Letter: Are Republicans tired of ‘winning’ yet?

Published 9:25 am Friday, November 18, 2022

On Jan. 13, 2021 10 Republican Party members voted to impeach President Donald Trump over the events of Jan. 6. One of those members was U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, who lost her bid for another term in Congress when she was defeated by Joe Kent in the Washington state primary on Aug. 2, 2022. Democratic candidate Marie Gluesenkamp Perez garnered more votes than Republican candidate Joe Kent in the Nov. 8, 2022 mid-term elections and will soon become our 3rd Congressional District representative.

I’m sitting here shaking my head and wondering just who came up with the brilliant strategy resulting in the loss of a congressional seat held by a Republican for 11 years? When the Clark County Republican Party voted to censure Herrera Beutler on Feb. 23, 2021, they also decided to vet and select another conservative Republican candidate to champion in the 2022 primaries. Too bad they picked Kent, a man not only endorsed by the former president but also a guy who had swallowed the big lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

Despite being endorsed by Trump, my wife and I would probably have voted for Mr. Kent if he hadn’t been an election denier. I’ll bet both Joe Kent and Republican senatorial candidate, Tiffany Smiley, are now asking what Trump meant when he said, “We’re going to win so much. You’re going to get tired of winning, you’re going to say, ‘Please Mr. President, I have a headache. Please, don’t win so much. This is getting terrible.”

Now that former President Trump has announced a 2024 run for the office he once held, I hope the Republican Party is prepared for so much winning that its members are going to develop a massive headache, if they haven’t already done so.

RALPH D. WARNER

Ocean Park