We have met the enemy, and he is dumb
One of the nice things about covering the GOP is that I get to occasionally repeat my material without it getting stale. And here we go again. God I love it when they eat their young!
Once in a while every party gets the occasional shitty candidate. Especially in the primaries, where the only criteria is a certain number of nominating petitions and paying the filing fees. It’s how the party deals with them once they’re stuck with one. And BOY!, is the Pennsylvania GOP stuck with one.
Ladies and gentlemen, meet GOP all purpose pus bucket Doug Mastriano. He is a sitting Pennsylvania state Senator. He’s also the PA GOP Senate’s point man in dealing with seditionist Trump lawyer John Eastman. He was also at the US Capitol on January 6th, even after rioters breached the Capitol, and has selfies to prove it. Oh yeah, and he’s running for Governor of Pennsylvania.
The problem is the same as the GOP had for the 2016 presidential primaries. Mastriano has a solid base of somewhere around 30%. But as in 2016, there are too damn many candidates. Mastriano is leading, with 3 other candidates in double digits, and a handful in single digits. And as long as Mastriano’s base stays solid, he’ll win with about 32% of the vote, just as Trump did in the early primaries in 2016.
Mastriano is a walking nightmare for the GOP. He’s mired to his hips in Stop the Steal and the J6 insurrection. If he survives the primary, the GOP rightfully fears that they will spend all their time having to explain Mastriano’s relationship with Eastman and the riot, and not talking about things like high gas prices and culture war issues.
And so, in desperation, the GOP is trying to pull a Democratic Biden/2020. They are desperately trying to find the most electable non Mastriano candidate, and then everybody else will drop out of the race and back that candidate. The fear is that it’s both too late, and that the other candidates supporters may not play along.
Here’s just a couple of kinks to consider. With Mastriano’s relationship with Eastman common knowledge, as well as his attempts to pull off a recount in PA, Mastriano got a subpoena to appear before the J6 committee. He blew it off. So the GOP is faced with the prospect of a gubernatorial candidate going into the election under federal indictment for Obstruction of Congress. And six days out, Trump has yet to endorse a candidate. Maybe he’s a little queasy about plighting his troth to this chucklehead.
But if he survives the primary, it might already be too late for the GOP, because he may have just scuttled his own candidacy. These brain dead Trombies have the nasty habit of saying the quiet stuff out loud, and a couple of days ago, Mastriano just fired a Neptune missile right into his own bow.
His verbal flair took place in a Senate debate that was televised locally. The moderator brought up Mastriano’s work on overturning the 2020 election, what changes would he push for in Pennsylvania election laws if elected. After which, Mastriano opened his mouth, inserted his left foot, his right foot, and his left elbow. He said something like, If I’m elected, I will instruct my Secretary of State that we need to overhaul the entire voting system. And I don’t just mean purging the voters list, I mean throwing the entire thing out. Everybody will have to start from scratch and register to vote again.
Doug, Doug, Doug, You stupid fuck! Do you have any concept of what the hell you’re talking about?!? I can only guess not, because if you did, you would never have opened your fat pie hole about such a plan until you were already safely sworn in and ready to spring your plan. For two simple reasons.
First, you want to talk about mobilizing voters in the wrong direction? Look moron, your base is the Trump base, And that means a shitload of older voters. Do you honestly believe it will whip up an older base to come out and vote for you if it means that sometime after you’re inaugurated, they’ll all have to root around for their documents, and then go stand in insane lines at the DMV to register to vote all over again? And do you think it might just motivate Democrats, independents, and soft moderate voters to show up and vote Democratic, just to save themselves from that pain-in-the-ass option?
The second reason is even worse, and Trump is going to hate it! Since November 3rd, 2020, the entire Trump/GOP platform has been Stop the Steal!, and the specter of Millions of fraudulent votes cast by illegal immigrants and dead people! If you sit there and delete the entire voter registration roll in 2023, and make everybody register to vote all over again, and Pennsylvania goes blue in 2024, how do you claim Massive voter fraud! when your entire voting roll is less than 2 fucking years old?!? You stupid shit.
You know, I’m no savant, political or otherwise, but there are days when it’s sweet to sit down and do this job. Because of mental misfits like Doug Mastriano. This kind of stupid isn’t genetic, nor is it ingrained or learned. This kind of stupid is a gift from God.
Oh, I have a feeling that all those older Trump voters would still vote for Mastriano because they would believe that THEY wouldn’t have to re-register likely because they’re the, um, “right” kind of person.