Tag: leaders

As a second Donald J. Trump impeachment trial nears next month, Republicans across the nation are lining up behind the former president with unwavering support.

No state has perhaps demonstrated its loyalty as tenaciously as Pennsylvania, where Republican officials have gone to extraordinary lengths to keep Trumpism central to their message as they reinforce the president’s false claims about an election. “Stolen”.

Eight of the nine Republicans in the Pennsylvania congressional delegation voted to reject their state’s electoral votes for President Biden on January 6, just hours after a crowd stormed the Capitol.

A majority of Republicans in the state legislature endorsed this effort.

And State House Member Scott Perry was instrumental in promoting a plan in which Mr. Trump would fire the acting attorney general in an attempt to stay in office.

In the weeks following the Nov. 3 election, Pennsylvania Republicans made loyalty to the defeated ex-president the party’s sole organizing principle, the latest chapter in a repeated right-wing populist march in other states. As elsewhere, the Pennsylvania GOP was once led by mainstream conservatives, but is now defined almost exclusively by Trumpism. He faces big statewide races in 2022, for positions including governor and the Senate, with an electorate that has just rejected Mr. Trump in favor of Mr. Biden.

Far from engaging in self-examination, Pennsylvania Republicans are already rushing ahead of the 2022 primaries to prove that they fought the most for Mr. Trump, who, despite his party’s losses in the White House, in the Senate and House, still wields a strong hold over elected Republicans and grassroots voters.

As the Republican base has shifted – with commuters leaning more on Democrats and rural white voters lining up behind Republicans on cultural warfare issues – GOP leaders recognize how much the former president triggered waves of support for their party. In Pennsylvania, just like in some states in the Midwest, a wave of new Republican voters with grievances about a changing America was sparked by Mr. Trump, and only by Mr. Trump.

“Donald Trump’s presidency and his popularity has been a great victory for the Pennsylvania Republican Party,” said Rob Gleason, former state GOP chairman, though many state and federal courts have dismissed the allegations without The foundation of Trump’s electoral fraud campaign, Gleason said the belief that the vote was rigged “lingers on a lot of people’s minds.”

He predicted this would result in Republican participation in upcoming races. He said he met a prosecutor this week who “felt the election was stolen” and was considering running for a statewide judge this year.

Other Republicans are more skeptical that the unsuccessful backing of the former president is the best way forward in Pennsylvania, a critical battlefield state that will likely be up for grabs in future election cycles.

“We have become, in four years, Trump’s party, and it has been one test after another,” said Ryan Costello, a former GOP House member from suburban Philadelphia who has criticized Mr. Trump and explored one to run for the Senate. “It is not a sustainable growth strategy to double, triple and quadruple compared to Trump when he becomes a divider.”

Despite Mr Costello’s apprehension, most Republicans suspected of running for the Senate or governor have made it clear that they are ready to take a Trump loyalty test.

They include members of the Republican delegation to Congress, hardline members of the legislature and even Donald Trump Jr. The president’s eldest son has been the subject of persistent rumors that he will run for high office in the state – mostly due to his ties to Pennsylvania, where he attended prep school and college. The Trump family spent an enormous amount of time campaigning in Pennsylvania in 2020, and as they seek their next political step, the state remains a big one.

The transformation of the Republican Party in Pennsylvania has been brutal. Less than two decades ago, it was led by political centrists such as former Senator Arlen Specter and former Governor Tom Ridge, who became the first secretary of homeland security.

He is now played by Mr Perry, a member of the extremist freedom group that won a fifth term in November for its headquarters in the Harrisburg area. His Democratic opponent, Eugene DePasquale, said he lost the “fair and just” race. But he called the Republican lawmaker’s efforts on behalf of Mr. Trump in a scheme involving the Justice Department “a radical attempt to overturn the election.”

Mr Perry, a provider of presidential election disinformation, acknowledged his role in introducing Mr Trump to a Justice Department official on Monday. That official, Jeffrey Clark, was ready to encourage Mr. Trump to pressure Georgia to invalidate his electoral votes for Mr. Biden.

The plan never happened. But Mr. Perry, a retired National Guard general who dodged the Capitol’s new metal detectors, rejected Democrats’ calls to resign.

Equally resolute in their defense of Mr. Trump were the other Republicans in Pennsylvania House who voted to reject the state’s electoral votes for Mr. Biden on January 6. Rep. Conor Lamb, a Democrat from western Pennsylvania, told the House that his fellow Republicans should be “ashamed of themselves” for spreading lies that led to the Capitol violation. His impassioned speech almost precipitated a fight.

“The Trump people were broadcasting a message, ‘We had better see you fight publicly for us,’” Mr Lamb said in an interview this week. “Midterm 2022 is shaping up to pick the candidate who loves Trump the most,” he said of the GOP primary contests.

But he called it an opportunity for Democrats to speak out about issues affecting people’s lives, such as the economy and the pandemic, while Republicans remain focused on the 2020 election. “They are making their main political argument at this. stage based on fraud; they don’t do it in real conditions, ”he said. “The election was not stolen. Biden really beat Trump.

Mr. Lamb, who won three races in districts that voted for Mr. Trump, was mentioned as a candidate for the open Senate seat. “I would say I’ll think about it,” he said.

Outside of the House delegation, much of the Trumpist takeover in Pennsylvania occurred in the legislature, where Republicans held a majority in both houses in November (a result the party does not mention. in his vehement claims of electoral fraud in the presidential race).

Unlike states like Georgia and Arizona, where senior Republican officials debunked disinformation from Mr. Trump and his allies, in Pennsylvania, no Republican in Harrisburg has repelled false statements about election results. , some of which were created by lawmakers themselves or by Mr. Trump’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani.

A majority of Republicans in the General Assembly urged the state’s congressional delegation in December to reject the state’s 20 electoral votes for Mr Biden after the results were legally certified. The pressure from core Trump supporters has been such that State Senate Majority Leader Kim Ward said in an interview last month that if she refused to sign such an effort, “ma house would be bombed tonight. “

Full acceptance of Mr. Trump’s lies about a “stolen” election followed months of Republican lawmakers echoing his rejection of the coronavirus threat. Lawmakers who attended “ReOpen PA” rallies in Harrisburg in May, flouting masks and crowd size limits, have become the main sources of disinformation about voter fraud after November 3.

State Senator Doug Mastriano, who is widely seen as considering a gubernatorial run, paid for buses and offered trips to attend the “Save America” ​​protests in Washington on January 6 that preceded the split. Capitol. Mr Mastriano said he left before the events turned violent.

As the legislature convened its 2021 session, Republicans again embarked on a sweeping agenda. Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democrat, was deposed by the Republican majority as president of the state Senate in a legislative session on January 5. been officially certified.

State House Republicans seek to change the way judges are elected to secure a Republican majority in the state’s Supreme Court, after the current court, with a Democratic lean, ruled against allegations in cases electoral fraud last year.

Republican lawmakers have also immersed themselves in a lengthy review of the November election, although no more than trivial evidence of fraud has surfaced, and the courts have dismissed allegations that election officials overstepped their legal mandates.

Republicans have announced 14 House hearings. Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, a Democrat, was toast last week. Dismissing the round of hearings as a “charade,” she called on Republicans not to sow further suspicion in the integrity of the state election, which drew a record 71 percent turnout despite a pandemic.

“We need to stand united as Americans,” Ms. Boockvar said in an interview, “and tell the voters that these were lies, that your votes were counted, they were verified, they were audited, they were been recounted in many places and the numbers added. and they have been certified.