As of Saturday, November 12, 2022, control of the U.S. House of Representatives is up in the air, and every seat matters. It could come down to a single seat.
Joe Kent, Republican savior of Washington’s 3rd congressional district, was too smart by half. He defeated off 5-term GOP Rep. Jamie Herrera-Buetler in the primary (see results here), then lost to a Democrat (see results here).
Kent’s campaign website said, “I voted for Representative Beutler to stand firm for my family and our district. She betrayed that trust and made it clear that I needed to act decisively.” Herrera-Buetler voted for Trump’s second impeachment and the January 6 investigation. Kent is a MAGA election denier who repeated the false claim that the 2020 election “was rigged and stolen” and called the Capitol rioters “political prisoners.”
That marked him as an extremist, and it cost him at the ballot box. Across America, in November 2022, voters turned their backs on anti-democracy Republicans. Things were no different nearer to home. Kent lost, and handed a GOP House seat to the Democrats.
Joe Kent is an admirable man. He was a Boy Scout, then joined the Army and served in the Special Forces, logging multiple combat tours; and after a 20-year military career, he worked for the CIA as a paramilitary officer. He met and married a military woman, and lost her to a bombing in Syria, which made him a Gold Star father and husband. He reeks of patriotism. (See story here.) But, sadly, his mind is gone.
Kent sees the world in black-and-white, good-and-evil, for-us-or-against-us, when reality is nuanced. God gave people brains to think with, and he’s not using his.
For example, “He has previously proposed ending all legal and illegal immigration besides immigration through marriage and ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program,” without distinguishing between hardworking immigrants, which our workforce needs, and those few who cause trouble or are a burden on society.
America has a labor shortage that’s holding back our economy and contributing to inflation. Our population isn’t self-sustaining; the citizen birthrate has fallen below the replacement rate (i.e., more Americans are dying than being born). The Baby Boomer generation is aging out of the workforce. Without a steady inflow of immigrant labor, our economy will be dead in the water.
As I’ve written previously, crime statistics show citizens are twice as likely as illegals to engage in criminal activity. This makes sense; they come here to support their families, and don’t want to create a stir or draw attention to themselves. If you want crime rates to go down, bet on immigrants. They come here for peace, safety, work, and opportunity to live better lives.
On his campaign website, under the heading “Supporting Our Law Enforcement,” Kent said, “I fully support the men and women of our law enforcement community. I will fight any efforts to defund the police. I will fight to use the tools of federal law enforcement to dismantle the Antifa terrorist organization.”
This isn’t a thinking response to the crime problem. We all support good police, but you can’t paint police with a broad brush. America has some policing problems that can’t be swept under the carpet. When George Floyd was murdered by a police officer, a new civil rights movement was born and millions took to the streets to demonstrate against violent and racist policing. These peaceful protesters weren’t “Antifa terrorists.”
While some few activists used “defund” rhetoric, nobody is seriously considering “defunding” police. Biden has proposed more money for police. But we certainly should be looking at reforming police where there are problems.
Chances are most voters don’t think through these issues in great depth. That’s not a knock on them; they’re busy earning a living and raising families, and don’t have much time for politics. But America’s voters have a sense of fair play, and above all, don’t want their rights taken away from them. The Republican Party has come to be widely seen as a threat to basic rights.
Even so, simply wearing the “Republican” label doesn’t have to drag a candidate down. Jamie Herrera-Buetler was a thinker, dedicated to serving her district and solving its problems, and probably would’ve been re-elected. She was in 2020, a “blue” year. And Washington is, by and large, a “blue” state.
Joe Kent simply “blue” the election and a GOP House seat by not thinking, by embracing lies and excusing political violence, and talking about issues as if voters are sixth-graders. And Joe Kent went down in flames. (Click on image to activate smoking airplane.)
Update: On Sunday, November 13, 2022, CNN said, “Democrats scored a major coup in Washington’s Republican-leaning 3rd District, where on Saturday CNN projected that Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez would defeat Republican Joe Kent, who had aligned himself closely with former President Donald Trump. Her victory came largely as a result of Trump’s efforts to punish Republicans who voted to impeach him. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, a moderate who was widely viewed as a lock for reelection, did not finish in one of the top two slots in the primary and therefore didn’t advance to the general election.”
Bottom line, Joe Kent gifted this seat to the Democrats. Unbelievably, an Army veteran and former CIA employee aligned himself with someone who tried to overthrow our democracy. How did he go so wrong? He kicked Herrera Beutler out of Congress to satisfy Trump’s thirst for revenge, and WA-3 voters wouldn’t have it; that should be a wakeup call, and now he should be asking himself some hard questions.
