We can judge the content of Steve King's character by the way he speaks about the color of other people's skin.
Our congressman the other day revealed very clearly the prejudice and cowardice behind his positioning on immigration.
Steve King is a racist.
There's no doubting this anymore.
There's no questioning it any longer.
At a Washington, D.C. meeting with The Greater Des Moines Partnership - an event attended by Daily Times Herald general manager Ann Wilson - King offered up a plan for a worker shortage that will ensue if the Iowa congressman and his jack boot clone from Colorado, U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, get their way and deport anyone in America who has ever had a taco.
How would we deal with the worker shortage in the western Iowa towns that have relied on Hispanics since the Farm Crisis of the 1980s?
More Iowa babies are the solution, King told the Greater Des Moines Partnership, according to the reporting of long-time Des Register D.C. journalist Jane Norman.
"What about the 'grow your own' plan?'" King said.
In other words: white people need to have more kids. Let's get busy, congressman. Puncture all the condoms between the Missouri and Mississippi and lower the age of consent to 14 for anyone with skin prone to sunburn. As for the darkies, give them some extra hours in the packing plant and bad Viagra.
King's racism is now in plain view, naked in the stark light of day.
The Kiron Republican added that the birthrate is so low in Europe that "western Europeans themselves are not having babies fast enough to keep their population up, and because they created ethnic enclaves, as opposed to assimilation, Europe isn't going to be the same Europe we knew," reports The Register.
This is not about economics and the rule of law for King. This is about white and brown.
If the Hispanics, many legal, many not, who have played a role in western Iowa's economy were white German Catholics here without papers, King would stamp their fast-tracked citizenships himself.
King isn't worried about the illegal immigration. He fears a Latinization of Iowa in much the same way Protestants detested his Catholic forefathers.
But rather than stand with brown-skinned Catholic brethren, King has appropriated the 19th century American Protestant playbook of hate and language of exclusion.
Last year, in interviews and during a speech before the Carroll Rotary Club, King said Iowa needs a "fertility" plan.
Former Republican Lt. Gov. Art Neu of Carroll asked the visiting King to elaborate on references the GOP congressman has made in the media to a "fertility" program King contends could plug a void now filled with immigrant labor.
"I gave them a whole list of things that we could do," King said. "There are nations out there that encourage a greater birthrate."
King singled out Singapore, a nation King said has had some privacy issues at the root of its birthrate problems.
He said the government of Singapore came up with the following plan to increase pregnancies: "We think you ought to put newspapers in your car (windows) to get more privacy."
Added King, "I remember those things when I read them. They kind of stand out in my mind."
King repeatedly insisted that race doesn't play a role in his thinking about immigration or anything else - in spite of King's not-so-subtle messages that more of the right kind of people need to be having kids, people, ironically, that are a lot like me, white Protestant former fraternity guys who can break 80 on a lot of golf courses.
In fact King once told me he's so colorblind that he tells his staff not to be racist.
That's sort of like telling someone to be funny. If you have to say "be funny or be tolerant," it's safe to say there won't be many laughs - or much human decency either.
