Today, Mitt Romney enthusiastically endorsed Rep. Steve King (R-IA), saying “he needs to be your Congressman again. I want him as my partner in Washington!” If Romney were elected, then, he’d be partnering on legislation with one of the most radical members of Congress:

1. King is the leading defender of dog-fighting and animal torture in the United States. King recently suggested “there was something wrong” with the priorities of people who wanted to criminalize dogfighting while boxing was legal. When challenged on that assertion, King went on a bizarre diatribe about how the kidnapping, rape, and forced abortion of an underage girl wouldn’t be illegal under current law. King’s prodogfighting statements are consistent with a long legislative record of defending the inhumane practice as well as his recent sponsorship of legislation that would enable the torture of animals on farms while critically weakening food safety standards.

2. King compares immigrants to dogs, proposes keeping them out with electrified fence. Describing immigrants as birddogs, King said that we should only take “frisker” people, “not the one that’s over there sleeping on the corner.” This makes his remedy for illegal immigration, an electric fence, unsurprising, which he justified by saying “we do this with livestock all the time.” He also thinks that multicultural groups are about self-pity and that immigrants who “love taxes” aren’t real Americans.

3. King believes states can ban birth control and that contraception may destroy America. King, who adheres to a revisionist interpretation of the 10th Amendment, disagrees with well-established Supreme Court precedent guaranteeing a woman’s right to control her own body. This may be because King thinks that access to birth control may “let our birth rate get down below replacement rate we’re a dying civilization. Hypocritically, King has proposed that it is unconstitutional for states to ban foie gras. King, like Todd Akin, has “never heard of” a rape-induced pregnancy.

4. King tends birther. King personally searched for and discovered Obama’ birth announcement in Hawaii newspapers, he remains unconvinced that Obama was born inside the United States, positing the notion that “they might’ve announced that by telegram from Kenya.”

5. King sympathized with a terrorist and secessionism. After being informed of an attempted right-wing suicide attack on an IRS building, King expressed empathy with the terrorist’s motives, saying “It’s sad the incident in Texas happened, but by the same token, it’s an agency that is unnecessary and when the day comes when that is over and we abolish the IRS, it’s going to be a happy day for America.” Further, after the passage of the health care law, King intimated that parts of the country may need to secede from the Union, claiming that “we wouldn’t have to do that” if his audience could beat “the other side” to a pulp and chase them down.

And there’s much, much more where that came from.

Congressman Steve King (R-IA) participated in a radio debate with Democratic challenger Christie Vilsack last night, and was given a chance to explain a comment he made in May comparing immigrants to dogs.

But instead of apologizing, or even explaining how he simply misspoke, King told the audience that the comment was really meant as a compliment, and that anyone who interpreted it as an insult — namely, everyone — was simply motivated by partisanship and incapable of cooperation:

VILSACK: Frankly, he’s been a bully, and he’s an embarrassment to the people of Iowa when he talks about immigrants as animals. If my mother were here she would say to Congressman King ‘show some decency.’

KING: …This American vigor that we have that comes from legal immigrants who came to this country with a dream — we get the cream of the crop of every donor civilization on the planet — and people that can take a compliment and turn it into an insult are not going to be constructive working across the isle. But that’s what that was, was a compliment. And everyone who was there that heard that knows that.

King’s original comment, first flagged by Salon’s Alex Seitz-Wald in May, was made during a town hall meeting in Pocahontas, Iowa. He told the audience that immigrants were like bird dogs: “You get the pick of the litter and you got yourself a pretty good bird dog. Well, we’ve got the pick of every donor civilization on the planet,” he said.

King has a long history of inflammatory rhetoric about both immigrants and dogs. He has worked with xenophobic icons of the far-right like Sheriff Joe Arpaio and criticized minority college students as “people that feel sorry for themselves.” And in July, King advocated for the legalization of dog fighting, a felony crime punishable with severe jail time and hefty penalties.