If he bows to the left on something this basic, then there is no way he will be able to stand up to the full pressure from the establishment in 2024 when they need him to bow to them to fortify the election. Fuck him.
The small cultural battles like this are how we can tell if he’s actually strong enough to fight or if he is going to squish. The smears are only going to get worse, the pressure in 2024 is going to be 1000x what it is now. We are in a culture war and we need a fighter, not someone who claims to be on our side and then gives up when it matters.
Also, you’re retarded if you think this will do anything. Disavowing or deleting his account is an admission of guilt, not an apology. He will always be smeared with his prior association.
I never said that he needed to defend Andrew Torba. Torba can do that on his own. He is a grown man.
He should have handled this same way MTG handled it earlier this year when she spoke at Nick Fuentes’ conference. Nick Fuentes has a much more toxic reputation than Torba, and Torba also spoke at that conference! She defended her own speech there, and has done it repeatedly since - as recently as last week when she was on the Tim Pool show. The most she said was that she didn’t know Nick, which is true because Milo was the one who invited her to the conference. MTG is doing just fine in terms of fund raising.
The fact that he’s so far behind in fund raising at this stage is indicative of fundamental competence issues in his campaign, and not a great sign for him as governor.
The Dems are flooding Shapiro with cash. That is why Mastriano has it so tough.
Go check out Mastriano's campaign, he is doing a pretty good job. His messaging is great. He focuses on all the right issues such as crime, inflation and tying his opponent to Biden.
MTG is regarded as a joke nationally, none of our politicians should emulate her.
She is right on some issues and I personally don't dislike her but much of the electorate despises her.
If MTG ran statewide in Georgia, she loses by a minimum of 10 points.
I was more skeptical of Mastriano's campaign than you in the beginning but he really is running a good campaign right now.
I wanted Lou Barletta as the GOP nominee but the Republican voters of Pennsylvania chose Mastriano. I think Mastriano is currently proving they chose correctly.
He did this to get 8.5 million dollars in ad buys.
Lol how did you say this with a straight face. Imagine the next thing he's going to do for 8.5 million dollars.
The only reason I think you have a point is because of mail-in balloting, which is an immediate existential threat. Unfortunately, this gives more cover to every other Marco Rubio snake in the grass out there. "Duhhh optics" is not an acceptable argument ever since Trump taught people how to win. If a hitpiece brings your campaign down, you're just a bad candidate or there's an off chance that your problem is so bad that you shouldn't be running.
It's unfortunate to watch someone bend the knee when they don't at all have to, but what does this have to do with someone else having sex with his wife?
I can understand the other side as well. If he will fold on this, what else will he fold on? You never know with politicians. That said, this is particularly dumb case to complain about.
I think we are very much the underdog vs. the establishment, regardless of what happens.
He didn't cuck, he made the right choice if he wants to win.
Mastriano was facing a major fundraising problem and today he received 8.5 million dollars of ad support from Pennsylvania Commonwealth partners who demanded he cut ties with Gab.
You can't win elections without any money. Josh Shapiro has 15 million dollars and Mastriano had less than 1 million when had ties with Gab.
I believe in freedom of speech and Doug Mastriano will do a better job protecting that freedom than that weasel Josh Shapiro.
Mastriano is playing the optics game right now because there are 550k more registered Dems than Republicans in Pennsylvania, to win he needs to get support from the independent voters.
Mastriano actually has a good chance of winning now and you are making it easier for Shapiro by focusing on his Gab account.
Andrew Torba has the worst optics, if you are associated with him, you will lose any general election. Mastriano is playing to win.
How does deleting his Gab account help? He's clearly doing it for optics. It doesn't change the fact that he had a Gab account. Was he wrong to have that account? Is he going to denounce Gab and apologize for associating with conservatives?
If he just cared about appearances the best course of action would be to simply stop posting on the Gab account, and if asked about it say "I keep social media accounts everywhere. It's a way to put my message out. I don't endorse any particular platform or their policies."
