Joe Arpaio has it all to be a GOP hero. He’s hard on crime. He treats his criminals in ways that would get you imprisoned if you treated animals that way. He demeans common small time crime offenders.

Oh yeah, he’s also a raging anti-immigrant racist. Arizona seems to breed these guys like weeds.

One other thing. Some of his co-workers think he’s a disgrace to the badge.

You won’t catch me arguing against that.

Overstepping his bounds, going out of his way to punish offenders, dragging his policies into politics, he’s an all-around dirtbag. Heck, I think we *should* be tougher on criminals, I just don’t think we need to treat them like livestock.

First off, here is the standard Politico “hit job” on a conservative. List every bad thing a Republican has ever done by slowly and quietly trying to pooh-pooh it all away.

“Sure, he’s PROBABLY a racist, but you can’t find a picture of him in Klanwear so you can’t prove it.”

He’s the less slightly “fair-and-balanced” point of view from Rachel Maddow (admittedly not unbiased herself):

Guess which opinionated point of view I’m going to go with? The one that says that co-workers of this dirtbag basically call him a racist.

He has, in the past, called anti-Iraq War protestors un-American and traitors. He’s against stem cell research, anti-environment, anti-immigrant, anti-voting rights.

But hey! He’s all for torture and wire-tapping. Plus he’s all for harassing black voters.

Since he’s the GOP’s guy in charge of trying to derail anyone who President Obama picks for the Supreme Court, finding out whether or not this guy IS a Kloset Klucker might not be such a bad idea.

The GOP as the clowns they are.