PA Senate Primary Turns Into Mud Wrestling GOP Free-For-All

Have at it, fellas.

If you're screaming to disenfranchise your own voters, you're probably losing. And yet that is the position the Pennsylvania GOP and the RNC find themselves in after Donald Trump's endorsement failed to push Mehmet Oz over the finish line in last Tuesday's Senate primary. So they find themselves intervening in a lawsuit to get Republican ballots tossed out, which is extremely DEMS IN DISARRAY, except LOL, it's the GOP.

As of this writing, Oz's lead over his closest rival, replacement-level white finance dude David McCormick, has shrunk to 977 votes , or less than 0.1 percent. That's well within the 0.5 percent margin for a mandatory recount, and there are still upwards of 5,000 votes untallied. Oz took Trump's advice to shout "I WIN, STOP THE COUNT!" but that didn't work, so now he and the GOP are flipping shit about McCormick trying to steal the game in overtime.

"President Trump is right, and others, that we should not have no excuse absentee voting. This influx of mail-in voting is clearly showing that systems are not ready for that and Pennsylvania is a case of that right now," snarked RNC Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel to Fox's Martha MacCallum on Sunday, adding later that "We certainly do not think that ballots without dates should be counted, because how do you know when they came in?"

Which is bullshit, because you could sign and date your absentee ballot for Christmas and still have it be kosher. The only thing that counts is whether it has a date — any date at all — and whether it's received in time, a fact that is recorded by the county clerk, as McDaniel knows perfectly well. None of the Gippers could crack 31 percent, and that's got nothing to do with an "influx of mail-in voting."

Meanwhile, McCormick filed suit in Pennsylvania state court demanding election officials count ballots that were timely received but for which the voter failed to date the outside envelope consistent with Pennsylvania law. To be clear, there is no indication whatsoever that these votes are fraudulent. But Pennsylvania Republicans passed a law to protect the "integrity" of the ballot by ordering them to be rejected, working on the assumption that absentee ballots were more likely to be Democratic, so rejecting as many of them as possible would be a statistical win for the GOP.

The problem is that now they're using this weapon on their own voters, trying to knock out as many of the uncounted ballots as possible to avoid McCormick eating any further into Oz's wafer thin lead. Also the problem is that the Third Circuit just ruled that rejecting votes because the envelope is undated violates the Civil Rights Act, and thus the law cannot be enforced, as McCormick points out in his suit demanding county officials count those ballots. But the case will definitely be appealed to the Supreme Court, which is not exactly dominated by proponents of civil rights these days, so who the hell knows what's about to happen?

What are the odds that Justice Thomas recuses, since his wife Ginni is advancing election fraud conspiracies six ways from Sunday ? Haha, we are silly today!

"The RNC stays neutral for a reason," McDaniel told MacCallum on Sunday. "We legally have to stay neutral, but it is helpful because we didn't put our thumb on the scale and we get to bring everybody together after the fact and have a kumbaya moment."

Less than 36 hours later, the RNC is parking its whole ass on the scale to make sure Oz squeaks out a victory, joining him in opposing McCormick's efforts to get those votes counted. And they're cheek-to-cheek with the state party.

"This is another example of the RNC’s ironclad commitment to ensuring the highest standards of transparency and security are upheld throughout the election process," RNC lawyer Matt Raymer told Fox, leaning into the false implication that there's something suspect about undated ballots.

"While the Republican Party of Pennsylvania looks forward to supporting the Pennsylvania Republican U.S. Senate nominee, whoever it may be, we absolutely object to the counting of undated mail-in ballots," the state party added, without saying why exactly they're so invested in not counting ballots from their own voters.

Which isn't exactly kumbaya. But if these assholes want to spend the next month kicking the shit out of each other while John Fetterman recuperates, we're not mad about it. Get well, big guy! And of course, let them fight .

[ Politico / Fox ]

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