Doug Mastriano's campaign struggling to hide what a ginormous right-wing nut he is

[marmar]

Doug Mastriano's campaign struggling to hide what a ginormous right-wing nut he is
GOP candidate for governor in Pennsylvania fakes normalcy, champions conspiracy theories that make QAnon look tame

By AMANDA MARCOTTE
Senior Writer
PUBLISHED OCTOBER 25, 2022 6:01AM (EDT)


(Salon) Doug Mastriano, the Republican candidate for Pennsylvania governor, was a no-show. He had been scheduled to speak over the weekend at the ReAwaken America Tour at its stop in Manheim, a small town in Lancaster County west of Philadelphia. Even Donald Trump took time to call into this Christian nationalist shindig, whose participants didn't bother to hide their fascist longings. But even though Mastriano was scheduled to appear with other pro-insurrection figures, including Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn and MyPilllow CEO Mike Lindell, at the very last minute, Mastriano decided he was too busy to show up.

The likely real reason for Mastriano's hasty pull-out is evident in the tweets of HuffPost reporter Christopher Mathias, who spent two days at the conference. Even by the basement-level standards of a Trump loyalist like Mastriano — who was at the Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection — this gathering was a doozy. It wasn't just the usual slate of election denialists like Flynn and Lindell, along with Eric Trump and Roger Stone. This event featured book-burning preacher Greg Locke, who believes Harry Potter and Halloween are Satanic and told the crowd he was being persecuted by "BLM, antifa, witches and warlocks." Self-declared prophet Bo Polny declared that the "angel of death" would be coming for President Biden, Hillary Clinton and Chief Justice John Roberts, among others, by the end of the year. Trans people were described by another speaker as the work of Satan. Another denounced quantum physics as "demonic."

Mastriano is falling behind Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania's Democratic attorney general, in the governor's race, largely due to the entirely correct perception that Mastriano is a Christian nationalist nutjob who wants to overthrow democracy and will try to steal the 2024 election for Trump, if he gains the power to do so. Indeed, Mastriano is performing even worse than the other major Republican running for statewide office, U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz, even though Oz is a puppy-killer who seems to have barely spent any time in Pennsylvania before Trump suggested he run for the seat being vacated by Republican Sen. Pat Toomey. In order to win in this consummate swing state, Mastriano has to trick moderate and even some conservative-but-not-bananas voters into believing he can't really be that nuts. And that's a lot harder to pull off if he's on stage with people who claim that Bible-based numerology offers clear predictions that Trump will replace Biden in 2023. ...............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2022/10/25/doug-mastrianos-campaign-struggling-to-hide-what-a-ginormous-right-wing-nut-he-is/

[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. "denounced quantum physics as demonic": taking reality denial to new levels. . . . nt

[Joe Cool]

2. PA resident here

The only people voting for Mastriano are the hardcore GOP base and complete nut jobs.
I live in Butler County (+27% Republican registration advantage) and I have never seen so many signs for Democratic candidates in my life, specifically John Fetterman for Senate and Josh Shapiro for governor. As long as Fetterman does even a mediocre job in tonight's debate, Oz is toast.

[FakeNoose]

3. Mastriano isn't "falling behind" Josh Shapiro, he was never anywhere close

From the beginning Mastriano has been at least 10 points behind Shapiro, and that number is probably increasing by now. I don't know because I don't believe most of the polls. Whenever pollsters make their daily/hourly calls, they fail to take into account the fact that Repukes routinely lie to pollsters. They lie for fun and profit. We can't believe anything they say, and as a result the polls are almost worthless.

What we know about the gubernatorial race is that Shapiro will win all the Democratic votes, more than half of the independents, and probably about one-quarter to one-third of the registered Republican voters. (My estimate, based on no phone calls.)