Commentary by Joe Schaeffer, 247 Real News
Could Pennsylvania be the start of something big?
When political outsider Donald Trump captured the 2016 Republican presidential nomination and then the White House, millions of Americans had reason to hope that the era of selected candidates for high office by the ruling establishment, be it in shade of red or blue, had suffered a staggering setback.
One look at the Biden administration or the Democratic and Republican congressional leadership six years later can tell you how that has worked out.
Even amid a populist flood tide within America’s grassroots, big money and powerful connections are still the way to become a U.S. senator or state governor today.
Despite all the upheavals in American politics since 2016, that has not changed. This is the true importance of the Pennsylvania Republican Senate primary.
Two wealthy and elitist-ensconced contenders butted heads against each other, and in the process revealed everything that is wrong with the nominating process in both political parties today.
You could see it coming. On April 20 WorldTribune noted:
Whether or not Pennsylvania Republicans can avoid being stuck with [hedge-fund multimillionaire David] McCormick or [Oprah Winfrey TV doctor Mehmet] Oz in a general election, the bruising primary battle may reap rewards for MAGA voters wary of the corrupting influence of establishment Big Money inside the GOP. Another month of dueling negative campaign ads by the feuding globalist elites may prove to be the only genuine service these two fraudulent candidates provide to an America First Republican grassroots base that wants nothing to do with either of them.
A lane was opening. And one unheralded rival was positioned to fill it:Of the five other candidates, Kathy Barnette appears to be garnering the most attention as the May 17 primary date fast approaches.
Barnette clearly understands how McCormick and Oz are seen by Trump backers in the Keystone State and is attempting to use the negative framing to her advantage.
The dominant political story of the past few days is the rapid surge by Barnette, who is statistically tied with Oz and McCormick and has all the momentum in the final stretch. She has managed to corner the "screw them both" voter... which is huge in this race.The panicked reaction by the Republican establishment has led to a bumbling hit job being aimed at the outlier. A PAC supporting Dr. Oz rolled out a “Crazy Kathy” ad that featured clumsily spliced video of Barnette making comments that were completely taken out of their proper context in a feeble attempt to portray her as a Woke Black Lives Matter radical. Fox News host Sean Hannity limply pored through old Barnette tweets seeking to smear her in a similarly duplicitous manner.
Hannity devoting he’s opening monologue going after Barnette for negative tweets about Obama and Islam pic.twitter.com/cQSvJpDk8Y
— Acyn (@Acyn) May 13, 2022
Republican-aligned “conservative” news sites such as The Daily Caller and flagrantly pro-McCormick Breitbart have also piled on. It’s a grand operation, and it is all aimed at preventing one unheralded citizen from daring to claim a major-party Senate nomination.
That is not a good look, even by traditionally shameless Swamp standards.
There are so many interesting dynamics to mull here. For example, why is the Swamp-encrusted Club For Growth doing a $2 million ad buy for Barnette? Yes, the group is an avowed opponent of all things Trump and relishes the notion of his endorsed candidate, Oz, going down in flames but it would seem hedge-fund globalist McCormick would clearly be their man in this race.
There is convincing speculation that the Club is trying to split the MAGA vote between Trump-endorsed Oz and Trump supporter-backed Barnette to benefit McCormick, who is right up their alley. What makes this Machiavellian notion plausible is the fact that McCormick has zero MAGA appeal despite all his expensive attempts to hack out an America First platform for himself.
Yet McCormick still has a good chance to win due to the name recognition you get when you spend tens of millions of dollars on your campaign. An Oz-Barnette MAGA split is without a doubt the only avenue to victory for the fading McCormick at this point.
There are two other key points that must be mentioned. First, Barnette has been very wise to keep saying that the ruling establishment does not want ordinary people in political office, they only want their bought puppets. It is very effective on its own but gains more wallop thanks to the high-profile stumbling candidacies of ruling establishment favorites Oz and McCormick. Secondly... guess who predicted the rise of Kathy Barnette well in advance?
April 16:
It will be amusing when Kathy Barnette, the true believer grassroots MAGA candidate, defeats the wealthy phony carpetbaggers Oz and McCormick in the PA GOP Senate primary.https://t.co/sWucdRoVIZ
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) April 16, 2022
Leave it to an aged Uniparty stalwart and totally discredited Republican con man to clearly see that the two rich pretenders swooping in from Connecticut and New Jersey were going to run into heavy turbulence. Kristol’s savvy prediction is more the result of his bitterness over the populist nationalist direction the GOP base has taken since 2016.
In taking grim pleasure over the predictable vulnerabilities of Oz and McCormick as they trod the now-rocky path he once happily strolled, Kristol is unwittingly acknowledging that the old way of foisting unwanted nominees on unhappy Republican voters and then demonizing Democrats in the general election as the far worse option doesn’t work anymore. Which is why Kristol now travels in the Democrat orbit.
As Joe Biden proved in March 2020, this approach still works with progressives so blinded by hysterical establishment-crafted hatred of the Donald Trump monster that they will back everything they once raged at, including the champions of endless war once known as “neoconservatives” when that name proved useful to them.
Trump himself has hit out at Barnette in order to buttress his endorsement of Oz but his heart didn’t seem to be in it:
“Kathy Barnette will never be able to win the General Election against the Radical Left Democrats,” Trump said in a [May 12] statement. “She has many things in her past which have not been properly explained or vetted, but if she is able to do so, she will have a wonderful future in the Republican Party — and I will be behind her all the way.”
The man who rode a national wave of discontent with the established political status quo all the way to the White House six years ago can see which way the sea is flowing.No matter the result on May 17, the Uniparty has taken a blow in Pennsylvania. Its ability to manufacture the elected officials it desires is being severely tested, and too much of the curtained-off manipulation is being publicly revealed. Six years after 2016, it remains slow, smug, ossified, and ripe for a fall.
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