Where did openly supporting Torba come into the discussion? Am I openly supporting Zuck if I have a FB account?
I haven't followed the details of this story, but the only way this actually looks reasonable is if he said "Hey guys follow me on Truth Social, that will be my ONLY social media account going forward."
You are partially correct. I agree with most of what you say here (and what you said surprised me given your history), but when it comes to politicians and stuff that actually matters, we need to get them on the record to make it as costly as possible for them to go back on their word.
Whether or not you are on Gab does not actually matter.
These people will never be happy, if even Mastriano is not enough for them. Like SJWs, they will never be satisfied, and no sane person should try to satisfy them.
We aren’t trying to appease leftists. We’re trying to break through to the normies who don’t even know much of anything, and unfortunately alt-media makes that hard. It’s incredibly fucked up that it does, but it’s what it is.
The reason people are paranoid about this is because we've been burned countless times by Republican politicians who don't live up to the hype. This particular incident is minor enough that, if I could vote in this election, I'd probably still turn out for it.
However, it is a borderline red flag. I'd save the outrage for him doing shitty things after being elected, though. If electoral politics is going to do anything of value, right-wing voters need to have a more adversarial relationship with our politicians and be ready to nuke their political careers when they start fagging out on policies.
I am pretty sure the one issue that Doug Mastriano will never cuck out on is election integrity.
His speeches during the stolen election literally won him the primary.
I wanted Barletta in the PA gov primaries because I thought Mastriano's campaign was too focused on 2020 stolen election but damn he won the primary and pivoted to also talk a lot more on inflation and crime.
Mastriano was one of the candidates who I thought cannot win in the beginning but he is running a good campaign in a must win state for us.
I pretty much never get pissed when someone attacks a politician but Mastriano is working his ass off to stop mail in ballots and we have our own guys mad about his comments about Gab. Priorities people.
They do not care about 'purity' for its own sake. They claim to care about 'purity' to try to pretend that they're better than the next guy. Same way the SJWs always claim to be more anti-racist than the next guy.
It's called being a bloody idiot, and not focusing on what actually matters.
Mastriano is very likely going to lose because he is too far to the right for Pennsylvania. It was a mistake to nominate him in the first place. But to say that he is not right-wing enough is the rankest of stupidity that you will be able to find.
My opinion is that Mastriano actually has a 55 percent shot of winning.
Many of the PA Republican leaders who shunned him in the primaries are coming home and he is finally getting good fundraising support.
The fundamentals of the race favor him: incumbent President is hated in PA, gas prices too high, his opponent is an Attorney General who is weak on violent crime. Shapiro is also running a shitty McAuliffe type campaign focused only on abortion and attacking Mastriano on Jan 6.
I thought Mastriano would be doomed in the general but looking at his campaign, he is doing much better than expected.
If things continue and Mastriano continues to hit the ground with the grassroots and Shapiro continues to bitch about abortion and 1/6, we will be saying Governor Mastriano next year.
The abortion attack has to be neutralized. You can't go around in PA saying that you will ban abortion even in cases of rape and incest. Stick to the 15 week stuff and you will have the better end of the argument. On the other hand, the January 6 thing is such nonsense that I do hope he spends all his time on that.
The only hope for Mastriano is that fundamentals will reassert themselves. Based on that, I predicted that Trump would lose in 2020, and that Republicans will do better than the polls now indicate. The economy is bad, and midterms are notoriously difficult for incumbent parties.
That alone should guarantee a major GOP victory, though I can't say if it will extend to PA. Even in the wave year of 2010, Republicans shot themselves in the foot by nominating crazy people like Sharron Angle.
We don't have any Sharron Angle level candidates this year.
Most questionable guy is GA Senate pick Herschel Walker but he is a likeable football legend. He has documented mental health issues that he has publically talked about and has a few kids out of marriage.
