Joe Kent (R) and Marie Gluesenkamp-Perez (D) squared off during their first debate, held in Vancouver last Tuesday. The two political novices are vying to become congressman for Washington’s Third Congressional District.* The difference between these candidates was striking, not just on issues but on style. Perez answered the moderator’s questions by reading off a stack of note cards, occasionally looking up at the audience, gestating with her right hand while her left hand held on to her note cards. Kent answered the questions from memory, without notes, while looking at the audience.
Marie Gluesenkamp-Perez and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have much in common. Besides being just months apart in age, they both supported Marxist Bernie Sanders for president, and they both claim to have college degrees in economics, YET they are completely unable to articulate basic economic concepts. They both support policies that RAISE inflation, DECREASE wages, RAISE our national debt and DEVALUE savings. The major difference between them is that AOC can spout her nonsense without notes, MGP can’t.
Perez, age 34, is a graduate of a Hard Left indoctrination center, the private and expensive Reed College in Portland, Oregon.** She talked mostly about herself and her problems, implying or demanding that government should fix them. [Sounding a lot like AOC, she even whines about personal problems on her campaign website.] Based upon her remarks, she knows little about the issues facing America or Washington State, and virtually nothing about how to fix them.
Her nonsensical remarks elicited groans or laughter from the audience throughout the debate. But, perhaps the strangest part of the debate centered around how she just couldn’t stop name-calling her opponent. She wasted much of her precious debate time scare mongering, telling the audience what HE would do if elected, not what SHE would do. Whoever wrote her note cards should be fired.
Kent, age 41, was endorsed by President Trump on September 1st. He is a graduate of Norwich University, a military college in Northfield, Vermont, and a 20-year veteran of the Army.*** During the debate he displayed a broad grasp of the problems facing America and Americans. It was obvious he understood how we arrived in this unique economic mess, and provided ways to get us out of it. His mindset could best be summed up with the phrase “the US government exists to look out for the American people,” which he repeated several times.
JAIME HERRERA-BEUTLER OUSTED FOR VOTING TO IMEACH TRUMP
These two political novices, both members of the Millennial Generation, are competing to fill the seat of the defeated incumbent, Republican Jaime Herrera-Beutler. Herrera-Beutler, who was first elected in 2010, was narrowly defeated in Washington’s open primary (low voter turnout), held on August 2nd. Eight challengers vied for her seat and she came in third. As the top two vote-getters, Kent and Perez advanced to November’s general election. It is interesting to note that, of the top four vote-getters, three were Republicans. Voters in the district were mad at Herrera-Beutler for voting to impeach the president they had twice voted for.
Debate topics centered around Economy, Healthcare, Foreign Affairs, Crime & Security. Verbatim, the following are Perez’s and Kent’s answers to the following question:
“What do you see as the role of the United States in the world?”
Marie Gluesenkamp-Perez’s Answer:
“You know, we’ve been hit a lot lately on immigration. And so, I would like to talk about that for a little bit. I believe in secure borders and that countries have a right and a responsibility to know who is coming into their countries. There is a crisis at the southern border that Joe Kent keeps bringing up. We have got to have strong borders, absolutely. But we also have to have a legal system of immigration.
Joe Kent wants to ban all immigration for 20 years to re-establish a white majority. He is a perfect example of someone who is entirely incapable of making things better. What he wants is a political football that he can toss back and forth to fund raise off of.
What we need is a strong system of laws and controls. Joe Kent’s policy is just magical thinking, morally bankrupt and economic sabotage. It is exactly why so many people who work in agriculture are supporting me. Because they know that their existing prior ability for authorized labor is critical not only to our agriculture industry, but our ability to go to the grocery store and get produce. Yeah.
Joe Kent would devastate our agriculture industry, and get us $40 cranberry sauce on the Thanksgiving table without solving any of the problems we are really seeing.
Immigration policy actually hits pretty close to home for me. My dad immigrated here from Mexico, fleeing Leftist violence. He came here to finish his university degree and went on to become a lay pastor at an evangelical church.”
NOTE: Perez did not answer the question.
Joe Kent’s Answer:
“This nonsense about me being a white nationalist is absolutely despicable. I fought for this country for over 20 years, I placed my life in the hands of minorities and people of every single race and creed and sexuality and they placed their lives in my hands. For 20 years! So that is just absolutely despicable. I want to limit immigration to this country, cut off illegal immigration and if a job has a visa tied to it that takes a job away from an American citizen, I want to get rid of that.
The question was “What is America’s role in the world?” The American role in the world, from the American government’s perceptive, is to look out for our people, period, end of story. We need to stop putting foreign countries first, stop putting major global corporations first, and put our people first, once and for all.
We need to make the American working family the center unit of concentration. We do that by bringing back our supply chain, creating an economic environment where someone can leave high school, get a decent paying job, and support a family, support a family on one income. This is the environment, this is the culture, that the greatest generation provided for us at the end of World War Two, but it was sold off at the altar of globalism.
We need to stop worrying about securing the rest of the world whether that is securing international shipping lines, or going off and fighting in these foreign conflicts because someone screamed “democracy” in some far-flung corner of the world. The US government exists to look out for American citizens, if you are an American citizen, I don’t care what political party you are, I don’t care what race you are, I don’t care what sex you are, I don’t care what god you pray to, I don’t care who you go to bed with at night, I am fighting for you.
THAT is the role of our government.”
DID PEREZ SUPPORT 2020 RIOTERS?
Perez’s auto body shop, which is across the Columbia River in Portland, Oregon, offered free help to Antifa thugs**** during the five months of BLM/Antifa riots in Portland, according to an Instagram post on July 26, 2020.
The post, on the Instagram account of Dean’s Car Care, @deanscarcarepdx, showed a picture of Perez’s husband Dean getting a haircut, with the caption:
“If you and your leaf blower have been getting busy supporting human rights, we’d like to do what we can to help keep that little machine working right (pro bono) shoot us an email and check your fluids.”
Antifa rioters used leaf blowers to clear the tear gas that police used to control the mobs. The Instagram post remained up throughout the riots. However, during her campaign Perez blamed an employee for posting this offer on the business’s Instagram account. It is unclear if any Antifa thugs actually brought their leaf blowers to Perez’s shop for maintenance.
DEBATE AFTERMATH
In a podcast interview the day after the debate Kent characterized Perez’s pitiful performance perfectly when he said:
“It’s pretty embarrassing when the candidate for the other side of the aisle has to bring a stack of note cards and then reads off the note cards. And really, if you bring note cards, you should at least have a coherent thought about how everything that’s happening in our economy is deeply interlinked, from the cost of energy, to what is happening on the stock market, to what is happening …in Ukraine, the open southern border, but even with her notes she couldn’t link any of that together.”
The next Perez-Kent debate is October 15th somewhere in Clark County again.
Marie Gluesenkamp-Perez Reading from the cue cards weakened her professional appearance, compared to Joe Kent, who appeared to be confident and qualified. A confident candidate renders good security for those concerned about wars rumors of wars, famine, glutinous hyper inflation and the poor house. A well educated candidate has a much better chance of winning an election.
America has had enough of a weak US admin. who makes wild cat decisions, most of whom are detrimental to the American middle class and those who fall through the cracks and still rearing kids, or the elderly who often live day by day.
Professionalism and grammatical articulation seem to have lost their flare in some circles.
I enjoyed the post because I missed the debate. There seems to be quite a gap between the candidates personas, but two very different candidates with quite a gap in platforms make for a good race if the election is honest.