Up until now, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s principal claim to fame outside of the Keystone State is that Kamala Harris considered him for the vice presidential spot on her illustrious 2024 Democrat ticket, but ultimately decided to go with Tim “What A Man” Walz in order to avoid the ire of the legions of Jew-haters who have come out of the woodwork on the left since Hamas massacred 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023. Now, however, Shapiro deserves kudos for that rarest of actions among Democrat politicians: doing the right thing. Bucking his own party, he has actually come out against efforts in Pennsylvania to steal the Senate election for Bob Casey.
Fox News reported Monday that Shapiro is “siding with the state's high court after the justices ruled that faulty mail-in ballots can’t be counted amid a contentious recount, delivering a victory to Republican Party officials.” This is important, as Democrat county officials in Pennsylvania have been defying the court’s directive not to count mail-in ballots that lacked dates or had other irregularities.
That led the state Supreme Court to tell the Boards of Elections in Bucks County, Montgomery County, and Philadelphia County that they "SHALL COMPLY with the prior rulings of this Court in which we have clarified" the rules about which ballots could be counted and which could not.
Shapiro braved the firestorm that could ensue from his not putting party over ethics and any recognizable standard of right and wrong, unlike most Democrats, saying: "Any insinuation that our laws can be ignored or do not matter is irresponsible and does damage to faith in our electoral process. The rule of law matters in Pennsylvania... It is critical for counties in both parties to respect it with both their rhetoric and their actions."
The rule of law? A Democrat said that the rule of law matters, even when it goes against the benefit of the party? Has Shapiro been stripped of his donkey epaulets yet? These are completely reasonable questions in light of the fact that Bucks County commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia vowed last week to continue to defy the court, saying: "People violate laws any time they want. So, for me, if I violate this law it’s because I want a court to pay attention. There’s nothing more important than counting votes." Yes, there is. What is more important than counting votes is first making sure that the ones you’re counting a real votes, not fraudulent ones. But such a consideration wouldn’t have gotten Pennsylvania Democrats the results they wanted, and so it was off the table.
But not for Shapiro. He declared his intention to "continue working to protect our democracy and the votes of all eligible Pennsylvanians." That may have been the first time in the history of the modern Democrat party that a Democrat proclaimed his intention to “protect our democracy” and actually meant that he would be working to “protect our democracy,” or more precisely, our republic, rather than meaning that he would be working to protect and advance the interests of the Democrat party and the leftist political elites.
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RNC Chair Michael Whatley commented acidly: "Heartening to see. Once Democrats came to the conclusion that even ignoring the Pennsylvania Supreme Court can’t scrape up enough ballots to win…Governor Shapiro suddenly discovers that he stands with the rule of law. Better late than never.”
Indeed. Josh Shapiro doesn’t have to have had a road-to-Damascus conversion moment. It is heartening enough that he sees that the way of lawlessness and authoritarianism that all too many Democrats seem to have embraced without a second thought is not a viable way forward. If his new stance against the vote-counting shenanigans in Pennsylvania is a measure of the way the winds are blowing all across the country, so much the better.
It’s extremely telling that the Democrats have so strenuously opposed voter ID measures, as well as election integrity measures such as restrictions on mail-in balloting, the enforcement of the prohibition against non-citizens voting, and the like. It’s almost as if they know that if elections in America are a fair fight, they will lose. Whatever his motives may be, Josh Shapiro deserves our commendations and gratitude for standing on the side of America’s continued existence as a free republic. Far too few do so these days.
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