After damning revelations emerged Monday about Pennsylvania GOP Senate candidate Sean Parnell, a Republican adversary pounced.
Former GOP Rep. Ryan Costello mocked a Parnell campaign statement denying the sworn testimony of his estranged wife that Parnell choked her, verbally denigrated her as a “whore” and “piece of shit,” and hit their kids.
Parnell, who Donald Trump has endorsed in the open Republican primary, said he “anxiously” awaited the chance to refute his estranged wife’s testimony. “Let me empathically state: I have never raised a hand in anger towards my wife or any of our three children,” Parnell claimed in a statement.
Costello, a more moderate Republican who is still weighing a Senate bid, quickly subtweeted, “Let me emphatically state he would’ve lost the General (election) by 5 before this, even to the do-nothing clown (John) Fetterman, but now it’s clear he’d lose to a golden retriever by double digits.”
Calling Parnell a “disaster of a candidate,” Costello added that Parnell should “write books & play hero on Fox & gtfo out of the race.”
Republican real estate developer and primary opponent Jeff Bartos already declared Parnell “unelectable” in September because Parnell’s wife had secured two temporary protective orders against him in 2017 and 2018. Both were expunged with no public record of their contents accessible.
On Monday, Parnell’s estranged wife reportedly testified that she endured years of physical and verbal abuse. “It just got worse and worse,” she said, adding that the family was “walking on eggshells. The minute he walked back into the house, we were petrified.”
GOP Sen. Pat Toomey, who is retiring from the seat, couldn’t even bring himself to generally denounce abusive behavior when he was asked Tuesday about the allegations against Parnell.
“I really don’t have anything for you right now,” Toomey told HuffPost reporter Igor Bobic.
What a profile in courage. Toomey couldn’t even muster the standard response: If proven true, these are very serious allegations.
The entire GOP Senate slate is shaping up to potentially offer voters an array of allegedly abusive behavior. Whether it’s Herschel Walker in Georgia allegedly threatening to “blow” the brains out of his former spouse and girlfriend, Missouri’s disgraced ex-governor Eric Greitens allegedly sexually violating and blackmailing a woman with whom he had an affair, or Parnell’s family allegedly living a life of fear, Republicans are assembling a regressive field of men with stunningly horrific anger issues.
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