There is so much alarming political news in the world right now that it’s difficult to decide what rises to the level of my caring enough to highlight it, especially if it’s local politics somewhere other than my home state. This from Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent rises to that level, if for no other reason than Pennsylvania is likely to be one of the states in the next presidential election wherein who is in charge in the Pennsylvania governor’s office could make the difference between the GOP stealing the election or not:
What must be conveyed clearly and unflinchingly is this: If Mastriano wins the general election, there is almost certainly no chance that a Democratic presidential candidate’s victory in Pennsylvania in 2024 will be certified by the state’s governor.
Consider Mastriano’s own words. During Trump’s 2020 effort to steal the election, Mastriano explicitly endorsed the idea that the state legislature has “sole authority” to reappoint new electors, given “mounting evidence” that Joe Biden’s win was “compromised.”
It wasn’t actually “compromised,” of course. But Mastriano continued to insist it was. He even pushed the Justice Department to accept this, at the moment when Trump wanted the department to announce fraud to create a pretext to overturn his loss. Mastriano is running for governor on the very idea that Trump’s loss was compromised.
This functionally means that Mastriano adheres to the notion that the mere claim of fraud is enough to justify the certification of presidential electors in defiance of the popular-vote outcome. As governor, he would be in a good position to help operationalize this very principle.
We already know that the GOP has been laying the groundwork to do what their seditious insurrection failed to do on Jan. 6, 2021. Every single state house where they are in charge is a possible pivot point between a Democrat who is the clear electoral winner taking office, and a losing Republican being installed in the White House anyway.
