TOOMEY WARNS GOP CANDIDATES AGAINST BLIND TRUMP LOYALTY AS BARTOS AND PARNELL COMPETE IN “MESSY” “SUPER MAGA” PRIMARY

GOP candidates vying to replace Toomey ignore his advice as they continue to suck up to Trump

PENNSYLVANIA — While addressing the Pennsylvania Press Club, sitting Senator Toomey issued a warning to GOP candidates: 

“I do think it’s important to win elections, especially in competitive districts in competitive states, candidates will have to run on ideas and principles, not on allegiance to a man.

The warning echoes the sentiments Toomey gave in a recent Financial Times interview where he voiced concern Trump will endorse candidates “based on their loyalty to him, who are not strong candidates in their own right” — leading to “an election in 2022 that goes worse than it should.” 

These comments could not be more relevant to Toomey’s home of Pennsylvania, where real estate developer Jeff Bartos and failed congressional candidate Sean Parnell are “already at each other’s throats,” weaponizing past Trump comments to attack each other as MAGA purity tests come to define their “super MAGA” primary. As the field spends the next year focused on damaging each other while sucking up to a man who lost Pennsylvania in 2020, Toomey is right to be concerned about what experts have called Democrats’ top Senate pickup opportunity of the cycle

A recent survey of political scientists found Toomey’s own standing in the GOP has morphed as loyalty to Trump has become more closely aligned with conservatism than actual conservative policy positions in the eyes of voters, demonstrating how far the Republican primary base has drifted from the general electorate that decides statewide elections in Pennsylvania.

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