Can Trump's Endorsement Save Mediocre Candidates Who Kiss His Ass, Like Oz, Perdue & Budd?

Trump endorsed the Pennsylvania Senate candidate most like himself, Dr. Oz, another phony, values-free TV huckster. Will it save Oz's sinking candidacy. I'm sure John Fetterman hopes so. The resident of New Jersey is hated by MAGA-world but is spending a million dollars running the ad above to persuade low-info rural voters that he's the conservative icon in the race despite a constant drumbeat from the far right fringes that he's pro-Choice, pro-Critical Race Theory, pro-vax, pro-trans, pro-immigration and anti-gun. The primary is just around the corner: May 17.

Before the endorsement he has been trailing David McCormick significantly. Pennsylvania's GOP primary is the most expensive in the country so far-- $80 million on TV ads alone! Much of that spending is the brutally negative campaign between Oz and hedge fund manager McCormick, ads that can only help John Fetterman in November despite a likely red wave. Both "are spending heavily from their own personal wealth."

Tim Miller had some interesting observations on McCormick for Bulwark readers yesterday, observations that describe more Republicanos than just McCormick. "Watching people of stature-- titans of industry, high-ranking diplomats, Ivy Leaguers with doctorates in their subject of expertise-- sacrifice every ounce of their dignity at the feet of a racist carnival barker will never really cease to amaze. No matter how many times we have witnessed it over the years, the spectacle is still so obscene that one struggles to look away. As such, this weekend our collective gaze turned with a sense of vicarious embarrassment to GOP Senate candidate David McCormick." [McCormick can say he at least has Ted Cruz in his corner-- who lost every county in the state to Trump in the 2016 primary by landslide margins.]

[W]ith the entire world as his oyster, McCormick decided that the job he wanted was United States senator. And to be a senator in the GOP these days, sucking up to Trump is the ante. So McCormick hired many of his wife’s former Trump administration coworkers up to and including the white nationalist sympathizing Stephen Miller to help him go “Full MAGA.”

Multiple sources relayed to me that McCormick has told friends he would court Trump, but was drawing a line at advancing the Big Lie about the 2020 election. As it turns out the line he has drawn is so thin as to be barely visible by the human eye-- which [Joshua] Green discovered in his interview with the candidate during which McCormick repeatedly retreated to expressing concerns about election “irregularities” and reiterated that the voters’ “doubts” should be taken seriously.

Le Sigh.

As recently as last Wednesday, Washington Post reporter Josh Dawsey said McCormick was having lunch on the patio at Mar-a-Lago with Hope Hicks in his feverish attempt to suck up to the man who invented the Big Lie that he finds so distasteful (in private) and the resulting insurrection (that he publicly called a “horrific and dark chapter”).

The scene on that patio is quite the image to conjure in your head. There’s McCormick sweating profusely as he eats a rock-hard steak in a gaudy-ass club, being made to wait for the opportunity for an audience with Trump, who delights as this Big Man calls him “sir” in the hopes that the Orange God-King might look with favor upon his candidacy.

And what did McCormick get for all that humiliation? What did he get for hiring the most deplorable of Trump’s hangers on? For schlepping to Cougarville to beg like a dog?

Shunned in polite society, obviously.

But also: rejected in humiliating fashion by the man he courted.

On Saturday Donald Trump passed over David McCormick to endorse fellow huckster, Dr. Oz.

You hate to see it. You really do.

Oz and Trump are both counting on Trump's endorsement turning things around for him. It sure didn't for Mo Brooks, who was running a distant third when Trump, embarrassed to be associated with another loser, withdrew his endorsement. And this morning the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Trump's endorsee in the Georgia gubernatorial race, former Senator David Perdue is doing so badly that he may not even force Trump nemesis Brian Kemp into a runoff. A new internal poll of the May 24 primary shows Kemp leading Perdue 49-33% with 12% undecided-- with almost all GOP voters already aware that Trump endorsed Perude.

In North Carolina, Trump's bizarre endorsement is working out much better and has helped propel a garden variety right-wing congressional backbencher, Ted Budd, into first place over the failed former "bathroom governor," Pat McCrory. The Trump-Budd strategy has been to lock this nomination up by getting Mark Walker, another right-wing congressman, to drop out and endorse Budd. That strategy fell embarrassingly flat on its face with a puffed-up and cringingly self-righteous Walker this past weekend:

There's no enthusiasm for anyone in the North Carolina Democratic primary. Cheri Beasely, the dull establishment candidate, a right-of-center corporate shill, polled at 37% but with most Democratic voters scratching their heads and telling pollsters they are "undecided," maning dissatisfied with the lack of choice. By forcing Beasely down North Carolina Democrats' throats, Stalinist Chuck Schumer is in full lesser-of-two-evils mode-- but in a red wave year that can only lead to catastrophe for Democrats. And, by the way, that tactic was the same one he used in Arizona last cycle... giving us all Kyrsten Sinema.

This came out this afternoon from the McCormick campaign.