June 18, 2010 05:20 PM UTC

Tancredo, King Go Hostile on Cory Gardner

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Fort Collins Coloradoan’s Bob Moore reports:

Iowa Rep. Steve King will speak in Northern Colorado this weekend, thanks to a new conservative group that put together a rally after he had two other events canceled in the wake of controversial remarks on a radio talk show…

The Iowa congressman will be joined at the Loveland rally by former Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo, who has campaigned for Gardner but said he was “disappointed” by the Yuma Republican’s decision to cancel the fundraiser with King.

Tancredo was particularly irked that the initial reporting on King’s comments came from the left-wing watchdog group Media Matters for America, and then picked up by other media. He and King said Media Matters distorted the comments on the Liddy show.

“It’s a mark of a naive campaign, and it does nothing to advance our cause. Nobody should pay attention to Media Matters,” Tancredo said.

Adds the Colorado Independent:

In an interview Wednesday with Fox News, conservative Iowa U.S. Rep. Steve King blasted Colorado Fourth District GOP candidate Cory Gardner. King accused Gardner of spinelessness for canceling a joint-campaign event this weekend after King made headlines for saying he thought Pres. Obama exhibited favoritism toward black people.

“[Gardner] simply caved in at the first sign of friction” without “bothering to call me,” King told Fox. He elaborated to the Omaha World-Herald. “[He’s] not the kind of [person] I want guarding my back.”

…King’s remarks rocketed around the mediasphere but they were just the latest King comments to create a stir. The western-district Iowa Representative is well-known for a long list of incendiary remarks. He was clearly invited to the Pepper Pod “Afternoon with Cory Gardner” event in Hudson and given high billing precisely to draw on his ability to rally right-wing talk-radio listeners and activist voters. [Pols emphasis]

Gardner didn’t call King after the cancellation and he didn’t give any reason for the cancellation to the press. He has yet to disavow King’s statement about Obama or distance himself from any other of King’s political views…

As we said before, Steve King is a known commodity, and Cory Gardner knew exactly what he was getting–this kind of controversy is why King is popular on the GOP fundraising circuit. So now that Gardner’s canceled the event, he loses twice. Once dissing his invited guest for being what Gardner knew him to be, and again for refusing to explain why any of this happened: specifically why Gardner canceled, and more importantly, why he booked King for this fundraiser at all.

We wonder if Rep. King knows Gardner used to be a Democrat, before he found it stylish to consort with the hardest of the hard right? It seems to us that might help explain what partisans on both sides can identify coming out of this episode–a lack of conviction.