Next ones are Dr. OZ for PA senate and Arizona gov and senate with Kari Lake and Blake Masters. Dr. Oz has a base problem but I think they will finally come home by Nov. Fetterman had a stroke so it is unclear if he makes it to November. Lake and Masters talk mostly about the stolen election but I think they both pivot after the primaries are done and they win.
Mastriano's base is mainly rural socialcons so his abortion stance will sadly remain. I think moving to a 15 weeks ban would help him a lot in Philly suburbs but that is not going to happen.
The fundamentals of the environment along with higher than Trump margins in the rurals will hopefully push Doug Mastriano to victory.
But to say that he is not right-wing enough is the rankest of stupidity that you will be able to find.
You've got people on here who say the same thing about Trump. "He lost votes because he abandoned his White base to give money to minorities who wouldn't vote for him anyway!" I can't tell if they are serious or working for the other team.
There's a core of truth to that. He spent very little time on appealing to Latinos, very much on blacks, and yet Latinos swung for him hard, and blacks did not. That seems like wasted effort, and getting off your own supply of 'Blexit'.
It was wasted effort but I doubt it cost him any "right-wing" votes. Perhaps he could've gained more of those elusive "suburban moms" had he campaigned tactically. OTOH it's hard to campaign tactically when they can change the election rules at any time and there's no fair playing field.
He is trying to win the most important governor election this cycle.
He cannot let his name be associated with people like Andrew Torba.
Don't attack Doug Mastriano for increasing his chances of winning a difficult election.
Winning is more important than publicly supporting Torba. Trump never even made a Gab account because his clown son in law Kushner forbid him to. I don't see people hammering Trump for it.
Lay off attacking Doug Mastriano. We need him to win this race. This race is crucial to winning the 2024 Presidential race. Mastriano will end mass mail in balloting in PA while Shapiro has promised to expand it and have same day voter registration.
If he bows to the left on something this basic, then there is no way he will be able to stand up to the full pressure from the establishment in 2024 when they need him to bow to them to fortify the election. Fuck him.
Idiot.
He is not bowing to the left.
He needed to do this to get fundraising money to compete with Shapiro.
Mastriano was the leading voice actually calling out 2020 election fraud in PA.
He will end mass mail in balloting while Josh Shapiro has promised to expand it and implement same day voter registration.
We need Mastriano to win to win PA in 2024.
Why the fuck would you attack Mastriano for improving his victory chances?
You cannot win if you are seen as affiliated with Andrew Torba.
Why do so many of you not realize this?
The small cultural battles like this are how we can tell if he’s actually strong enough to fight or if he is going to squish. The smears are only going to get worse, the pressure in 2024 is going to be 1000x what it is now. We are in a culture war and we need a fighter, not someone who claims to be on our side and then gives up when it matters.
Also, you’re retarded if you think this will do anything. Disavowing or deleting his account is an admission of guilt, not an apology. He will always be smeared with his prior association.
No, not every hill is worth dying on.
This may have been a mistake. But it's absolute idiocy to assume that everyone operating not 100% to how you would have done is a sell-out.
He did this to get 8.5 million dollars in ad buys.
If he didn't do this, no money.
We need money to win elections.
You don't understand electoral politics if you think defending Torba was the right play here.
Mastriano has an excellent record on election integrity and to suggest otherwise is beyond rage-inducing.
I never said that he needed to defend Andrew Torba. Torba can do that on his own. He is a grown man.
He should have handled this same way MTG handled it earlier this year when she spoke at Nick Fuentes’ conference. Nick Fuentes has a much more toxic reputation than Torba, and Torba also spoke at that conference! She defended her own speech there, and has done it repeatedly since - as recently as last week when she was on the Tim Pool show. The most she said was that she didn’t know Nick, which is true because Milo was the one who invited her to the conference. MTG is doing just fine in terms of fund raising.
The fact that he’s so far behind in fund raising at this stage is indicative of fundamental competence issues in his campaign, and not a great sign for him as governor.
The Dems are flooding Shapiro with cash. That is why Mastriano has it so tough.
