The David McCormick story is quite revealing about the cul-de-sac to which Republican politics have led the party. Because of Citizens United, the institutional GOP has to favor wealthy, self-funding candidates, particularly for statewide offices in states with expensive urban media markets (Pennsylvania has two). Because of trump, however, those candidates have to masquerade as avatars of the MAGA base stereotype: rural, church-going, bootstrapping populists who succeeded despite their education. The disconnect is so enormous that bogus claims become inevitable--and the political hypocrisy is in plain sight.
The David McCormick story is quite revealing about the cul-de-sac to which Republican politics have led the party. Because of Citizens United, the institutional GOP has to favor wealthy, self-funding candidates, particularly for statewide offices in states with expensive urban media markets (Pennsylvania has two). Because of trump, however, those candidates have to masquerade as avatars of the MAGA base stereotype: rural, church-going, bootstrapping populists who succeeded despite their education. The disconnect is so enormous that bogus claims become inevitable--and the political hypocrisy is in plain sight.