STEVE KING, a Republican congressman from Iowa, has a long history of making nativist remarks—though rarely so undeniably as in an interview he gave to the New York Times last week. “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization—how did that language become offensive?” he blithely asked.

By way of an answer, the Republican leadership has been swift to denounce him. “Steve’s remarks are beneath the dignity of the party of Lincoln and the United States of America,” said Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader. “His comments call into question whether he will treat all Americans equally, without regard for race and ethnicity”. Senator Mitt Romney said Mr King should quit. Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, similarly suggested he “find another line of work”—as did Liz Cheney, the third-highest ranking Republican in the House.

The Republican House leadership withdrew Mr King from the three congressional committees he was serving on: Judiciary, Agriculture and Small Business. On January 15th the House passed a “resolution of disapproval” rejecting “white nationalism and white supremacy”. Every Republican voted for it (including Mr King, who said his comment was misinterpreted).

Why have Republicans waited so long to admonish Mr King? His 16 years in Congress are best-known for his offensive comments. In 2006, while demonstrating his design for an electrified border-fence, he said: “We do that with livestock all the time”. In 2011 he opposed the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate by arguing that, “if we let our birth rate get down below the replacement rate, we’re a dying civilization”. He has said that he doesn’t want Somali Muslims to work in Iowa’s meat packing plants: “I don’t want people doing my pork that won’t eat it, let alone hope I go to hell for eating pork chops.”

All that while, Republican leaders continued to embrace him. In 2016 he was national chairman for Senator Ted Cruz’s strong presidential campaign. Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa and other senior Republicans backed his re-election campaign in the recent mid-terms.

But the results of the mid-terms seem to have changed Republicans’ political calculation. Amid heightened controversy over his offensive views, Mr King won re-election by a much-reduced margin of three percentage points. Randy Feenstra, a Republican member of Iowa’s state Senate, has since declared his intention to run against Mr King in next year’s Republican primary. In his announcement he alluded to the congressman’s “caustic nature”. Kim Reynolds, Iowa’s Republican governor, has declined to endorse Mr King in that race.

More broadly, the mid-terms suggested to Republicans the limits to the white nativist politics that Mr King is an extreme, but by no means the only, exponent of in his party. The Republicans lost 40 seats in the House, largely in mixed and suburban areas, where voters are generally relaxed about immigrants and abhor racism. In his New York Times interview, Mr King referred in horror to the more diverse America such voters are willing to embrace. Referring to the unprecedentedly diverse new Congress he said: “You could look over there and think the Democratic Party is no country for white men.”

A bigger image problem for Republicans, which their sudden recoiling against Mr King also reflects, is Donald Trump. The president’s frequent vile comments about immigrants, and sometimes casually dismissive remarks about blacks and Native Americans, are as offensive as almost anything Mr King has said. The president has said there were some “very fine people” among neo-Nazi protestors. He has suggested a judge was biased on the basis of his Mexican heritage.

On January 13th he joked about the Wounded Knee massacre of hundreds of Native Americans in an attempt to ridicule Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a would-be Democratic candidate for the presidency. Mr Trump is the Republicans’ big problem with nativism. He, not Mr King, has driven away the party’s suburban voters. Unfortunately, he will not be so easily censured.

Asked for his view of Mr King’s long-overdue fate, the president played coy. “I haven’t been following it” he said. “I really haven’t been following it.”