More On Rick Saccone (The Trump And "P-G" Endorsements)

Tomorrow is the day voters in Pennsylvania's 18th Congressional district choose which candidate:

• Conor Lamb, the Democrat - a retired Marine Corps officer and former federal prosecutor
• Rick Saccone, The Republican - a torture supporter and religious zealot

will fill out disgraced Republican Tim Murphy's term in the House of Representatives.

In the past few hours, there's been some fallout from the events of this weekend:

• The endorsement by the Toledo Block Bugler (formerly known as the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
• The endorsement by pussy-grabber in chief, Donald J Trump

First there's this from the Washington Post about the Bugler's endorsement:

The largest newspaper in southwest Pennsylvania endorsed the Republican candidate ahead of Tuesday’s special congressional election with a rationale unlike any cited in other races: Democratic control of the House would hurt the country by setting the stage for a presidential impeachment.

I didn't write about that angle in my own analysis of the endorsement yesterday but it certainly fits with a publisher who's doing what he can to make nice with the orange vulgarity now sitting in the Oval Office.

The ridiculousness of the Bugler's endorsement is shown by these two snippets from The WaPost:

Neither Rick Saccone nor Conor Lamb, the Republican and Democratic nominees in the 18th Congressional District, has talked about impeachment during the campaign.

And:

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), who would chair the House Judiciary Committee if his party won a majority, told The Washington Post this year that impeachment would not be pursued unless both parties agreed to it, as removal of the president would require a supermajority vote in the Senate.

And yet the Bugler's endorser says it's a reason to back Saccone.

Driving the point home, the endorsement goes on:

The prospect of a Democratic House may please partisans, but it might be bad for the country. The Democrats in the House have only one agenda item at the moment, and it isn’t health care or jobs. It is impeachment. Regardless of whether one likes this president or his policies, one must ask what the consequence for the country will be if we dive into so great a distraction.

Yes, so if Trump colluded with the Russians for a win and/or if he then covered up whatever happened and/or if he's obstructing the subsequent investigation in any way and/or if he violated FEC laws by paying off the pornstar he schtupped (repeatedly) to keep her quiet, that should all be ignored because it will be a distraction for the country.  Rule of law be damned.

Then there's this from inside the White House itself:

There's a reason Trump said hardly anything about Republican candidate Rick Saccone during a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday night that was supposed to promote his candidacy.

And this is it:

Trump thinks Saccone is a terrible, "weak" candidate, according to four sources who've spoken to the president about him.

So if Saccone wins, Trump takes the credit. If Saccone loses, he's already prepared the narrative that it's not Trump's fault.