WARMINSTER TOWNSHIP, PENNSYLVANIA — For nearly two hours Saturday, members of the media were denied entry to a routine campaign event featuring the GOP front-runners for governor and U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, by a security team who wouldn’t say who had sent them.

“I know my rights,” said a man in a tricorne hat and white knee socks, when pressed for answers about why he was preventing the media from entering.

“We’re just following orders,” another security man said.

The decision to ban reporters from a joint rally for Doug Mastriano, the gubernatorial candidate, and Kathy Barnette, the Senate candidate, turned a normal campaign stop at an office-park event space into a protracted confrontation between reporters and the campaigns of two far-right candidates.

The back-and-forth was emblematic of the relationship between the GOP and mainstream media over the last decade — primarily because it was so ridiculous.

The man in the colonial outfit was enforcing the ban in […]