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Republicans are falling in line behind the candidate they called a 'disaster' [1]
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Date: 2022-07-26
Republican leaders might not like Mastriano. They might not be personally on board with his conspiracy theories. But he is their nominee, and that’s that.
What that means is this: Republicans are supporting a candidate for governor of a major state who sent more than 50 tweets hashtagged QAnon and promoted the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. They’re falling in line behind a candidate who has described COVID-19 as “a government-sponsored virus” and spread misinformation about vaccines. This guy, who Republicans are saying is part of the team sport they are playing, has a campaign consultant who recently said that he does not want Jewish people in the conservative movement. “We don’t want people who are atheists. We don’t want people who are Jewish [...] This is an explicitly Christian movement because this is an explicitly Christian country,” Andrew Torba, the Mastriano consultant and Gab CEO, said. And when he said explicitly, he meant exclusively—no matter how prominent the conservative might be: “Ben Shapiro is not welcome in the movement unless he repents and accepts Jesus Christ as his Lord and savior.”
Mastriano has been a conspiracy theorist for years before Donald Trump arrived on the political scene, writing his 2001 Air Force Air Command and Staff College thesis as an extended piece of speculative fiction in which “The moral underpinnings of the US military were replaced by a neo-pagan worldview,” with a “Hitlerian putsch” resulting from the weakness of the military.
Twenty years after that dire warning about the collapse of democracy in the U.S., Mastriano organized buses to Washington, D.C., for the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, 2021, that turned into the attack on the U.S. Capitol—and he himself crossed police barricades that day as part of the attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
Mastriano opposes abortion in all circumstances, a view shared by just 14% of Pennsylvanians. He has said that, as governor, he would ensure that “only biological females can play on biological female teams.” He wants to make Pennsylvania voters re-register, as part of a broader attack on voting rights.
This is the Republican nominee for governor of a large purple state. While establishment Republicans might not be happy about it, this is the direction of the Republican Party—and it’s the uncomfortable establishment types who are falling in line.
Trump and his followers proved on Jan. 6 how dangerously close they came to overturning our democracy. Help cancel Republican voter suppression with the power of your pen by clicking here and signing up to volunteer with Vote Forward, writing personalized letters to targeted voters urging them to exercise their right to vote this year.
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[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/7/26/2112673/-Republican-leaders-know-Doug-Mastriano-is-awful-If-they-think-he-can-win-that-won-t-matter
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