Trump’s Toxic Election Lies Have “Fast Become A Litmus Test” In Pennsylvania’s “Fiercely Competitive” GOP Primary

Recent news reports are detailing how “Trump’s false claims of a stolen election” have found “new signs of life” in Pennsylvania’s “fiercely competitive” Republican Senate primary. GOP candidates Kathy Barnette, Jeff Bartos, Sean Parnell, and Carla Sands have all backed baseless calls for an election audit in an attempt to use “their loyalty to the lie as a selling point” for their campaigns as they desperately compete for an endorsement from the toxic former president:

• The Associated Press reported this weekend that “GOP party officials and donors [are] squirming with discomfort” and worrying that the rhetoric will damage the “party’s credibility with critical swing voters” in 2022. One former centrist Republican congressman from the state called the audit push “a blunder of epic proportions.”

• The Philadelphia Inquirer detailed how “calls for a new election review, and casting aspersions on the 2020 results, are now a key element of GOP primaries nationally and in Pennsylvania” as Trump’s “election grievances have become a litmus test for Republican candidates.”

The escalating Pennsylvania Republican Senate primary is yet another example of how Trump’s election lies are “taking over Republican Senate races” and worrying national Republicans who believe his “furious insistence on fealty and refusal to let 2020 go could cost them” in 2022.

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Associated Press: Pennsylvania election audit gets GOP campaign trail embrace

• Former President Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen election have been debunked by the courts, his own Justice Department and scores of recounts.

• But in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, where Trump lost by 80,000 votes eight months ago, they’re finding new signs of life.

• The audit has fast become a litmus test in an election cycle where an open governor’s office and an open U.S. Senate seat — the political equivalent of a blue moon — have triggered fiercely competitive Republican primaries.

• That has some GOP party officials and donors squirming with discomfort, albeit quietly. Some Republicans privately worry that the spectacle of a protracted election audit is a time bomb that not only will damage the state’s democratic institutions, but also the party’s credibility with critical swing voters.

• “Most of the Republicans I know, at the very least, have misgivings and, at worst, are like me and realize this is just really a blunder of epic proportions,” said former congressman Charlie Dent, a centrist Republican from the Allentown area. “Why bring the Arizona clown show to Pennsylvania?”

• Sean Parnell, a candidate for U.S. Senate, said that “half the state” not trusting the election result is a problem that can be remedied with an audit, and dismissed the official state and county audits as simply “recounts” that were inadequate to investigate allegations that something went wrong.

• “And now after the fact, that people are saying, ‘Hey, wait a minute, maybe there were some problems,’ they just blow us all off and say, ‘No, no, screw you, you don’t know what you’re talking about,’ like, ‘You’re just a bunch of crazy conspiracy theorists,’” Parnell told a radio show host Wednesday.

Philadelphia Inquirer: Supporting Trump’s election lies is becoming a litmus test for Pennsylvania Republicans seeking higher office

• The six-month anniversary of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol prompted somber reflections on one of the darkest moments in recent American history.

• But far from creating a moment of regret or reflection, last week’s grim milestone also showed how many Republicans — including in Pennsylvania — have doubled down on the lies and conspiracies that sparked the insurrection. As former President Donald Trump continues promoting the fantasy of a stolen election, key Pennsylvania Republicans have amplified or nodded toward that fiction, using their loyalty to the lie as a selling point in their bids for higher office.

• Calls for a new election review, and casting aspersions on the 2020 results, are now a key element of GOP primaries nationally and in Pennsylvania, where the state has critical elections for governor and U.S. Senate next year.

• With Trump still reigning as the party’s most powerful figure, his election grievances have become a litmus test for Republican candidates.

• It’s a familiar pattern: Republicans are pulled along by Trump’s lies, forced to at least humor them until they take hold and become party orthodoxy.

• Several of the most prominent Pennsylvania Republicans running in 2022 have embraced calls for additional reviews of last year’s presidential vote.

• “We need a full forensic audit in all the states where we had issues, and Pennsylvania certainly had issues,” Republican Senate candidate Jeff Bartos recently said in a May interview with former Trump strategist Steve Bannon.

• Another Senate candidate, Sean Parnell, also told Bannon he supports an audit of the 2020 results, as well as in other elections.

• Carla Sands, Trump’s former ambassador to Denmark and now a Senate candidate, pointed to Mastriano’s visit to observe Arizona’s election review when she told conservative radio host Chris Stigall last week that “I believe that they want our election to have integrity and be honest and fair.”

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