#doug mastriano
Photo
For Pennsylvanians.
#Pennsylvania#Pennsylvanians#Josh Shapiro#Doug Mastriano#Shapiro#Mastriano#abortion#choice#pro-choice#women#freedom#LGBT#LGBTQ#LGBTQIA#SAGA#LGBTQ+#climate change#global warming#Democrat#Democrats#Vote Blue
151 notes
·
View notes
Text
92 notes
·
View notes
Text
Republican analysts and commentators blamed Donald Trump for the party's disappointing performance in the midterm elections when hopes for sweeping victories fell short.
The former president had endorsed hundreds of candidates in the midterm elections as he sought to cement his control over the party. But as of early Wednesday many were performing poorly.
The most prominent setback came in Pennsylvania, where Mehmet Oz, the Trump-endorsed Senate candidate, was defeated by Democrat John Fetterman, damaging Republican prospects of taking control of the upper chamber.
In a CNN interview, former Trump aide Alyssa Farah Griffin blamed the failures on the poor quality of the candidates Trump championed.
"Are they going to continue to nominate poor-quality candidates to appease Donald Trump?" she said of Republicans.
"If you want the Republican Party to thrive, we've got to just finally speak out and say, 'This man is a loser, he lost 2020, he's losing a seat that is winnable this time," she continued.
Scott Jennings, a conservative analyst who has been an advisor to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, said the results showed that Trump's hopes of winning back the presidency were a non-starter.
"How could you look at these results tonight and conclude Trump has any chance of winning a national election in 2024?" he said.
Caleb Hull, a pro-Trump communications strategist, said that it was time for the GOP to move on from Trump.
"I LOVED Trump and campaigned for him in 2016 but the guy has lost his mind and attached (sic) everyone in our party far too much to be a serious face going forward. The COVID-19 briefings did him in and now he's sealed it. Time to move on," he tweeted.
Liam Donovan, a former aide to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, also laid the blame at the feet of the former president.
"If this proves to be another Senate flop in a year that was otherwise favorable to Republicans — even if not a wave — it will again be a function of the candidates they put up, which was unmistakably shaped and steered by Donald Trump," he told The New York Times.
Trump has endorsed hundreds of loyalist candidates who have embraced his lies that the 2020 election was stolen. Many of them have checkered pasts and have pushed fringe conspiracy theories.
Oz had attracted criticism with a series of gaffes on the campaign trail and even recorded a campaign video from his New Jersey mansion while seeking to assure voters of his ties to Pennsylvania.
In Pennsylvania, Trump's defeated candidate for the gubernatorial race, Doug Mastriano, had associated himself with the QAnon conspiracy theory movement and attended a rally before the January 6 Capitol riot. Trump-endorsed Georgia senate candidate Herschel Walker's campaign was rocked by revelations he'd paid for a woman to have an abortion while calling for the procedure to be banned on the campaign trail. That race is in the balance and may result in a run-off vote.
Trump had hoped to use the successes of his candidates in the midterms to launch his own campaign to return to office in 2024, but much of the praise from senior Republicans Tuesday went to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose sweeping reelection victory was one of the few bright spots on an otherwise disappointing evening for the GOP Tuesday. He is considered Trump's leading rival for the 2024 GOP nomination, and Trump had attacked him in interviews on the eve of the midterms.
"All the chatter on my conservative and GOP channels is rage at Trump like I've never seen," Michael Brendan Dougherty, a Senior Writer at National Review, wrote on Twitter. "'The one guy he attacked before Election Day was DeSantis — the clear winner, meanwhile, all his guys are shitting the bed.'"
