People.here complained about all 3 major GOP candidates for this Senate seat.
I know nothing of PA politics. But just saying, is there a problem recruiting acceptable conservative candidates there?
I have a feeling we would be having this same conversation if another candidate had won that primary.
McCormick was said to be too much a RINO, and people said Barnette was unable to win the general election.
So here we are.
Shaun Pernell was the PERFECT candidate BUT his wife screwed that up for him!!! I honestly believe that Barnett could have beat Fetterman he is SO BAD and Barnette had the fire in the belly OZ does NOT have the fight or fire in the belly!!
Here's the real story: A year ago, PA had an awesome GOP candidate in Sean Parnell. He would have won the senate race in his sleep. He unfortunately married a terrible woman years ago, and that terrible woman allowed even more terrible democrat operatives to interfere in their divorce in a way that, through some stunningly corrupt means, basically made Parnell choose between elected office or seeing his kids. Look it up, it's not just awful, it's nakedly political and shows just what kinds of demons the other side has working the lines.
After that bombshell, the GOP field was fractured. I don't know how Oz ended up in the mix, but in that post-Parnell chaos, he showed up as a vanity candidate who flew in on a private jet and courted Hannity and Giuliani first as a way to get the Trump endorsement; McCormick wasn't really all that bad, but had a lot of establishment stink on him; and then there were a bunch of also-rans who never had a statewide presence. Kathy Barnette surged in this vacuum because she was a black woman who happened to have a personal story that hit very strong with conservatives at a particular time in history (her mother was raped and she used that story to talk about the pro-life movement at a time when the Hobbs USSC decision was at the forefront of people's minds.).
If Freepers were honest with one another, they'd admit that if Kathy Barnette were a white man with the exact same life story, that guy wouldn't get elected dog catcher. She has some good prospects for the future if she plays her cards right, but she made a lot of rookie mistakes for a US Senate candidate, and it was not pretty. For the House, you can take a rookie with rookie mistakes, but not the US Senate.
McCormick just didn't have any juice to him, and he did nothing to distinguish himself from Dr. Oz (probably because he feared losing an eventual Trump endorsement if he won the primary).
Oz was awful as a primary candidate. Barely put in a lick's worth of effort, relied entirely on celebrity endorsements and banal campaign ads.
McCormick should have won the primary by a landslide, but there were a lot of blind Trump voters and a lot of blind Barnette voters. We're stuck with Oz as the candidate now.
Since that point though, Oz hasn't been nearly as awful as the right wing media wants you to believe. Oz is traversing the state and doing low level foundation building. He can talk exceedingly well extemporaneously on a number of topics , and he still has that celebrity factor to him. I'd be much more reassured if he and Mastriano would campaign as a team, or at least appear as co-candidates now and again, but there is still a gap there. There are a lot of butt hurt voters who are saying they won't vote for Oz (Lord knows this forum has 'em), but Fetterman is worse on every level and in every way and a lot of people already made up their minds to vote for Oz over Fetterman even if they will claim otherwise until election day.
The Republican party is Pennsylvania is a joke. They wouldn’t know a good candidate from a moron. I’ve lived in Pennsylvania all of my life. It’s been so heavily a Democrat for so long, Republicans have virtually given up winning anything.
So, they made no effort to help identify candidates for these seats.
Fetterman is an absolute flake. A hulking 6 foot nine bozo who left Braddock, where he was mayor, a disaster. Their one hospital just closed.
Absolutely!