{"id":32184,"date":"2022-08-08T11:01:53","date_gmt":"2022-08-08T15:01:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/?p=32184"},"modified":"2022-08-08T11:01:58","modified_gmt":"2022-08-08T15:01:58","slug":"the-problem-with-doug","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/?p=32184","title":{"rendered":"The problem with Doug"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Mike McGann<\/strong>, Editor, The Times<\/em> @mikemcgannpa<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"Way back in the \u201cgood old days\u201d of 2018, Scott Wagner, then the GOP nominee for Pennsylvania governor, threatened \u201cI\u2019m gonna stomp all over your (Gov. Tom Wolf\u2019s) face with golf <\/i>spikes.\u201d<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll assume for the sake of this column, that this claim was strictly metaphorical.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Wagner, of course did nothing of the sort at the ballot box, losing to Wolf by 17 points.<\/p>\n

What you have to love about Pennsylvania\u2019s Republicans is this: no matter how awful someone is that they run for office, there\u2019s always someone worse.<\/p>\n

Enter Doug Mastriano, the Republican running against Democrat Josh Shapiro.<\/p>\n

Mastriano \u2014 at minimum \u2014 funded and supported people who entered the U.S. Capitol and caused untold havoc on Jan. 6, 2021. He was at the Capitol himself, is documented to have crossed police lines during the riot. No images or footage of him in the building have surfaced \u2014 as yet. In the criminal justice universe \u2014 as hundreds have been charged with crimes related to Jan. 6 \u2014 this is called aiding and abetting.<\/p>\n

Additionally, Mastriano is described as the \u201cPoint Person\u201d in PA for the fake elector scam, potentially a criminal enterprise, currently under investigation by the Department of Justice. The short form is this: despite zero evidence of any voter fraud, Mastriano was going to ignore millions of votes cast by mail or drop off box and attempt to award Pennsylvania\u2019s electors to Donald Trump. Mastriano was actively involved in a plot to knock out the votes of 38% of the people who cast ballots in 2020 \u2014 millions of perfectly legal votes, including mine and those of a lot of people in Chester County.<\/p>\n

So, normally, being in the middle of two separate potentially criminal acts would be enough of a problem for most political candidates.<\/p>\n

But even this sordid history isn\u2019t enough in the race to the bottom for the GOP.<\/p>\n

Mastriano spent $5K of his campaign money to get Gab, a haven of anti-Semitic speech and other hate groups, to have all of its followers automatically follow Mastriano\u2019s account on the site.<\/p>\n

And while he issued some lame statement about not supporting anti-Semitism, he did nothing to leave the site or change his campaign\u2019s outreach to these people.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Actions speak louder than words here.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If the horrific content on Gab really was something that bothered him, he\u2019d have made a change. He didn\u2019t, so we have to assume he\u2019s down with the claims of Gab founder Andrew Torba, who has made it clear that Jewish people \u2014 or anyone \u2014 can not be part of his community or movement without converting to his particularly vile version of Christianity.<\/p>\n

Torba \u2014 and by extension, Mastriano \u2014 support a hateful, vengeful version of Christianity that essentially flies in the face of the teachings of Jesus Christ, embracing hate over love, tolerance and common decency.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While I have massive disagreements with Mastriano over policies ranging from education to women\u2019s rights, none of that is my real issue with the man.<\/p>\n

My issue is that he is a loathsome, despicable, hateful human being unfit to serve in any public role in any capacity at any time. He is, in short, a bad person.<\/p>\n

Tragically, many rank and file Republicans are rushing to support Mastriano. They know better and they don\u2019t care, they did the same thing with Trump.<\/p>\n

When I wrote some years back about the death of the Republican Party \u2014 when the local GOP embraced Trump, this is exactly what I meant. It has come to pass. The party that dominated Chester County from the Civil War until 2017 is a sad, pathetic shell of itself, driven by hate.<\/p>\n

Republicans no longer support the rule of law.<\/p>\n

Republicans no longer respect freedom and individual rights.<\/p>\n

Republicans no longer support even basic democracy or the institutions that back it.<\/p>\n

They now are supporting a \u201cChristofascist\u201d philosophy, and seek to impose a rigid, cruel dictatorship and run every detail of your life.<\/p>\n

For your sake, for Pennsylvania\u2019s sake, for the future of the United States as a democratic republic, Mastriano needs to be repudiated at the polls and by large numbers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Mike McGann, Editor, The Times @mikemcgannpa Way back in the \u201cgood old days\u201d of 2018, Scott Wagner, then the GOP nominee for Pennsylvania governor, threatened \u201cI\u2019m gonna stomp all over your (Gov. Tom Wolf\u2019s) face with golf spikes.\u201d We\u2019ll assume for the sake of this column, that this claim was strictly metaphorical.\u00a0 Wagner, of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[11511,4515,10817,10417,3912,565,10609],"class_list":["post-32184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-christofacist","tag-donald-trump","tag-doug-mastriano","tag-election-2022","tag-featured","tag-gop","tag-the-big-lie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32184"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32185,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32184\/revisions\/32185"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}