#us politics#news#2022 midterms#2022 elections#2022#business insider#Republicans#conservatives#gop#Alyssa Farah Griffin#mehmet oz#Michael Brendan Dougherty#scott jennings#Caleb Hull#Liam Donovan#Doug Mastriano#hershel walker#gov. ron desantis#donald trump
30 notes
·
View notes
Text
#pennsylvania#doug mastriano#democrats#republicans#insurrection#politics#books#woc#poc#news#women of color#jan 6 insurrection#jan 6 riot
77 notes
·
View notes
Link
33 notes
·
View notes
Text
dear pennsylvanians,
please vote fetterman and shapiro today!! they’re trying to protect our rights, not take them away. please run, walk, climb, crawl, roll, etc. to the polls to help improve the life of all of us.
love, a pennsylvanian
ps. dr oz doesn’t even live in PA so…
14 notes
·
View notes
Text
The Infantilization of the American Right Continues
Scott Lemieux has a good post overviewing and refuting claims that Democrats are responsible for Republicans nominating neo-fascist extremists like Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania. The argument in favor is that some Democrats have spent money on ads which supposedly "boosted" Mastriano over his primary foes. This, critics continue, is recklessly irresponsible insofar as Mastriano is, again, a far-right lunatic whose presence within a country mile of levers of power would be an existential threat to democracy.
The problem with this argument is that the ads in question are attack ads against Mastriano. They are clear and forthright that Mastriano is a neo-fascist extremist who represents an existential threat to democracy. They nonetheless "boost" him because Republicans like all of these things. But that's a problem with Republicans, not Democrats. As one commentator pointed out, it's one thing to run an ad that lies about the health benefits of poison -- if people ingest the poison, that's on you. It's another thing to run an ad that says "poison is dangerous!" only to witness scores of people say "actually, I love poison, I'm going to take a double dose!" That's on them.
The fact of the matter is that anti-democratic fascist flirtations are an overwhelmingly popular position amongst the GOP primary electorate. Mastriano's closest contender in the GOP primary was Lou Barletta, who is himself a far-right figure with a history of White supremacy. There was no constituency amongst Republicans for a non-poisonous figure, so Democrats hardly committed some foul by trying to inform the general electorate of who Doug Mastriano is.
Lemieux's post covers pretty much all I want to say. All I'll add is that we're just seeing the extension of the infantilization of the American right; perhaps the defining feature of American conservatism over the past six years. Republicans make terrible choices and then whine that Democrats aren't better babysitters. But that's not the job of Democrats. Republicans are adults, they can make their own choices, and they are consciously choosing to promote candidates with Nazi ties and fascist sympathies. That's bad. That's also their own decision, and trying to fob responsibility off onto Democrats is pathetic.
via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/qNr7GB6
24 notes
·
View notes
Link
11 notes
·
View notes
Text
Just a reminder if you live in Pennsylvania vote for Josh Shapiro and set Doug Mastriano nuts on fire
#vote blue#josh shapiro#doug mastriano#fuck republicans#fuck conservatives#abortion rights#anti Doug mastriano#vote for Josh Shapiro#pennsylvania#vote blue in Pennsylvania
21 notes
·
View notes
Link
20 notes
·
View notes
Text
Wow. They're training 'em in it now. It's "As One" rather than "Sieg Heil" of course, because nobody speaks German and it's not 1937, but it sure has the same cadence.
Watch the hands. Some of 'em aren't sure what to do, their hands vaguely up like they're in class. Some pose like they're a witness in court. Some even have one-armed "praise jesus" revival hands.
And a bunch of people just have the full heil salute. I wonder if they're the loudest barkers, after Mastriano.
"If you're willing to do it," he says, goading them, asking if they're willing to be transgressive enough to do what he's about to lead them through. Challenging them to go in on it with him.
He damned well knows what he's doing.
Notice the hype man in the audience, of course. "Oh yeah!" he shouts. Instantly. He knows what this is too. - I mean, after all, he's part of the show.
The audio is interesting too. As a study in technique.
Mastriano does the "AS ONE" shout twice, first to demonstrate, then with the group, barked both times. Listen to the difference. It's partly delivery, but not entirely. He has his sound crew doing something for effect.
The second "AS ONE" has a countdown, which is extremely useful for this live, and it. is. punched.
It's sharpened, brought way up very quickly to a hard high but very level compression for the first part of each word. Puts a real sonic pow on each syllable.
I can think of a few ways to do it. It's not difficult - in and of itself, it's just showmanship. But they've practised it. And it's effective.
Of course, there's nothing wrong with using stage technique. That's fine. It's what he's using it for that's evil.
Is he trolling? Probably.