Go check out Mastriano's campaign, he is doing a pretty good job. His messaging is great. He focuses on all the right issues such as crime, inflation and tying his opponent to Biden.
MTG is regarded as a joke nationally, none of our politicians should emulate her.
She is right on some issues and I personally don't dislike her but much of the electorate despises her.
If MTG ran statewide in Georgia, she loses by a minimum of 10 points.
I was more skeptical of Mastriano's campaign than you in the beginning but he really is running a good campaign right now.
I wanted Lou Barletta as the GOP nominee but the Republican voters of Pennsylvania chose Mastriano. I think Mastriano is currently proving they chose correctly.
Lol how did you say this with a straight face. Imagine the next thing he's going to do for 8.5 million dollars.
The only reason I think you have a point is because of mail-in balloting, which is an immediate existential threat. Unfortunately, this gives more cover to every other Marco Rubio snake in the grass out there. "Duhhh optics" is not an acceptable argument ever since Trump taught people how to win. If a hitpiece brings your campaign down, you're just a bad candidate or there's an off chance that your problem is so bad that you shouldn't be running.
Doug Mastriano had the courage to call out the stolen election publically as a PA State Senator.
Very few state senators did so.
Mastriano is not using this money to buy hookers and blow. This is money that is not even directly given to him.
It is 8.5 million dollars of funds that go directly into Anti-Shapiro attack ads airing till November.
He needed this pretty badly to even have a shot of winning.
If Mastriano is elected, I am sure the one issue he would never cuck out on is election integrity.
Go look up Mastriano's speeches during the stolen election. He called out the fraud as far as any politician could ever go.
Commonwealth Partners supported him with 8.5 miilion in ads against Shapiro starting literally the same day Doug Mastriano disavowed Torba.
It is pretty clear why he had to do it.
I defend this man because nothing that I seen from him gives me cause to worry.
If he wins and then reneges on a promise, I will be there with you calling him out.
I just don't want people here to hurt his chances over something like this when this state is crucial to GOP's chances in 2024 Presidential.
We need to end mass mail in ballots in that state.
If a genie could grant me one wish concerning the outcome of one single race in November, I would be picking the PA governor race with no hesitation.
We really need this.
Truth Social @ Doug4Gov
It's unfortunate to watch someone bend the knee when they don't at all have to, but what does this have to do with someone else having sex with his wife?
Ten years from now, the right will consist of precisely three people, all calling each other 'sell-outs', 'controlled opposition' and 'cucks'.
If this kind of purity spiral continues, I fear the establishment can easily end the populist takeover.
We need to prioritize key issues.
Election integrity is do or die. Defending Andrew Torba who cannot hide his power level is not the hill we should ever die on.
I can understand the other side as well. If he will fold on this, what else will he fold on? You never know with politicians. That said, this is particularly dumb case to complain about.
I think we are very much the underdog vs. the establishment, regardless of what happens.
He didn't cuck, he made the right choice if he wants to win.
Mastriano was facing a major fundraising problem and today he received 8.5 million dollars of ad support from Pennsylvania Commonwealth partners who demanded he cut ties with Gab.
You can't win elections without any money. Josh Shapiro has 15 million dollars and Mastriano had less than 1 million when had ties with Gab.
I believe in freedom of speech and Doug Mastriano will do a better job protecting that freedom than that weasel Josh Shapiro.
Mastriano is playing the optics game right now because there are 550k more registered Dems than Republicans in Pennsylvania, to win he needs to get support from the independent voters.
Mastriano actually has a good chance of winning now and you are making it easier for Shapiro by focusing on his Gab account.
Andrew Torba has the worst optics, if you are associated with him, you will lose any general election. Mastriano is playing to win.
How does deleting his Gab account help? He's clearly doing it for optics. It doesn't change the fact that he had a Gab account. Was he wrong to have that account? Is he going to denounce Gab and apologize for associating with conservatives?
If he just cared about appearances the best course of action would be to simply stop posting on the Gab account, and if asked about it say "I keep social media accounts everywhere. It's a way to put my message out. I don't endorse any particular platform or their policies."
