The other day we looked at the misery the Pennsylvania Senate candidates are going through, but just focused on a pair of also-rans, conservative Democrat Conor Lamb and GOP carpetbagger and TV celebrity Mehmet Oz. Since money-bags David McCormick is probably going to buy the GOP nomination, it's more important to follow him. Let's take a look at a little tap-dancing from the Connecticut Republican.
In 2005 he was interviewed by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review soon after being appointed by Bush to a job as undersecretary of commerce for export administration, pushing job-killing free-trade policies. But the most important piece of the interview was this:
McCormick said his experience as a corporate CEO helping companies to move work offshore... will serve him well in his new post.
Oops. That's already come back to bite him in the ass. A carpet-bagger like Oz, a Pittsburgh radio station asked about the 2005 interview in which he bragged about outsourcing jobs to other countries. Oz is running a very unflattering ad that everyone is now asking McCormick about:
McCormick got rich off us. McCormick led a hedge fund with a billion dollar Chinese investment program. He called China our ally, and he cut Pittsburgh jobs only to create new jobs overseas, all to make a buck. McCormick even criticized President Trump's China policy. No wonder Trump fired him. David McCormick, Wall Street and China win, Pennsylvania loses.
What makes it worse is that his campaign claims he's a "job creator," a claim that's now being used to paint him as a liar and hypocrite. and he keeps digging deeper, denying the charges even though his 2005 interview is still out there and readily accessible. In fact, the same paper where he bragged about outsourcing jobs, "also reported in February 2003 that McCormick, then the CEO of an online auction company called FreeMarkets Inc., announced a new monitoring center in New Delhi with more than 100 jobs. The company had announced 50 layoffs at its Pittsburgh headquarters just one month earlier-- though the company disputes the idea that the two moves were related."
McCormick's response has been to savage Oz: "Lies are all the Mehmet Oz camp has because the truth-- that he's a Hollywood liberal and Dave McCormick is a Pennsylvania, combat veteran conservative-- is their worst enemy. This false ad being taken down just reinforces what Pennsylvanians already know: Dave McCormick is battle-tested and Pennsylvania-true and Mehmet Oz can’t be trusted."
Both Trump ass-kissing self-funders have already spent millions of dollars on the primary. Oz spent $4.1 million and has another $1.3 million booked. Oz's super-PAC slamming McCormick spent $1.2 million more. Meanwhile, McCormick has spent $3.4 million in ads and has another $385,000 booked, while two of his super-PACs have spent another $1.2 million running ads making the case that Oz isn't a conservative, one calling him a "Hollywood liberal" and the other pointing out his very public support of Obamacare.
Jeff Bartos is attacking both of them in over a million dollars in ads as "out-of-state-politicians [trying to] buy a Pennsylvania Senate seat."
More GOP fun and games? Even worse? Let's head across Ohio and turn sharp right into Michigan. Two GOP candidates-- Ryan Kelley (who participated in the 1/6 insurrection) for governor and Mike Detmer for a state Senate seat-- are actually campaigning against democracy! Kelley: "If you see something you don't like happening with the machines, unplug it from the wall." State Senate candidate Mike Detmer went further, advising the audience to be prepared to "lock and load ... So you ask, 'what can we do?' Show up armed. ... Make sure that justice prevails."
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel weighed in on Twitter yesterday to remind the two extremist crackpots, each of whom says he is endorsed by Trump, that what each is advocating is illegal:
