Thread by @daveweigel

Here at the #PASen GOP forum. Dave McCormick is skipping; John Gizzi, one of the moderators, joked that they thought about putting a “stuffed rhinoceros” (RINO) on the stage.

Of the candidates here - Barnette, Bochetto, Bartos, Gale, Oz, Sands - most applause by far was for Barnette. This is a conservative conference, not a regular GOP meeting, so make of that what you will. (Polite applause for Oz, who's been working the crowd all day.)

First question is about social media censorship: "Donald Trump can't tweet, but the Kremlin can."

Barnette kicks off: "Covid does not trump the US constitution, nor does Facebook, nor does Twitter."

Oz: "I went to war with [big tech] several times when hosting my show... they ran fake ads around energy policy, we now know Putin was influencing those ads."

Oz talks about his argument with the Philadelphia Inquirer and how Robert Malone (of "mass formation psychosis" fame) has been canceled. "You won't find him on social media... the only way for us to fight back is to take out Section 230."

Bochetto: "With all due respect to Dr. Oz, I don't think he understands Section 230." Solution is to "start treating data as proprietary."

Bartos: Repeal section 230 and/or break up big tech with anti-trust laws.

Gale doesn't get specific, says he'll "fight against cancel culture" in DC.

Sands: "God has prepared me for this moment. This is my Esther moment." Talks about her CPAC speech being censored on YouTube. Big Tech needs to be "regulated like the phone company. Can you imagine if one of us wasn't allowed to buy a cell phone bc we're conservative?"

Q2: How would they vote on Ketanji Brown Jackson?

Oz: No. "She's been tainted by woke ideology... the question of 'what is a woman,' in that dialogue, the senator quickly jumped in as she was about to hang herself."

Oz: "Republicans keep walking into woke knife-fights with index cards."

Bochetto is a no, says Biden hurt Jackson with black woman justice pledge. "It's almost the equivalent of Biden saying to Russia, we're not going to put our people into Ukraine if you invade."

Bochetto says that Jackson "made it clear that she would favor" court expansion, which is 1) not true and 2) not up to SCOTUS. (Constitution gives Congress the power to change court size.)

Like Oz, Bochetto also characterizes the Blackburn-Jackson exchange as Jackson not being able to state the difference between a man and a woman.

Bartos, also a no, says she's "soft on crime" and ties Jackson's views to Larry Krasner. "We have a George Soros-funded DA."

Gale and Sands are both "no" votes (unsurprisingly). Sands: "Not only would this nominee not define a woman, she wouldn't admit when life began."

Interestingly, Sands goes after "weak Republicans" right after mentioning Sarah Bloom Raskin's failed Fed nomination... and doesn't mention Pat Toomey, arguably the key senator in defeating that nomination, who the candidates are running to replace.

Barnette, a black woman, makes fun of Dems for the "oppression olympics" and how they think more "oppressed" people are more virtuous. "What about a black woman with a limp? What about a black woman with a limp and a lazy eye?"

Q3: Defending Taiwain.

Bochetto: "I can't help but notice that we have a gathering of Pennsylvania's key conservatives... but there's one person who's not here." Says McCormick clearly dodged this debate/conference bc he's vulnerable on China questions.

The candidates are discouraged from talking about candidates not onstage (which means McCormick), but Bartos sarcastically says Bochetto was being too harsh: "The traffic to get to Pennsylvania from Connecticut is really rough on the weekends."

Gale mostly returns to his we-need-a-real-conservative message, Sands talks about confronting China when she was ambassador to Denmark. "My work to counter Russia and China was so complete that the DOD gave me their highest honor." China spread covid "intentionally,"

Like Sands, Barnette says China intentionally "spread covid around the world."

"The rest of the world sees what you and I see; Biden is incompetent.

Barnette says that someone in the admin talked about "putting the first black woman on the moon" this week, which I honestly hadn't heard. Did that happen?

Oz says China and scrutiny of McCormick's dealings there is "the reason Beijing Dave isn't here."

Q4: Would you want Trump to come and endorse you?

Bartos: Yes

Gale: Yes, but he'd advise Trump not to endorse, after the Sean Parnell debacle. He knocks Trump for endorsing people like Romney and Ryan, and "all they did was stab him in the back."

Everyone else says yes, Oz takes the opportunity to talk about Biden trying to remove him from president's fitness council, which he says he joked about w Trump. "He can't even fire a person as well as Donald Trump."

Bochetto says he's "already" gotten a Trump endorsement because he was consulted on the defense against the 2021 impeachment.

No surprises in closing statements, but Oz really emphasizes that he married his wife "in the house we live in today" near Philly, and Bartos says he's a "lifelong resident" of PA.

The debate's over, and here's the result of a straw poll taken over the weekend. (Over a couple tweets, they have multiple questions.)

Most important issue:

Election integrity: 61%
Budget: 16%

Nothing else comes close.

86% support an "automatic audit of every election regardless of the result." (There is a canvass that happens after every election already.)

#PAGov
Mastriano - 88 votes
McSwain - 88 votes
White - 56 votes
Gerow - 41 votes

#PASen

Barnette: 127
Bartos: 64
Sands: 52
McCormick: 50
Oz: 43
Bochetto: 9
Gale: 9

McCormick didn't attend, the others did.