Posted on 10/06/2013 2:32:33 PM PDT by mandaladon
If Peter King’s brand of Republicanism seems to be on the wane these days, the Long Island congressman isn’t letting it go quietly. Kng, 69, has long been one of the Hill’s most quotable and irascible troublemakers, a frequent presence on cable television with an apparently boundless capacity for outrage. He has fumed over topics as serious as Hurricane Sandy relief and aid for 9/11 responders, and as comparatively trivial as the White House party crashers and the death of Michael Jackson (whom he called a “lowlife” and a “pervert.”) King broke with Newt Gingrich over the government shutdowns of the mid-1990s and earned the gratitude of the Clinton clan when he rebuked his own party for impeaching a president for sexual indiscretions. So while it’s not a surprise that King would be one of the Republican Party’s most prominent internal critics these days, even the congressman’s friends say there’s a new intensity and urgency to the lawmaker’s indignation.
King has thundered away in recent months against what he calls the “Ted Cruz wing” of the Republican Party, criticizing the GOP’s libertarian drift on issues such as domestic surveillance and assailing what he views as the utter pointlessness of the House’s effort to defund Obamacare at the cost of a government shutdown. He has floated the idea of a 2016 presidential campaign largely out of opposition to the tea party crowd. His frustration, friends say, reflects a deepening conviction that Republicans have lost touch with the working-class, middle-of-the-road voters who sent King to Congress in the first place, and who used to make Republican candidates for the Senate and the presidency competitive in downstate New York.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
What do the Republicans stand for these days?
I’ve been saying for years that Peter King is RINO scum. Nice of other conservatives to discover King is NOT “one of the good guys” after 15 years of his treasonous actions. Better late than never, I guess.
I haven't forgotten. Shame other conservatives did, or this turd would have been purged from Congress over a decade ago.
Who are the conservatives who didn’t know about Peter King being a lib?
Someone needs to photoshop King’s face on to the Maytag Repairman.
Check any Peter King thread prior to 2013 and you’ll see dozens of conservative posters fawn over him because he’s anti-illegal alien and goes after Muslims.
Why aren’t you communicating with those people to give them your “see I told you so”?
“Republicans have lost touch with the working-class, middle-of-the-road voters who sent King to Congress in the first place”
Well guess who sent the “Cruz wing” of the party to Congress RECENTLY...the working class voters you moron!
Middle of the road my *ss! Besides, he obviously has no respect for voters who don’t think like him. Who is out of touch?
“It’s appealing to the lowest common denominator”
I didn’t hear him say that about the Democrat leaders calling people in his own party terrorist who strap bombs to their chest. Funny how his outrage is only for voters in his own party.
During the 1990s King enjoyed a close relationship with the Muslim community in his congressional district. King often gave speeches at the Westbury Islamic Center, held book signings in the prayer hall, took in Muslim interns, and was one of the few Republicans who supported U.S. intervention in the 1990s to help Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo. The Muslim community thanked King for his work by making him the guest of honor for the 1993 opening of a $3 million prayer hall. For years, a picture of King cutting the ceremonial ribbon hung on the bulletin board by the mosque’s entrance.
He was endorsed by the Brady Campaign in 2006 and 2008
In 2011, King said that his ties to the Irish Republican Army (IRA) had been “entirely distorted”, arguing that if the accusations were true then “I doubt the president of the United States would have offered me the position of ambassador to Ireland.”
King began actively supporting the Irish republican movement in the late 1970s. He frequently traveled to Northern Ireland to meet with senior members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA), many of whom he counted as friends.
King compared the leader of Sinn Féin, the political wing of the PIRA, Gerry Adams to George Washington, and asserted that the “British government is a murder machine”. However, he did not meet Adams until 1984.
A judge in Northern Ireland ejected King from the courtroom, describing King as “an obvious collaborator with the IRA”. Some organizations reported that King was banned from appearing on British TV for his pro-IRA views.
In 1993, King lobbied unsuccessfully for Gerry Adams to be a guest at the inauguration of President Bill Clinton.
In 2000, he called then-presidential candidate George W. Bush a tool of “anti-Catholic bigoted forces”, after Bush visited Bob Jones University in South Carolina, described by King as “an institution that is notorious in Ireland for awarding an honorary doctorate to Northern Ireland’s tempestuous Protestant leader, Ian Paisley.”
King was a go-between during the Northern Ireland peace process, and has said that the PIRA was a “legitimate force that had to be recognized” in order to have peace.
In 2002, King denounced Congressional investigation of the IRA-FARC links in the Colombia Three case.
Peter King became the first Republican to officially declare his candidacy for the presidency. King had earlier characterized a potential candidacy as being opposed to potential Tea Party movement candidates such as Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, whom he criticized for their national defense policies, calling them “isolationists who barely mention the threat of Islamic terrorism.” He later opposed Republican efforts to tie the repeal of delay of the Affordable Care Act to a continuing resolution before and during the 2013 government shutdown, and accused Tea Party conservatives of trying to “hijack the party.”
House Republican leaders have learned that giving King free rein may actually be the only way to deal with him.
He is, after all, the man who said the GOP’s romance with Christian evangelicals was turning the party into “barefoot hillbillies who go to revival meetings.”
He unfailingly supports labor unions.
Rhinohunter is proud to have voted for RINO Hunter 3 times!
I wish I could vote for him. maybe he’ll run for POTUS one day.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.