This Kent is no Superman

 (Nathan Howard/AP)

     Look at that lead image. It struck me at once as being perfectly representative of every cautionary tale we ever read in a book or seen in a movie about a strongman or some malcontent with pretensions thereof who ever ran for public office on a populist platform. Such alternate reality political novels and movies seem to verge on science fiction. Whether it's It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis or The Plot Against America by Philip Roth or All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (based on the life and career of Huey Long), they almost come across as science fiction because the scenarios portrayed are almost too far-fetched to quality for willing suspension of disbelief.

     The picture above is of Joe Kent, who's running for Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler's seat in Washington state's 3rd district. If her name sounds familiar, it's because Beutler is our sole source for the disturbing anecdote about what Trump told Kevin McCarthy during that now-infamous call during the January 6th riots. "Well, it seems they're more upset about the election than you are, Kevin."

     If that isn't enough to ring a bell, Herrera-Beutler is also one of the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump.

     So, it shouldn't strike anyone as surprising that Trump would give his endorsement to a former Green Beret, one of a virtual platoon of former Special Forces operators seeking, and getting, public office. And this is the Trump way: If you want his endorsement, which is far from an assurance of success (Look at Alabama, if you don't believe me, and the fact that all four Senate seats now belong to Democrats in once-crimson Georgia and Arizona), the fastest way to the charcoal briquette that passes for his heart is to spread the Big Lie that He and not Joe Biden won, especially if you're running against someone who voted to impeach him.

     Kent has already signaled that he has zero interest in battling Democrats if and when he ever gets on the Hill outside of a tour group or a forgettable mini MAGA rally in front of the Capitol building.

     The lead image was taken on September 18th this year, in which Kent was stumping not just for himself but the rabid psychopaths who'd tried to overthrow the government and invaded in force and with homicidal intent the very same Capitol building that Kent had audaciously preened before. Specifically, he was stumping for the jailed rioters who probably would've had no problem killing him on sight if he was in Congress on January 6th.

     The reason I'd chosen that lead image was because, in my mind, it's the iconic photo of a strongman or pretender thereof, hatefully declaiming about something or another, surrounded by overweight goons vaguely masquerading as some ad hoc security detail. We saw much the same thing in Florida when Allen West ran for his one term stint in Congress when his security detail was a biker gang.

     Such Republicans are not statesmen or statesmen-in-waiting but goons, thugs of which Congress already sadly has in abundance. They're running not against Democrats but establishment Republicans with the intention of throwing verbal bombs and forcing mainstream Republicans into votes that they ordinarily wouldn't seriously entertain.

     That lead picture would be perfect as a cover for a book or a poster for a movie about some dystopian or possible dystopian future about a strongman who legally gets himself elected to some high public office with the intention of molding it in his image. But the fact is, we'd already gotten that in 2016 and for four years we were bombarded with one reason after another as to why that was such a bad idea, that we'd taken the old adage of anyone being able to grow up in the USA to become president just a bit too far. And, on November 3rd 2020, over 81,000,000 of us declared, "No more."

     And these far right wing, bomb-throwing anarchists like we already have in Marjorie Taylor-Greene, Lauren Boebert and Matt Gaetz have no interest in compromise, no interest in statesmanship or even practicing basic Civics. They're running for one reason only: For the GOP primary, in dislodging the Republicans whom Trump had judged to be insufficiently loyal to him.

     They're running for office in 2021 and 2022 on a 2020 platform and identifying themselves with a dead, spent MAGA movement of 2016.

     The Senate race in Missouri is a classic case: Establishment Republicans are scared shitless that their former governor, Eric Greitens, another ex Special Forces meat head who played politician for all of 17 months before he was buried under a blizzard of scandals that involved the obligatory extramarital affair, sexual assault, mishandling of campaign funds and invasion of privacy. Depending on which one you listen to, Greitens is leading in the primary polls. Republicans are jittery he'll actually get the GOP nod only to wind up losing the election itself to the Democrat whether it be Lucas Kunce or another.

     But primary poll numbers, especially ones conducted a year before an election, never tell the true story about one candidate or another. True, Greitens is polling well in some places and he does have the dodgy patina of public acceptance and political legitimacy. But what's the GOP's alternative to Greitens?

 

     This asshole?

     It's become screamingly obvious by now that Trump doesn't give a fuck about the Republican Party any more than your average liberal. It's all about soothing his perpetually-bruised ego. He will gladly destroy whatever is left of the Republican Party, one that's been a joke since Hoover, in his never ending quest to refill that once progressive party with ideologues, mini Trumps in his image, like so many missile-carrying penguins in Gotham City.