Does he also mean it? Absolutely.
That's what 2016 should've taught everyone: you can troll and completely mean it at the exact same time.
See also Laura Ingraham:
See that smug little smirk? She knows what she's doing and how people will react.
And people were right to react, because you can be a smug little trolling asshole and a smug trolling would-be fascist at the same time.
They love trolling us with this shit. But that doesn't mean they don't mean it.
Someone trolling as a Nazi is still being a Nazi.
And that's the Republican Party of today.
Give them power at your own peril. Because they will use it.
7 notes
·
View notes
Text
The Republican Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, brought his act to Pittsburgh on Friday and left little doubt that he’s running for president in 2024. We need to talk about this, but first let’s look at the even more revealing event that DeSantis staged right before he boarded the jet for his Rust Belt road swing — a full-on display of what 21st-century American fascism looks like.
In heavily Democratic Fort Lauderdale, the 5′9″ DeSantis — the modern fulfillment of the Jimmy Breslin-ism about a small man in search of a balcony — elevated himself on a podium, flanked as he so often is by armed and uniformed men and women of law enforcement, to highlight his crackdown on supposed voter fraud ahead of November’s election.
“That is against the law, and now they’re gonna pay the price for it,” DeSantis declared of 20 Floridians — almost all from Democratic strongholds such as Broward County, where his campaign-rally-style announcement was staged, or Miami-Dade — accused of casting ballots despite a law barring them because they’d been convicted of murder or sexual assault.
But the event and its stench of “law and order” intimidation revealed so much more through what was left unsaid. Such as the fact that DeSantis’ Office of Election Crimes and Security — like so much that the Florida Governor does, a dangerous escalation of the GOP’s long-running war on voting rights into straight-up authoritarian territory — has spent $3.9 million in taxpayer dollars to find alleged fraud in less than 0.0002% of the 11 million votes cast in the Sunshine State. The outlay is about $195,000 for each allegation.
But arguably more outrageous is the way that Team DeSantis is less exposing a systematic problem — actual voting fraud in America is extremely rare — but rather taking cynical advantage of several years of confusion in Florida over its laws regarding whether people convicted of crimes can vote. In 2018, the state’s voters overwhelmingly passed a referendum allowing most felons who’d served their time to vote, only for GOP lawmakers to muddy the waters by imposing new requirements for restitution. It’s now apparent there was widespread confusion — not just among citizens, but from government officials — over who could vote in 2020.
Indeed, Florida journalists who dug into the 20 criminal cases found a scenario rooted in benign confusion, not malicious fraud. In Orange County, Fla., the three people charged with third-degree felonies — punishable up to five years in prison — said they mistakenly believed their rights had been restored in the 2018 vote, and one man said he’d simply been sent a ballot in the mail and returned it. Nathan Hart, 49, told the Miami Herald he was renewing his driver’s license when a man at a voter registration booth convinced him, mistakenly, he was eligible to vote. “One individual guy voting when he thought he could is hardly voter fraud,” said Hart, now terrified of losing the life he’d rebuilt after his incarceration.
There are two very important things going on here — and neither of them is a real-world problem around “election integrity.” Most immediately, DeSantis — favored for re-election in November, but hardly a lock in a state he won by just 32,000 votes in 2018 — clearly seeks a chilling effect that would frighten thousands of voters who are unsure of their eligibility and now may stay home rather than risk getting arrested.
The broader implication is even more frightening. The time for mincing words is over. This is the latest and most alarming manifestation of a now barely hidden fascism by the head of America’s third-largest state, and one of the handful of serious contenders for the White House. DeSantis’ push for voter suppression and the increasingly paramilitaristic vibe of his public appearances prove the Floridian is the one we’ve been warning about: A post-Trump Republican taking a war on democracy to an even more dangerous place, minus the buffoonish narcissism of the 45th President.
DeSantis has embraced a politics that has absolutely nothing to do with traditional conservative blather about freedom and everything to do with raw power. This 43-year-old rising force has already surpassed the dark promise of Trump by going after corporations who’ve dared to criticize him, seeking to chill classroom discussions about race or gender, and even overriding the results of a democratic election for a large-county prosecutor whose offense was having a differing opinion.
