Steve Bannon is on a losing streak: That could swing the Pa. governor's race (column)
UPDATE: Steve Bannon's losing streak continues. This week, he stepped down from running the alt-right website Breitbart.
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Now that the bizarre spectacle that masqueraded as a U.S. Senate race in Alabama is over and terrible human being Roy Moore can shuffle off to his next gig as a stand-in for Woody in the next "Toy Story" movie, it's time to turn our sights to 2018 and the race for governor of our fair commonwealth.
And here is a bold prediction: Tom Wolf will be putting a lot more miles on his famous Jeep driving back and forth from Mount Wolf to his job in Harrisburg.
Bank on it. It's easy money. Wolf should call the caterer and the band and get things lined up for his victory celebration. (Just a suggestion: Instead of booking a fancy hotel ballroom somewhere, Wolf should hold his election night celebration at the Mount Wolf fire hall and have the Manchester Café cater the affair. Maybe hire Del McCoury and his boys to provide the entertainment. Go full York County.)
And there is one reason for that bold prediction.
Steve Bannon.
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Bannon, if you'll recall, is the evil genius behind the 2016 presidential campaign that saddled the country with an orange-tinged huckster as its president, a man who has demonstrated, in less than a year, that he can make close to 70 percent of the country loath him.
At least he played the role of evil genius. Now, his role is reduced to more of a sideshow, the kind of freak that fills you with awe from the spectacle that a person who was once a Goldman-Sachs investment banker, TV producer and operator of a website that caters to cranks, conspiracy theorists and wingnuts can portray himself as a kindred spirit with the unwashed masses.
As blogger extraordinaire Charlie Pierce pointed out, covering his appearance on behalf of a Senate candidate who appeared to be the illicit spawn of the lead character from "Toy Story" and Howdy Doody, he rails against the "elite" while maintaining membership in their exclusive club. (Pierce described Bannon as "a carbuncled vandal," which is a pretty good description. He also looks like his campaign appearances come during intermission between a long liquid lunch and happy hour at the airport Marriot.)
Bannon, it almost goes without saying, is a peddler of weapons-grade nonsense intended to rouse the rabble, distracting the rubes while his cohorts loot the national treasury for their personal gain.
Anyway, Bannon has a new bestest buddy – our own Scott Wagner.
In September, Wagner flew to St. Louis for a meeting of something called the Phyllis Schlafly Eagles, which seems like a fun group named for the now-deceased conservative activist who was a big deal in such circles a few decades ago for reasons that remain mystifying. That he was invited to speak to the group is also mystifying, or maybe not. That group seems like an easy mark for campaign contributions from a candidate who fashions himself as a kind of Dollar General Donald Trump.
Wagner told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that he found out that Bannon was invited to the gathering too and extended an invitation to share a chartered flight to St. Louis. "It's called plane-pooling, like car-pooling," Wagner told the newspaper.
Setting aside the notion that taking charter flights is the hallmark of the friend of the working man, Wagner and Bannon hit it off. Wagner told the newspaper that they talked about issues and found "we had a lot of issues in common."
Which doesn't seem like a good thing to say, at least in public.
Bannon, in case you didn’t know, is a leader of what's called the alt-right, which is, essentially a gussied-up version of people with whom you really wouldn’t want to associate. The neo-nutjobs who marched on Charlottesville? They identified with the alt-right. (I still haven't gotten an explanation for the tiki torches and their significance in that strange world.)
Wagner, the Post-Gazette reported, told the crowd that he'd spent "two hours on the plane with Steve Bannon. I was pretty emboldened before, but I can tell you right now I'm like 500 percent more emboldened."
Just what we needed.
He also told the group, "In Pennsylvania the gloves are coming off, and the message is to hard-working Pennsylvanians: You’re being shafted by the corruption in Harrisburg. … I watched Republican leaders giving our governor a free pass, and you know what? Enough is enough."
"A free pass?" That would be news to Wolf.
The lovefest continued when Bannon took the stage and said, "What Scott Wagner was talking a second ago — it’s not about ... the Democrats. We’ll get to them, and we’ll beat them like we beat Hillary Clinton. But the first thing we’ve got to get through is a corrupt and incompetent Republican establishment.”
“They’re not going to give you your country back,” he said later. “You’re going to have to go and take it back and we’re going to start taking it back … in November when Scott Wagner runs in Pennsylvania.”
Wagner told the Post-Gazette that he didn’t know whether Bannon would be playing a role in his campaign. He said Bannon told him, "If you want to talk, give me a call."
So he may, or may not, have Bannon in his corner.
While it is true that Bannon played a role in foisting Trump upon an unsuspecting nation – which probably had more to do with Trump's abundant grifting skills than anything – he has also been involved in a couple of other campaigns.
He championed the candidacy of Corey Stewart in his bid to run for governor in Virginia, the online magazine Slate.com reported.
So how'd that work out?
Stewart lost the primary to Ed Gillespie. And after the loss, Bannon was sure that Gillespie was going to win the general election. He didn't.
And then Bannon hitched his wagon to the creaky old nag that was Roy Moore. The strategy seemed to be that electing a nut who was twice thrown out of office for defying court orders and who stands accused of sexually abusing teenage girls and who was perhaps the only person in Alabama even creepier than the man he was trying to replace in the Senate, Jeff Sessions, was a lot better than sending a Democrat to Washington. It almost worked. Until it didn't.
The moral of the story is that people seem to be catching on to this particular con.
So now Bannon may be latching onto Wagner.
Good luck with that.
Wolf might as well start checking to see whether the Mount Wolf fire hall is free election night.
Reach Mike Argento at 717-771-2046 or at mike@ydr.com.
