Republican Shaun Winkler, White Supremacist, Running For Sheriff In Idaho

[Galraedia]

Source: Huffington Post

SANDPOINT, Idaho -- He has been an Aryan Nations member and Ku Klux Klan leader, and now Shaun Winkler wants to be the sheriff in a rural Idaho county near the Canadian border.

The white power activist is running as a Republican in the May 15 Bonner County primary to become the top law enforcement officer. Winkler said despite the white supremacist beliefs he holds as a KKK imperial wizard, his brand of justice would be color blind.

"In the event I was elected sheriff, I would not act on racial profiling," Winkler said. "Being in the white power movement, I know how it feels to be profiled by law enforcement."

Rather, Winkler is running on a platform that includes coming down hard on sex offenders and meth manufacturers, and reducing the impact of federal law enforcement at the county level.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/29/shaun-winkler-white-supremacist-sheriff_n_1388346.html?ref=politics&ir=Politics

[Neoma]

1. Supports Ron Paul...

[radicalliberal]

6. Isn't it interesting that ...

... extremists such as this guy are attracted to Ron Paul (who, incidentally, my Republican wife has never been able to stand, even voting for the Democratic candidate running against him).

[Ken Burch]

2. I would never normally donate to a Republican

But I might well send some bucks to whomever else is standing in the 'Pug primary against this bastard.

This might be the only way to stop the guy, since I suspect Dems don't GET elected to anything in Northern Idaho(If I'm wrong about that, my apologies).

[jmowreader]

10. You would be wrong about that, but not very wrong

Democrats getting elected is very rare here, but there are a few--the sheriff and prosecutor in Shoshone County and the sheriff in Benewah County are both Democrats, but they're far enough to the right I don't know why they are what they claim to be.

I am very concerned that this man may actually get elected. He claims to have no law enforcement experience whatsoever and is running on a "we need to get the federal government out of Bonner County" platform. That's a popular stance up here, so if he plays the "fuck the government" card better than the other three Republicans who want to be Bonner County sheriff, he might win.

[Ken Burch]

11. Thanks for the information on that.

As to county sheriff's races in general...it's exceedingly rare that you see a non-reactionary person anywhere even stand for that particular office...let alone get elected to it(about the only exception to that that I know of is Hunter S. Thompson running for sheriff in his county in Colorado in 1970).

It would be a real step forward for somebody to actually develop a genuinely progressive, humane, and effective approach to law enforcement in this country. It ought to be possible(they seem to do fairly well at that in places like the Netherlands, for example)but I've never seen it here.

[Grassy Knoll]

3. A Republican, How Shocking !!!

?w=300&h=300

I Smell a Rush Limbaugh Fill in, Or when Hannity is on vacation.

[Major Nikon]

4. You don't have to be a racist to be a Republican, but it's a great start

[radicalliberal]

5. "Winkler said ..."

"... despite the white supremacist beliefs he holds as a KKK imperial wizard, his brand of justice would be color blind." Oh, yeah ... sure.

[alp227]

7. Mindless Republicans: "But but but the DEMOCRATS founded the KKK and were for segregation!"

"And Martin Luther King Jr. was a REPUBLICAN!"

(omitting how those racist Democrats aka Dixiecrats later became Republicans, Democratic president Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, and MLK campaigned for both Eisenhower and Johnson and was actually an independent.)

as for Winkler, let him have his moment of fame and either fizzle into irrelevancy or allow the (smart) people of that county to forgive him, if he's grown up any. People can change, whether the late Democratic senator/former Klansman Robert Byrd or this candidate Shaun Winkler.

[Grassy Knoll]

8. Dixiecrats is all they have left.....

only to exploit a 60 year old mirror they don't want to look into.
Good post.

[Galraedia]

9. Conservatives founded the KKK

And MLK was a LIBERAL, not a conservative.

[Ken Burch]

13. Actually, by the end, he was more or less a socialist.

The goals of the Poor People's Campaign were clearly social democratic, at the least-and that, IMHO, had as much to do with Dr. King's opposition to the Vietnam war did in terms of driving the decision by our country's power structure to have him killed.

[Ken Burch]

12. I never knew where the "MLK was a Republican" thing even started

Perhaps he voted for some Republicans in the 1950's(in Georgia, that was the only way at all in that period to cast even a symbolic vote against segregation-there were NO progressive Dem politicians of any stripe in that state in that era)but, at the same time, the State of Georgia, during Dr. King's lifetime, did not let people register to vote by party affiliation. Everyone in that state, whatever their voting choices and whatever their affiliations in any office they may have held, was technically a registered independent.