J.D. Scholten is a former professional baseball player who is the Democratic candidate for Congress in the Fourth Congressional District of Iowa. He went on to a career as a paralegal specializing in immigration litigation. But, even if he weren't qualified, even if he were a snaggle-toothed sub-literate employed in a fish house, he would deserve any thinking person's support because J. D. Scholten is not Steve King.

Steve King is the incumbent in the Fourth C. D. He is a Republican who's been in office for 16 years now. He also is as plainly a white supremacist as has ever fouled the House of Representatives. He long ago embraced out-and-out fascism. The government of the republic needs to be rid of Steve King as quickly as possible.

His recent escapades include going to Europe to confer, converse, and otherwise hobnob with actual fascists who are distressingly coming to power there. And King, because he lacks the sensitivity of a bone saw, found an interesting way to pay for his travel. From The Washington Post:

In an interview with a website associated with the party, King (R-Iowa) declared that “Western civilization is on the decline,” spoke of the replacement of white Europeans by immigrants and criticized Hungarian American financier George Soros, who has backed liberal groups around the world. King spoke to the Unzensuriert site Aug. 24 in Vienna, a day after concluding a five-day journey to Jewish and Holocaust historical sites in Poland, including the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. The trip, including airfare to and from Europe, was financed by From the Depths, an international nonprofit that seeks to educate lawmakers about the Holocaust.

Lovely.

MANDEL NGAN Getty Images

King described his travels in Poland as a “very, very powerful experience” but also described later visiting historical sites separately from the From the Depths group to get a “Polish perspective” on the Holocaust.“I asked them what was worse, was it the Nazis or was it the Soviets?” he said. “And they don’t know the answer to that because the Soviets occupied them longer, may have killed more of them, but it was over a longer period of time.”

The Polish perspective? Steve King is very bad at code.

In the earlier interview, King identified Soros as a force behind the “great replacement” — a notion promoted by far-right groups — and accused him of surreptitiously influencing U.S. elections and policymaking: “His money floats in in such a way you can’t see the flow, but if you trace it back, you can connect it to his foundation” The “Great Replacement” theory is a view on the right that white Europeans are being replaced by minorities.

Steve King is very, very bad at code.

At the moment, according to the last Emerson College poll, King is leading Scholten by 10 points, but he's only polling at 41 percent, which is dreadful for an eight-term incumbent. C'mon, Iowa. I mean, Jesus, give us all a break, will you?

Respond to this post on the Esquire Politics Facebook page here.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io