It hurts him actively.
He should never have made an account there in the first place.
You don't realize how difficult it is to win this race.
Mastriano has less money than Shapiro, the media is all in the tank for Shapiro and being tied to Torba is electoral poison.
I would say PA governorship is the most important single race in this election cycle.
I cannot believe our own guys are attacking Mastriano right now.
With allies like this, we will never win anything.
Mastriano is playing the optics game to win.
He cannot openly support Torba and win.
It is that simple.
Shapiro winning would be a disaster.
Do you want expansion of mail in ballots and same day voter registration? That is what Josh Shapiro has promised to implement.
If we want to end election fraud in PA, then you better hope that Mastriano wins this race.
Don't make it easier for Shapiro by attacking our guy!
It really pissed me off so much to see this post because I cannot believe our people are so short-sighted about electoral politics.
I'm not attacking Mastriano.
Where did openly supporting Torba come into the discussion? Am I openly supporting Zuck if I have a FB account?
I haven't followed the details of this story, but the only way this actually looks reasonable is if he said "Hey guys follow me on Truth Social, that will be my ONLY social media account going forward."
This is what his statement was
https://mobile.twitter.com/dougmastriano/status/1552764754262986753?cxt=HHwWgsC82aXUw4wrAAAA
Andrew Torba doesn't hide his power level about them.
Mastriano recently got 8.5 million from Pennsylvania Commonewealth Partners who wanted this to be said.
This needed to be done and the topic creator is attacking him for it.
I am not mad at you specifically. I am mad at everyone making this a big deal.
We need to win this race and people are caring about Torba of all people? Get the fuck out of here.
Ive noticed a lot of people who are vocal on kia2 care more about purity than winning.
Idiots.
You cannot govern with right wing values if you don't even win first.
I see right wing populists shoot themselves in the foot by going all in on meaningless shit like Gab.
Andrew Torba is an idiot because he says things out loud that the normies can't accept.
Being tied to him is poison and my fellow right wing populists cannot see this.
I am becoming increasingly more disillusioned with the right wing populist movement in the U.S.
We need to win first. Crying about condemning Gab and Andrew Torba is pointless.
We need the votes of atleast a few normies to win and we have populists thinking Trump's base is enough to win even swing states.
They don't understand basic electoral politics.
In other words hide your power level.
Yes you cannot win without hiding your power level.
You are partially correct. I agree with most of what you say here (and what you said surprised me given your history), but when it comes to politicians and stuff that actually matters, we need to get them on the record to make it as costly as possible for them to go back on their word.
Whether or not you are on Gab does not actually matter.
These people will never be happy, if even Mastriano is not enough for them. Like SJWs, they will never be satisfied, and no sane person should try to satisfy them.
We aren’t trying to appease leftists. We’re trying to break through to the normies who don’t even know much of anything, and unfortunately alt-media makes that hard. It’s incredibly fucked up that it does, but it’s what it is.
I agree with you, I think you read that as saying the opposite of what I intended. I meant that the ultra-right will never be happy.
The reason people are paranoid about this is because we've been burned countless times by Republican politicians who don't live up to the hype. This particular incident is minor enough that, if I could vote in this election, I'd probably still turn out for it.
However, it is a borderline red flag. I'd save the outrage for him doing shitty things after being elected, though. If electoral politics is going to do anything of value, right-wing voters need to have a more adversarial relationship with our politicians and be ready to nuke their political careers when they start fagging out on policies.
I am pretty sure the one issue that Doug Mastriano will never cuck out on is election integrity.
His speeches during the stolen election literally won him the primary.
I wanted Barletta in the PA gov primaries because I thought Mastriano's campaign was too focused on 2020 stolen election but damn he won the primary and pivoted to also talk a lot more on inflation and crime.
Mastriano was one of the candidates who I thought cannot win in the beginning but he is running a good campaign in a must win state for us.
