Among the speakers at the Iowa Republican Party’s state convention, Congressman Steve King offered the most stirring argument in support of presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain.
"We get to embrace John McCain as the national nominee to be the next president of the United States and here’s why. There are all kinds of reasons why," King said. "The first thing is he is an authentic American hero who has served America every day of his adult life and he serves America today."
King, a Republican from Kiron, questioned whether Democratic candidate Barack Obama is fit to be president. "As I track through that continuum of Obama, I see nothing in there where he would have been exposed to patriotism, conservatism, Republicanism, probably not even many of the other values that we’re talking about, but I can tell you what he has been exposed to and that’s the Harvard School of Law," King said, "and when (Obama) makes appointments to the Supreme Court, they will not be the appointments that John McCain will make."
King prodded Iowa Republicans, though, suggesting there’s hard work ahead. "We turned out more Republicans than ever before in the first-in-the-nation Caucus. You should be congratulated for that," King said. "The other side of that coin is the Democrats turned out twice as many. Now, we will get the representation that we earn and that means we’ve got to stand up and do all the things necessary to get our candidates elected. We must do all of them."
Iowa GOP chairman Stewart Iverson began the day with a similar theme. "It’s just not the top-of-the-ticket (race) that turns out voters. A lot of times it’s actually a county race that turns out voters in that county," Iverson said, "and so we have to get people enthused and keep them enthused to go out and vote in November so that we can be victorious and get our mission accomplished because that’s what it’s all about."
You can listen to Congressman King’s speech to his party’s state convention by clicking on the audio link below.
An inside-the-party fight ended Satuday with two well-known social conservatives winning seats on the Republican National Committee. Steve Scheffler of the Iowa Christian Alliance and Kim Lehman of the Iowa Right-to-Life Committee will be the Republican Party of Iowa’s male and female representatives on the National Committee.