King was spouting the president’s brand of politics for years before Trump started his run. Can he keep it going after?
The two share an anti-immigrant sentiment that on a good day could be described as thinly veiled bigotry, and at its worst is plain, naked white nationalism. King may be the only Republican who has spent more time in the latter category than the president. A decade before Trump rode a promise of a border wall to the White House, King in 2006 brought a crude model of a wall, topped with razor wire, to the House floor.
King has wielded this self-righteous self-pity like a cudgel, and his supporters have lined up behind him. In Charles City, after his sermon on immigration ends, a woman asks why more Republicans in Congress aren’t demanding “antisemitic, racial” lawmakers be stripped of their committee assignments, an apparent reference to Rep. Ilhan Omar and others who have criticized Israel.
If the ultra-conservative 4th District does side with the forces opposing their longtime representative in 2020, it would be the most concrete indication yet that Trumpism could have a limited shelf life as a public-facing ethos.
King doesn’t have much to offer in terms of health care options. Same goes for rural population loss, climate change, or any of the other issues that are actually plaguing the 4th District. All he can muster is the well-trodden illusion that he’s a populist champion, defending his largely rural, disproportionately white district from the twin dangers of liberal snobbery and an invasion of immigrants.
King doesn’t talk much with the press, and the chances are good he would have preferred to pass on this particular town hall — or any of them. But skipping events like these are part of what got him in trouble in 2018. Supporters blame his thin victory on two things: the liberal media infecting voters’ perception of King, and the fact that King kind of just mailed it in last November, assuming he’d win easily.
A man brings up how the farmers he knows rely on undocumented labor. King argues that Americans who don’t work — he cites homemakers, people receiving welfare, and those on disability who aren’t really disabled — can take these jobs. Later, someone challenges him about promoting birtherism, leading to a tense exchange. Unable to connect the issue to immigration or abortion, King ultimately retreats to another patch of familiar ground.
But in 2018 King defeated Scholten by only three points. He demonstrated one of the primary reasons why the day after the town halls in Charles City and Boone. While defending his controversial Heartbeat Protection Act, which he has described as a direct challenge of, in front of a conservative club in Urbandale, King wondered whether “there would be any population left” if not for rape or incest, for which the bill does not provide exceptions.
If King does win the GOP primary, he’s going to have to defeat a far more formidable version of Scholten than he slipped past in 2018. An unknown former minor league baseball player when he announced his first run at King in 2017, Scholten announced his second run at the seat with a viral campaign trailer narrated by Kevin Costner. A few days later, he was a veritable celebrity at the Democratic Wing Ding, a kind of pep rally for the party held annually in Clear Lake.
Republicans still have an overwhelming majority in the district — in 2018 active registered Republicans outnumbered active registered Democrats 191,000 to 121,000 — but there’s no reason to believe the forces that brought Scholten to within three points in 2018 won’t be even stronger heading into 2020.
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