I pretty much never get pissed when someone attacks a politician but Mastriano is working his ass off to stop mail in ballots and we have our own guys mad about his comments about Gab. Priorities people.
They do not care about 'purity' for its own sake. They claim to care about 'purity' to try to pretend that they're better than the next guy. Same way the SJWs always claim to be more anti-racist than the next guy.
No it's called not accepting the continued weakness of conservatives
It's called being a bloody idiot, and not focusing on what actually matters.
Mastriano is very likely going to lose because he is too far to the right for Pennsylvania. It was a mistake to nominate him in the first place. But to say that he is not right-wing enough is the rankest of stupidity that you will be able to find.
My opinion is that Mastriano actually has a 55 percent shot of winning.
Many of the PA Republican leaders who shunned him in the primaries are coming home and he is finally getting good fundraising support.
The fundamentals of the race favor him: incumbent President is hated in PA, gas prices too high, his opponent is an Attorney General who is weak on violent crime. Shapiro is also running a shitty McAuliffe type campaign focused only on abortion and attacking Mastriano on Jan 6.
I thought Mastriano would be doomed in the general but looking at his campaign, he is doing much better than expected.
If things continue and Mastriano continues to hit the ground with the grassroots and Shapiro continues to bitch about abortion and 1/6, we will be saying Governor Mastriano next year.
The abortion attack has to be neutralized. You can't go around in PA saying that you will ban abortion even in cases of rape and incest. Stick to the 15 week stuff and you will have the better end of the argument. On the other hand, the January 6 thing is such nonsense that I do hope he spends all his time on that.
The only hope for Mastriano is that fundamentals will reassert themselves. Based on that, I predicted that Trump would lose in 2020, and that Republicans will do better than the polls now indicate. The economy is bad, and midterms are notoriously difficult for incumbent parties.
That alone should guarantee a major GOP victory, though I can't say if it will extend to PA. Even in the wave year of 2010, Republicans shot themselves in the foot by nominating crazy people like Sharron Angle.
We don't have any Sharron Angle level candidates this year.
Most questionable guy is GA Senate pick Herschel Walker but he is a likeable football legend. He has documented mental health issues that he has publically talked about and has a few kids out of marriage.
Next ones are Dr. OZ for PA senate and Arizona gov and senate with Kari Lake and Blake Masters. Dr. Oz has a base problem but I think they will finally come home by Nov. Fetterman had a stroke so it is unclear if he makes it to November. Lake and Masters talk mostly about the stolen election but I think they both pivot after the primaries are done and they win.
Mastriano's base is mainly rural socialcons so his abortion stance will sadly remain. I think moving to a 15 weeks ban would help him a lot in Philly suburbs but that is not going to happen.
The fundamentals of the environment along with higher than Trump margins in the rurals will hopefully push Doug Mastriano to victory.
You've got people on here who say the same thing about Trump. "He lost votes because he abandoned his White base to give money to minorities who wouldn't vote for him anyway!" I can't tell if they are serious or working for the other team.
There's a core of truth to that. He spent very little time on appealing to Latinos, very much on blacks, and yet Latinos swung for him hard, and blacks did not. That seems like wasted effort, and getting off your own supply of 'Blexit'.
It was wasted effort but I doubt it cost him any "right-wing" votes. Perhaps he could've gained more of those elusive "suburban moms" had he campaigned tactically. OTOH it's hard to campaign tactically when they can change the election rules at any time and there's no fair playing field.
He is trying to win the most important governor election this cycle.
He cannot let his name be associated with people like Andrew Torba.
Don't attack Doug Mastriano for increasing his chances of winning a difficult election.
Winning is more important than publicly supporting Torba. Trump never even made a Gab account because his clown son in law Kushner forbid him to. I don't see people hammering Trump for it.
Lay off attacking Doug Mastriano. We need him to win this race. This race is crucial to winning the 2024 Presidential race. Mastriano will end mass mail in balloting in PA while Shapiro has promised to expand it and have same day voter registration.
Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good.