In this context, DeSantis’ national campaign swing — which came to Pennsylvania this weekend with his controversial embrace of our extremist and Christian nationalist GOP gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano — marks a major turning point as America looks warily toward a 2024 election that already has a kind of 1860 feel to it. Right now, DeSantis — the only serious Republican rival to Trump, according to the polls — is demolishing the myth that The Former Guy would be challenged by a moderate. Instead, DeSantis is taking the loose ideology of Trumpism to new extremes of demonizing The Other and positioning the GOP as an anti-democracy movement.
With more than 100 protesters outside, DeSantis told a packed downtown Pittsburgh hotel ballroom, in a lame, whiny echo of Winston Churchill: “We must fight the woke in our schools. We must fight the woke in our businesses. We must fight the woke in government agencies. We can never, ever surrender to woke ideology.” The use of a cadence that opposed Nazism in 1940 to instead attack American citizens as the enemy was obscene.
Just the fact that DeSantis, the head of a state with a large Jewish population, thought it important to endorse Mastriano — despite the shocking revelations about the Pennsylvanian’s ties to the website Gab, a cesspool of anti-Semitism that inspired the 2018 mass murderer of 11 Jewish people at a synagogue just a few miles from where he spoke — was a powerful illustration of a political party’s downward spiral into madness.
In addition to the anti-Semitism flap, something else that DeSantis never mentioned once on his Pennsylvania road trip was Donald Trump — but the former President was clearly paying attention. Just minutes after DeSantis finished speaking in the 412, the FPOTUS tweeted that he, too, is coming to Pennsylvania to rally with Mastriano, as well as his endorsed U.S. Senate candidate, Mehmet Oz, on Sept. 3 in Wilkes-Barre.
Let that sink in. The radical extremism of Mastriano — who brought busloads of supporters to D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021 and marched to the brink of the Capitol during an insurrection; who organized a slate of fake electors and has made clear his hostility to counting every vote; who invokes God to promote radical views against abortion, climate change, and public education — was supposed to make the Republican establishment run for the hills. Instead, the two true leaders of today’s GOP are tripping over each other to embrace a homophobic anti-Semite bidding to run the state where the American Experiment began.
The stakes for 2024 have never looked starker than Friday as the sun set over the Ohio River.
DeSantis ended his speech with a plea for supporters to “put on the full armor of God.” It was a blatant signal that the Floridian is fully down with a Christian nationalism that not only subverts the Founders’ desire for a separation of church and state, but looks nothing like what Jesus would actually do. Because in Ron DeSantis’ vision of America, cursed are the meek — the transgender kid with a target on their back, the schoolchildren he wants to indoctrinate with false, sanitized history, the communities of color seeking to exercise their hard-fought voting rights. We who believe in free speech and free inquiry in the face of an oppressive state must also don our armor, because this, the fight for the soul of America, has been joined.
#us politics#news#the inquirer#gov. ron desantis#florida#gop#conservatives#Republicans#2022 elections#2022#gubernatorial races#Pennsylvania#2024 election#fascism#op eds#Doug Mastriano#donald trump#Office of Election Crimes and Security
29 notes
·
View notes
Text
28 notes
·
View notes
Text
The complaint names Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, both Republicans who sit on the committee, as only "nominally members of the Republican party" and claims the two "follow ideologies that are inconsistent with their own party, instead choosing to pursue the priorities of the Democratic Caucus." Thus, the complaint argues, there is no ranking minority member on the committee.
7 notes
·
View notes
Link
DESTROY THESE CHRISTOFASCIST FUCKSTICKS!
12 notes
·
View notes
Text
If Mastriano beats Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania it is likely there will never be a free and fair election in Pennsylvania again in my lifetime.
He's also basically aiming for Handmaid's Tale style theocracy. Please, Pennsylvanians, Vote!
10 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
jasondoorismedia
Jason Dooris media
ria-bailey
DIRECTED BY Ria Bailey
sundermunder
hey yo!
mynameiseverchanging-blog
Multiple names, One me
kitchwitchen
Aspiring Kitchen Witch