I agree with your assessment.
Jerrod Sessler has virtually no chance of unseating Dan Newhouse in 2024. Newhouse crushed him in 2022. Tiffany Smiley is a much better candidate.
I’m always amazed when Republicans vote overwhelmingly for RINOs in safe Republican districts. The worst RINO in the House of Representatives is Brian Fitzpatrick (Pennsylvania’s 1st congressional district). He’s in a safe Republican district and will be reelected by a wide margin in 2024.
The Democrats would never allow this to happen in a Democrat safe district.
Republican voters are their own worst enemy.
Trump loves endorsing RINOs. He’ll stay with Sessler over Smiley even if Smiley has a better chance of defeating Newhouse.
Correction.
I didn’t mean to imply that Sessler is a RINO. I meant to say that Trump has been known to favor RINOs over other Republican candidates even in close primary races.
True (Fitz is a terrible RINO).
"He’s in a safe Republican district"
Patently false. His district is nothing like Newhouse's. It's a super-marginal district and is rated as dead-even; probably should be D+1.
Profile of Congressional District 1, PA
Scum though he is (far more liberal than even his brother was), Fitzpatrick fits the district well. The Democrats are spending more this year than they did in 2022 against him, but it's just a token effort because the Rats have no real reason to oppose him on ideological grounds.
If the shit hits the fan in November and the GOP is swamped by any kind of "blue wave", Fitzpatrick could and probably will be a casualty. The district being what it is -- a leftward-trending area in the Philly suburbs (the new Democrat vote fraud epicenter of PA -- neither he nor any Republican at the state or federal level is anything remotely resembling "safe" under any conditions.