This morning, failed GOP candidate for PA Gov Doug Mastriano tweeted bit of childishness:
— Doug Mastriano (@dougmastriano) January 11, 2023
Good ole Tucker's referring to
this piece in Red State which begins thusly:
Back in 2010, RNC Chair Michael Steele was heavily criticized and eventually lost his position because donors were angry about what they believed was luxurious spending on private jets, floral arrangements, chauffeur services, and member meetings in expensive tropical locales. Donors were used to frugality from the RNC under the George W. Bush administration, when “Karl Rove would bitch if there were flowers on the tables” and staff holiday parties were catered by Chick-fil-A.
Despite Joe Biden’s economy and three straight cycles of election losses, the RNC’s big-spending days are back with a vengeance.
Perhaps because of these losses both RNC donors and committee members are intensely interested in the committee’s finances, particularly the spending. Late last week, RedState was provided a report dated October 7, 2022 that examined RNC’s 2021-22 spending. It calculated more than $500,000 in private jet expenses, $64,000 at clothing retailers, and $321,000 in floral arrangements.
Doug is, apparently, trying to get his many many acolytes to think that if only the RNC had spent some of that sweet sweet donor cash on him, he wouldn't have lost to Governor-elect Shapiro.
Yea, like any amount of cash would've made up for 790,000 Doug rejecting votes.
Sure.
Apparently, Doug is trying to pin the blame of his humiliating loss on the RNC. Isn't the GOP the party of personal responsibility? Sure. Just like they're the party of law and order.
[Remonder: Members of Doug's political party stormed the US Capitol building a little over 2 years ago in order to stop the certification of the winner of the 2020 election.]
Back to our narrative. There's this from the Philadelphia Inquirer:
Doug Mastriano and his allies often complained fellow Republicans were not doing enough to support his campaign for governor of Pennsylvania.
Mastriano’s fund-raising struggles were so dire that in late September, a top campaign adviser, Jenna Ellis, urged her Twitter followers to call the Republican Governors Association to demand more money for his campaign against Democrat Josh Shapiro.
Mastriano never did catch Shapiro in fund-raising and ended up losing the race by double digits. But in a final twist to Mastriano’s highly unconventional campaign, it turns out the Republican didn’t even spend all the money he did manage to raise. In fact, weeks after the election, Mastriano still had more than $1 million in his campaign account left unspent, according to a fund-raising report he filed last week. That’s about 15% of the money he had available for the general election.
But the state GOP has a little Doug-gripe of it's own, as shown in the Inky's next paragraph:
While it is unlikely that cash would have made a difference in his long-shot bid against Shapiro — who spent a whopping $66 million compared with Mastriano’s $7 million — some Republicans are now griping that the money could have helped the party’s candidates down ballot. Pennsylvania Democrats won a majority of seats in the state House for the first time in more than a decade.
“It’s one of the most irresponsible and selfish actions I’ve seen a candidate for office at any level take,” said Mark Harris, a Pittsburgh-based Republican strategist. “The potential loss of the House rests heavily on Doug Mastriano’s decision.”
Wait. So some in the state GOP blame Doug for losing all those seats in the state House?
And yet, even with all that back and forth, all that damage inflicted by Doug's "irresponsible and selfish actions" on the PA House GOP, this happened:
State Sen. Doug Mastriano (R-33) today announced he has been appointed by Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward (R-39) to serve as chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs and Emergency Preparedness Committee for the 2023-24 legislative session.
The state of affairs in today's GOP.