No More Mr. Nice Guy!

Get a grip!

'Tis better to be silent and be thought a conservative idiot, than to editorialize in the Arizona Repulsive and remove all doubt.

Don Goldwater, nephew of Barry and obviously far surpassing the old man in nuttiness, is a rethug candidate for Arizona governor. He's also the author of a plan to build a wall along the border between Arizona and Mexico - using forced labor from captured illegals. Even the Falwell-ass-kissing John McCain realized he couldn't get away with supporting this, and denounced the plan. But Goldwater stuck to his guns.

First, he bullied and browbeat the news agency EFE, which originally published the story, into issuing a retraction and an apology. Then he went into print in today's Repulsive, trumpeting his vindication and dropping dark hints of Democratic smear campaigns (I wish the Dems had that much mojo) and, in the same editorial, confirming the details of his plan! The grandiloquently titled GRIP (Goldwater Reform Immigration Plan) would, he makes clear, do everything its critics say it would do.

Goldwater thinks it's perfectly all right to house illegals in "Tent Cities" in the middle of the Arizonan desert because he would simply be following the example of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a brutal buffoon who has been cited by Amnesty International for his cruel and humiliating treatment of his inmates, most of whom are pre-trial detainees and thus are innocent until proven guilty.

Funnily enough, Goldwater doesn't mention Arpaio by name, instead dishonestly trying to blame his depredations on Democratic governor Janet Napolitano. The mention of Napolitano's name evidently triggers some kind of mouth-foaming reflex, as Goldwater then launches into a tirade against her based on the bills she's vetoed. This is even more dishonest, when you consider that many of those bills are flat-out insane, and others are deliberately loaded with insane measures so that Napolitano will be forced to veto them and can thus be painted as soft on crime, America-hating and all the rest of it.

In fact the state legislature just finished a 164-day session which was record-breaking both for its length and for its lack of accomplishments, with whole weeks taken up by pompous oration about gay marriage and what have you, at a time when action on illegal immigration, wildfires, water supplies and a host of other issues has never been more urgent.

In other words, Goldwater is just another craw-thumping lunatic-right panderer who thinks leadership means appealing to the lowest common denominator and the worst dregs of ignorance, stupidity and bigotry. If he (or fellow 'thug candidate Len Munsil) wins election, it will be a sharp lurch rightward and backward to the past for Arizona, which gets to relive the glory days of Ev Mecham and other drooling neanderthals who made the state a laughing stock.

Arizona: just add water and you've got Mississippi.