After the GOP establishment leadership caved on defunding Obamacare and President Barack Obama’s executive amnesty, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) realized how important it is to have a conservative president in the White House.
That was what, in part, prompted him to organize the inaugural Iowa Freedom Summit over the weekend, where nearly every potential GOP presidential candidate spoke to Iowans who take their responsibility of casting votes in the first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses beyond seriously.
In an interview that aired on Breitbart News Sunday with hosts Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon and Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow, King wondered how Republicans can essentially say, with their actions, that they “don’t believe in the rule of law” or just decide to ignore parts of the constitution to avoid political confrontations.
King blasted the “lack of energy at the top” of the Republican establishment to “take the risk” of confronting Obama more aggressively on executive amnesty.
And he said that is why a conservative must be elected to the White House and his goal is to put on events like the Iowa Freedom Summit that will allow voters “to identify a full-spectrum constitutional conservative who is committed to restoring the pillars of American exceptionalism.”
“That starts here [in Iowa],” King said.
Acknowledging that Border Patrol agents are “rolling out the welcoming mat” for illegal immigrants and vowing to introduce an amendment to the House border bill that would prevent detained illegal immigrants from being transferred more than 50 miles from the border while they are awaiting hearings, King said the Republican leadership has not laid out a strategy to control illegal immigration except to say they want “step-by-step” immigration reform.
King said though the Republican establishment leaders expressed outraged when Obama enacted his executive amnesty, they did not confront it when they had a chance to in the lame-duck session of Congress by ramming through the so-called “CRomnibus” funding bill that did not defund it.
“I don’t think there is enough fight there,” he said.
He said he was “very disappointed that the entire Republican conference doesn’t see with utter clarity that the president has violated the constitution” with his executive amnesty.
He wondered how lawmakers can take the oath of office to defend the constitution and not know or understand that the framers wanted each branch of government to jealously guard its power and responsibilities. King said it is “appalling” that lawmakers–and Republicans in particular–do not honor that oath in the name of politics.