On Saturday night, April 9, former President Donald Trump endorsed Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania’s 2022 GOP U.S. Senate primary. And some MAGA zealots, journalist Zachary Petrizzo reports in the Daily Beast, have been throwing a major hissy fit — as they believe that Oz’s resumé is much too moderate.

The Oz of the George W. Bush era did not pander to far-right extremists. In those days, Oz, now 61, was a moderate conservative along the lines of the late Sen. John McCain of Arizona or former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge. But in his 2022 campaign ads in Pennsylvania, Oz is resorting to dumb MAGA talking points. He wants to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s top White House medical advisor, from the federal government — and Oz went from being pro-choice to pandering to “pro-life” theocrats..

Regardless, Oz’s opponents are slamming him as a RINO (Republicans In Name Only) who is only pretending to be MAGA. And Petrizzo notes that Trump, by endorsing Oz, has “ignited fury and ridicule among some of the loudest voices in Trumpworld.”

“At issue among Trump’s most fervent supporters is the belief that Oz, a Turkish-American TV physician who has hobnobbed with Hollywood’s elite and has flip-flopped on the issue of abortion, isn’t a trustworthy’ America First’ Republican candidate, compared to fellow candidate Dave McCormick, who has ex-Trump Administration official Hope Hicks by his side,” Petrizzo explains.

Oz is running for the U.S. Senate seat that is presently occupied by Sen. Pat Toomey and was occupied by the late Sen. Arlen Specter for many years. Toomey, a hard-right conservative, voted “guilty” in Trump’s second impeachment trial and decided not to seek reelection in the 2022 midterms. Trumpistas now consider Toomey a RINO, which is ironic in light of his history.

In 2004, Toomey gave the late Sen. Arlen Specter an aggressive Republican primary challenge in Pennsylvania — insisting that the moderate Specter wasn’t conservative enough. The Philadelphia Inquirer’s editorial board, at the time, was critical of Toomey’s campaign and argued that he was even more of an extreme culture warrior than then-Sen. Rick Santorum. The social conservatives and evangelical fundamentalists of 2004 praised Toomey was a “rock-ribbed” conservative and viewed Specter as the RINO; now, in 2022, Toomey isn’t seeking reelection because, insanely, the MAGA crowd thinks he is too far to the left.

Pennsylvania is very much a swing state. Its largest city, Philadelphia, is overwhelmingly Democratic and hasn’t had a Republican mayor since the early 1950s, while Central Pennsylvania is much more GOP-friendly and is the part of the state that Democratic strategist James Carville famously described as a northern equivalent of Alabama.

Printed with permission from Alternet.