Early this morning, Peter King-- first elected to Congress from the south shore of Long Island in 1992-- announced, on his Facebook page, that he won't be running for reelection. The announcement didn't say anything you wouldn't expect from a lock-step Trump enabler. Even though he sits on the Intelligence Committee and is well aware of how guilty Trump is, he announced in his statement that "In the coming weeks and during the next year I intend to vote against President Trump ‘s impeachment and will support the President’s bid for re-election." Many people first heard of his decision via a tweet (above) from Little Chuckie Schmucky. Not familiar with Schmucky? Maybe this little tune will help:NY-02 shouldn't have been a Republican district all these years. Although Hillary stunk it up with her status quo bullshit agenda, Obama won it both times he ran and the PVI hovered around neutral. After Hillary's dismal showing-- she lost by almost 10 points-- 53.0% to 43.9%, the PVI is now officially R+3. The district won't perform that way with King out of the way. I spoke with the head of the Suffolk County legislature, DuWayne, a former King opponent who has endorsed Gordon. He told me he expects her to win the district, explaining that it was the bipartisan old boys network that kept King in power.Before this morning's announcement, there were two Democrats running, establishment fave Babylon town concilmember Jackie Gordon (endorsed by EMILY's List and DCCC scam operation End Citizen's United) and local activist Mike Sax. She's already raised $187,941 but I wouldn't be surprised if other potential candidates jump into the race now. In 2018 King was forced to spend $3,175,639 to hold onto his seat. His progressive opponent, Liuba Grechen Shirley, spent $1,948,325. Although both Kirsten Gillibrand and Andrew Cuomo won the district, King was reelected, albeit more narrowly than in previous elections-- 128,078 (53.1%) to 113,074 (46.9%), losing the larger Suffolk County part of the district (D+3) while winning his Nassau home base which performed for him at an R+27 level.For years, the Long Island political class assumed that his daughter, Erin Sweeney, top Republican on the Hempstead town council, would inherit the congressional seat. But she decided to move to Charlotte, North Carolina and didn't run for reelection.John Wagner noted in his report for the Washington Post that the 75 year old King is the 20th GOP congressman to bow out of reelection. "King joins a growing number of Republican members of Congress who have announced retirements, resigned or said they will seek another office next year... By comparison, eight Democrats have announced they will not seek reelection."Even before King announced he was bowing out of Congress, NBC News ran a piece early this morning about how the GOP has lost 100 members since Trump arrived in DC. "Change is a way of life in Washington," reported Dante Chinni. "Politicians come and go at the whims of voters. But even by D.C. standards, House Republicans have seen massive changes during President Donald Trump's administration. This week, as the House impeachment proceedings become public, those changes are going to be front and center. When Trump arrived in the White House in 2017, there were 241 Republicans at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue in the House of Representatives. Today, 100 of them have gone or have announced that they are leaving. That's 41 percent of that original 241 in the 115th House... not congressional seats lost; that's a measure of actual people, the personalities that once roamed the halls of Congress that aren't there anymore. They left for a range of reasons. Some left to take administration appointments, some lost, and some just walked away."
While much is made of partisan flips-- and they are obviously crucial in terms of who controls the House and the Senate-- Congress is ultimately a collection of people, and personalities matter. Personalities frame debates and set up how committees are run. And the House's GOP personalities will define the larger Republican Party when impeachment moves from private to public hearings this week.The change in the House GOP over the last three years has been especially striking. Compare it to changes in the Democratic House in the same time period under President Barack Obama from January 2009 to November 2011....A good number of changes in the Republican House, 36 of them, came through election defeats. But overall, the departures are being driven more heavily by retirements and resignations. Half the Republican House turnover has come via voluntary exit-- 50 departures. And there was a lot of experience on that list.Former House Speaker Paul Ryan, a 10-term veteran, bowed out on his own. And 10 other Republican members who had served at least four terms in the House retired with their seats remaining Republican. That is, they were not in real danger of losing-- they just walked away and let different people take the reins.And more departures are likely on the way. We are heading into the holidays and the new year, always a prime time for members to announce that they are not seeking reelection.Keep these changes in mind this week when the House impeachment trial becomes a public affair. There has been a lot of turnover in the House in the past few years, and not just in terms of partisanship. The president's own party in the chamber looks very different from when he arrived in Washington.The House Republicans have less institutional memory and more new faces than they did a few years ago-- and those new faces have come to Congress in Trump's Washington. That's likely to have some impact when temperatures and rhetoric rise around impeachment.
Three memorable quotes by Peter King, the right-wing asshole Schumer said he will miss and whose friendship he will always value:
• Just after Michael Jackson's death: "Let's knock out the psychobabble. He was a pervert, a child molester, he was a pedophile. And to be giving this much coverage to him, day in and day out, what does it say about us as a country? I just think we're too politically correct. No one wants to stand up and say we don't need Michael Jackson. He died, he had some talent, fine. There's men and women dying every day in Afghanistan. Let's give them the credit they deserve... I believe I'm articulating the views of a great majority of the American people."• On the Occupy Wall Street movement: "We have to be careful not to allow this to get any legitimacy. I'm taking this seriously in that I'm old enough to remember what happened in the 1960s when the left-wing took to the streets and somehow the media glorified them and it ended up shaping policy. We can't allow that to happen."• After the police murdered Eric Garner: "If he had not had asthma, and a heart condition, and was so obese, almost definitely he would not have died from this."
King was a repulsive racist and an all around bigot. Right after the Orlando shooting in a gay club, he termed it a "vicious Islamic terrorist attack" on his Facebook page and said that "the Islamic threat to the United States is greater than at any time since 9/11" and excoriated "leftwing editors at the New York Times and the "liberal ideologies" of the ACLU, stating that both the newspaper and organization were attempting to "intimidate" critics of Islam. He also helped lead the charge against football players peacefully protesting discrimination by kneeling during the national anthem, likening their protest to "Nazi salutes." That's who Peter King-- a corrupt bag of shit-- is. I'm sure he and Schumer will sson meet again in Hell.
