Welcome to Trumpsylvania (formerly Pennsyltucky)
Did you ever think you’d be nostalgic for the days when lawmakers in Harrisburg were simply content to vote themselves pay increases in the middle of the night?
We knew they were mountebanks and pickpockets and that they specialized in all sorts of grift and self-dealing once they got into office, but at least there were usually sets of bipartisan fingerprints at the scene of the crime.
These days, a large swath of Pennsylvania’s elected officials — all Republicans — have graduated from petty larceny against the state’s taxpayers to major crimes — foiled attempts to steal our democracy by acting in concert with those trying to invalidate the votes of 7 million Pennsylvanians in the 2020 election.
In one of the most shameful episodes in state and national politics ever, every House Republican in the state’s congressional delegation, with one exception, moved to reject the state’s Electoral College votes.
State Republicans, arguably the nation’s weirdest hodgepodge of opportunists, conspiracy theorists, nuts and scoundrels, argued last year that there was widespread voter fraud in districts where Donald Trump didn’t win, and that mail-in voting was responsible for the overwhelming majority of it.
Despite the fact that many of them won their races, they sided with Donald Trump in arguing that all the ballots in the state should be thrown out because of cheating they suspected, but couldn’t prove, in Philly, Allegheny County and other places where President Joe Biden won handily.
It’s an amazing thing to see Republican politicians in lockstep hitting themselves in the head with hammers, but that’s how Trumpism manifests itself in Pennsylvania thanks to gerrymandering that produces nothing but crazed ideologues in red rural districts.
As an institution, the state GOP has bought into the Big Lie that Pennsylvania was “stolen” from Mr. Trump and that the state’s 20 electoral votes were erroneously awarded to Mr. Biden. The much-aggrieved party of angry white guys is now gearing up to field candidates who have blood in their eyes for governor and the retiring Sen. Pat Toomey’s seat in 2022.
The politics of resentment don’t stop with accusations of widespread voter fraud. The Pennsylvania Senate Republican Campaign Committee was kicked off of Twitter this week for violating the platform’s rules by allegedly inciting violence that led to the siege on the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Much has been made of state Sen. Doug Mastriano’s bus caravan to the Capitol on the day of the insurrection, and rightly so. Mr. Mastriano’s laughable excuse that he and his followers were already on the bus back to Central Pennsylvania during the siege has been widely mocked by those who understand the depths of his devotion to the cult of Donald Trump.
Even without Mr. Mastriano directly answering the questions put to him since Jan. 6 about whether he approves of the siege on the Capitol, it is probably safe to assume that he sympathizes with the 8% of Americans and 40% of Republicans who do support it. Those Republicans happen to be his political base, too.
Of course, no one has been more unctuous in the pursuit of overthrowing the will of the voters than U.S. Rep. Scott Perry, who was recently outed in a New York Times expose as one of the architects of a scheme to assist Mr. Trump in overturning election results in Georgia.
Not content to be just another bad-faith operator in his own state, Mr. Perry worked double time with the Trump White House scheming to disenfranchise millions of voters in another state. There has to be a dictionary-approved definition for someone who engages in this level of voter disenfranchisement, but for now Mr. Perry is just another obstacle to voting that has to be held accountable by public opinion and at the ballot box.
Several hours after the riot at the Capitol, Mr. Perry voted with his Republican colleagues against certifying Mr. Biden’s Electoral College win. It will be a stunning moment in Pennsylvania history for generations. Who would have ever imagined an elected official from Pennsylvania siding with a president who had just incited a siege that sent lawmakers running for their lives?
Mr. Perry also continues to endanger the safety and security of his colleagues by refusing to be subject to metal detector protocols, despite clearly mandated rules laid out by the House to protect all members. Instead of being repulsed by Mr. Perry’s selfishness, supporters in his blood-red district are thrilled by it. He’s their guy and they don’t want him playing nice with liberal mandates designed to keep everyone alive.
The depressing thing about Pennsylvania’s GOP is that it is now home to an endless rogue’s gallery of characters who, given the chance, would govern the state — and the nation — in ways that would be far more onerous than the mask mandates and metal detectors they continually rail against.
When the Republicans in the GOP-dominated state Legislature refused to seat state Sen. Jim Brewster, a Democrat who narrowly won re-election over a popular Republican insurgent, the state GOP more-or-less announced that it would now play ball the way Mr. Trump plays ball — dirty and with little regard for the integrity of the franchise.
The Republicans ejected state Lt. Gov. John Fetterman from the assembly floor when he objected to their anti-democratic stunt against Mr. Brewster. Ironically, their actions made a martyr of Mr. Fetterman, raising his national profile and kickstarting his 2022 senatorial campaign. Fearless and witty during television interviews, Mr. Fetterman is the perfect foil for a caucus of rightwing extremists who would be totally unremarkable if not for their convenient alliance with Mr. Trump.
The Pennsylvania GOP hasn’t always been a laboratory for madness. The recent death of former Gov. Dick Thornburgh reminded pundits and the public that the state was once home to the nation’s most distinguished Republican moderates from the late Sens. John Heinz and Arlen Specter to Gov. Tom Ridge.
The fact that none of these men would likely survive Republican primaries in Pennsylvania if they were to run in 2022 or 2024 isn’t lost on anyone. Still, it doesn’t seem fair that the GOP is stuck with the likes of Daryl Metcalfe and Mike Kelly simply because they speak the language of political estrangement and outrage better than most. They are certified con men, but that’s what the Republican electorate wants these days.
The Pennsylvania GOP was once an essential part of the “grandness” of what used to be called the Grand Old Party. Now it has devolved into an embarrassing and often seditious spectacle.