The Pennsylvania GOP Governor candidate has it all planned out
No Democrat will ever win again in his state if he gets his way. Amanda Carpenter lays out the plot:
By now, political junkies are familiar with the rucksack of election-denying baggage that Pennsylvania GOP gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano schleps around: He organized a faux post-election legal hearing for Rudy Giuliani in Gettysburg; he asked Congress to deny Pennsylvania’s electors; he spent thousands of campaign funds busing people to the Capitol on Jan. 6th; he was filmed crossing police barricades; some of his supporters were arrested for their activities that day, and he visited Arizona to observe its disastrous Cyber Ninjas audit in hopes of replicating it in Pennsylvania.
Those are only the highlights of what Mastriano has done in the past. But what about the future? People like Mastriano are never going to let Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss go. If anything, Trump’s “Stop the Steal” lies provide a pretext for actions intended to ensure MAGA types win in future elections.
How will they do it? Well, Mastriano has some ideas. (Well above and beyond hiring Trump’s throne-sniffing flack Jenna Ellis as his legal adviser.)
Although Mastriano evades scrutiny by blockading typical media interviews, with some help from his insurrection-friendly friends, he doesn’t hesitate to talk about his plans when he feels comfortable. Put those snippets together, and it shows Mastriano has a pretty well-thought-out election takeover plan in mind.
His platform includes the following:
loosening restrictions on poll watchers to make it easier to challenge votes;
repealing vote-by-mail laws;
appointing a fellow 2020 election-denier to be secretary of state who could enable him to decertify every voting machine “with a stroke of a pen”;
forcing all Pennsylvania voters to re-register; and
defunding the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
You can read on for the details but this pretty much tells the tale. And if the Supreme Court decides that state legislatures have plenary power over elections to the exclusion of every other official, in the next term you can bet that the Republicans will ensure that Pennsylvania never votes for a Democratic president again, regardless of the will of the people. They will find an excuse to overturn the election.
We’re starting to see people blame the Democrats for “choosing” extreme Republican candidates like Mastriano because there were cross over votes to put the more extreme candidate on the ballot in hopes that they will be rejected in the general election in swing states like Pennsylvania. No:
I’m getting a little bit sick of Democrats being blamed for everything. You see it all day long on social media from both the left and the right. I know it’s hard to believe that these people have the support they have but they do and it’s not because Democrats are so bad that people can’t help but vote for the other side. The sad truth is that a huge number of our fellow citizens affirmatively approve of these extremists and hate everything about the modern world that Democrats represent.
Democrats can certainly do a better job and must do a better job. But it’s very important to stay focused on the real issue which is the impending right wing fascism. The Dems are all we have to fight them. We must push them, but delegitimizing them and holding them responsible for what the other side is doing is for losers — which is what we will be, all of us, if these radicals have their way.
As for right wingers and their “look what you made me do” bullshit. Please ….