Rep. Pete King's Red Meat

Daily News
By Elizabeth Benjamin
March 16, 2010

Rep. Peter King riled up the crowd at his St. Patrick's Day-themed fundraiser this past Saturday with some good old-fashioned anti-Democrat rhetoric.

At about the 2:50-minute mark (after the "Irish Eyes are Smiling," but before the bagpipes), King delivered a red meat speech, which was received with considerable cheers and applause.

"I intend on waging a very, very tough campaign this year," the Long Island lawmaker said. "We are fighting for the soul of the nation."

"We don’t need a president of the United States who feels he has to go around the world apologizing for America. We don’t need an attorney general of the United States who feels he has to give constitutional rights to terrorists. We certainly don’t need a speaker of the House who wants to socialize one sector of our economy."

"...We certainly don’t need another $800 billion stimulus bill which has increased unemployment by millions of jobs. This is going to be a tough fight because the special interests, the media, they’re lined up on the other side. And yet we’ve seen throughout the last six, eight nine ten months, really a revolution." 

He goes on like that for a while more, and then finishes up with: "I think, quite frankly, the people running our government now don’t deserve to run out government."

None of this is particularly surprising coming from King, who tends to be pretty plainspoken.

King is one of just two Republicans left in the House since Obama tapped John McHugh to serve as secretary of the Army and Democrat Bill Owens won NY-23. (The other is Rep. Chris Lee, who holds former Rep. Tom Reynolds' old seat).

The Democrats were once plotting to redistrict King out of existence, but that was back before the midterms started shaping up to be such a disaster for them.

I don't think King, who flirted with running for the US Senate back when Caroline Kennedy was expected to get Hillary Clinton's seat, is in any particular danger this year, and the GOP is expecting to pick up several seats this fall.

Eight Democratic districts are in play to varying degrees: NY-1, NY-13, NY-19, NY-20, NY-23, NY-24, NY-25 and NY-29.