremist conspiracy theory website InfoWars-- that a Jerusalem imam told Muslims to “go into Western Europe, build your enclaves there, breed their women, and do not associate or assimilate into the broader society.”

King has similarly devoted much of his career to vilifying Latino immigrants as inherently criminal and threatening.

Last month, responding to a tweet showing a photo of young Latino boys detained at the border and forcibly separated from their families, King tweeted, ”‘Young boys’ all old enough to be tried as adults or serve in the military and are prime MS-13 gang material & certainly grew up in the culture of one of the top 10 most violent countries in the world.”

King has made the wildly false claim that over a quarter of violent crimes in the U.S. are committed by undocumented immigrants, and has referred to illegal immigration as a “slow-motion terrorist attack in the United States” and a “slow-motion holocaust.” (Undocumented immigrants commit less crime than native-born Americans.)

  He once, while proposing an electrified fence along the Mexican border, compared immigrants to “livestock.”

...King has also paid homage to more traditional forms of American white supremacy. He has said the U.S. should not apologize for centuries of enslaving, murdering and raping millions of black Americans. He came out against putting a picture of emancipator Harriet Tubman-- a conductor of the Underground Railroad-- on the $20 bill.

And he once kept a Confederate flag on his desk even though his home state of Iowa was not part of the Confederacy. In fact, Iowa sent thousands of soldiers to fight for the Union against the Confederacy-- a treasonous army fighting explicitly to protect the institution of slavery in the South.

Last month, King won the Republican primary in Iowa’s Fourth Congressional District, ensuring he’ll be on the ballot this November in the general election against Democrat J.D. Scholten.

J.D.'s perspective is nothing like King's... to say the least. "White supremacy," he said, "has no place in our society."

I’ve tried to make this campaign more about the things I want to do to help the people of this district-- about my vision for fixing our broken health care system, helping family farmers survive these tough times in rural Iowa, and bringing new jobs to the district to stop all our young folks from leaving. But it’s impossible to ignore the fact that Steve King continues to be a complete embarrassment to the people of this district and this state.

As a 5th-generation Iowan, I am deeply disturbed and appalled that Steve King refuses to denounce the abhorrent concepts of white supremacy and white nationalism. My Iowa values and my baseball career taught me that people of all backgrounds can achieve greater things by working together for a common cause. I was fortunate to have had teammates from six different continents and my Catholic faith taught me we are all equally loved and valued, regardless of race. I’m not sure what bible Steve King uses.

Northwest Iowa is tired of Steve King’s divisive politics, which is only good for embarrassing us on the national stage. A Des Moines Register poll from last winter showed I am not alone in my feelings as a Democrat trailed King by only three points. We are on the verge of a farm crisis, health care remains unaffordable for many rural folks, and more of our youngest and brightest keep leaving western Iowa. We urgently need a voice that genuinely cares more about building our district’s future than it does about tearing us apart. It’s time to replace Steve King’s extremist political views with someone who will fight for the people of Northwest Iowa.

I’m embarrassed to be represented in Congress by Steve King. Sixteen years is long enough and it’s time for change. Stand with me in saying, “ENOUGH” by contributing to our movement to defeat him!

Let’s end this national embarrassment once and for all.