Representative Steve King is an embarrassment to the Republican party. He has been for some time. On October 16, he endorsed white-nationalist Faith Goldy for mayor of Toronto. Goldy has plumped for a book that calls for the extermination of “the Jewish menace” and says that it’s “very, very, very, very spot on given a lot of what the movement is talking about right now.” In August 2017 Goldy was fired by Rebel Media for podcasting with the neo-Nazi website, the Daily Stormer. Enough to gain Steve King’s endorsement? You bet.

But while King’s endorsement is embarrassing, it’s also unsurprising. King and Goldy are both animated by the same brand of race-based identity-politics that consumes the alt-right. King’s focus on race and ethnicity is so consuming that it has become the core of his politics. In the past two weeks alone, he’s gone after Rep. Joaquin Castro and his brother Julian Castro, who served as an Housing and Urban Development Secretary under Obama by saying that they’re “retroactive Hispanics” who “took Spanish lessons to qualify.”