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To the editor: If California Republicans are energized by President Trumps election, so are the thousands of Californians including many Republicans who are showing their opposition by lobbying, demonstrating, writing and calling legislators. (California's Republican Party is buoyed by Trump, but struggles for relevance at home, Feb. 27)

If Republicans have any chance of winning in this state, it seems clear that they must distance themselves from the demagoguery of the Trump administration (something they seem unwilling to do) and come up with sensible, sustainable policies to address issues Californians care about: the environment, human rights, equality of opportunity, excellence in education and affordable universal healthcare.

Being in a blue state offers the California GOP a unique opportunity to help tilt the Republican Party back toward the thoughtful conservatism and democratic principles for which it has been known in the past.

Betty Guthrie, Irvine

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To the editor: Progressives, independents and Democrats are energized in support of the environment, education, women and more.

The Republicans cannot be energized if they continue to put party first enriched, maybe, but not energized.

Frank J. Lepiane, San Diego

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook

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How California Republicans can do their party and the country a big favor - Los Angeles Times

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) -- Republican legislative leaders in Indiana are warning that repealing the Affordable Care Act could unravel a program for poor residents that Vice President Mike Pence implemented as governor, a conservative blueprint for expanding Medicaid under the federal law.

Indiana House Speaker Brian Bosma and GOP Senate leader David Long both said this week that tens of thousands of poor people could lose their insurance if Republicans in Washington enact some of the ideas they're discussing for repealing President Barack Obama's signature health care law.

"It's reality hitting home," Long, a Republican from Fort Wayne, said Wednesday. "... The issue of the working poor is real. It's not going to be easy."

Pence has been a persistent critic of the law since representing the state in Congress. But one of his legacy achievements after becoming governor in 2013 was expanding Medicaid in Indiana, which overwhelmingly relies on money made available under the Affordable Care Act.

The program, called HIP 2.0, has covered roughly 400,000 people and was designed by Seema Verma, a key health policy adviser to Pence who is President Donald Trump's pick to oversee the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. It also counts on the federal government for at least 90 percent of its funding.

Indiana recently launched an ad campaign to promote the benefits of the plan. A billboard near the state capitol that previously carried an ad criticizing Pence was papered over with an ad for HIP 2.0.

In order to enact his own conservative vision for health care in Indiana, Pence sought - and was granted - a federal waiver.

He wanted to make sure poor people demonstrated personal responsibility and had "skin in the game" by paying small monthly fees for coverage. It's an approach that had been touted as a model other Republican-controlled states could adopt. A similar approach was undertaken in Kentucky under GOP Gov. Matt Bevin.

A spokesman for the vice president did not respond to a request for comment.

On Wednesday, Pence told ABC's "Good Morning America" that "we don't want anyone to fall through the cracks," especially not "the most disadvantaged citizens among us."

But changes under consideration by congressional Republicans would significantly reduce federal funding for Medicaid and subsidize private insurance, creating funding gaps for states and threatening a loss of coverage for many participants, according to a report by the consulting firms Avalere Health and McKinsey & Company.

Indiana and the 30 other states that expanded Medicaid would face the deepest cuts.

"It's not shocking to me that the federal government might not fully fund something they said they were going to," said Bosma, an Indianapolis Republican. "We'll have to reevaluate the program, the number of clients it serves."

Some Republican governors have voiced concern that a repeal of the ACA would have a disastrous effect on poor people, some of which are Trump supporters.

Pence's hand-picked replacement, new Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb, has yet to weigh in on his preference. Stephanie Wilson, a spokeswoman for the governor, said Holcomb believes it's important for people to keep their insurance, but she declined to offer specifics.

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Republicans in Pence's Indiana warn of health repeal fallout - WCPO

As someone who was intimately involved in supporting Tea Party activists in 2009, I feel like Ive entered Bizarro World.

A re-energized wave of liberal activists is crashing down across the nation. Democrats are celebrating disruptive protesters at congressional town hall forums, lauding them as living exemplars of the best traditions of American participatory democracyflesh-and-blood versions of Norman Rockwells Freedom of Speech painting. Everywhere, people are marching, protesting, tweeting, [and] speaking out, cheered Hillary Clinton in a new video released by the Democratic National Committee. Let resistance plus persistence equal progress.

Story Continued Below

For many Republicans, their new roles in this episode are equally upside down. Members of Congress are skipping out on public events, afraid of catching the wrath of angry voters. Several GOP elected officials have alleged that the protesters are not actual constituents, but outside agitators paid by wealthy liberalspeople to be ignored, not engaged with. President Donald Trump himself questioned the legitimacy of so-called angry crowds, tweeting that they are planned out by liberal activists. Marco Rubio, who first won election to the U.S. Senate in the Tea Party wave of 2010, has defended his own decision to avoid such town halls, arguing that attendees will heckle and scream at me in front of cameras.

What a difference eight years makes.

Back in 2009, it was impossible to find a single Democratic apparatchik willing to acknowledge the legitimacy of citizen participation in congressional town halls. Representative Lloyd Doggett of Texas dismissed frustrated voters as a mob part of a coordinated, nationwide effort. Then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi described Tea Party protesters not as grass-roots Americans, but as artificial Astroturf. After a glut of protests at town hall events in August 2009, she even went so far as to co-author a USA Today op-ed in which she smeared the demonstrators tactics as un-American. Organizing for America, Barack Obamas campaign machine-turned-advocacy group, outrageously labeled Tea Party members right-wing domestic terrorists who are subverting the American democratic process.

Improbable as it seems, the hysterical reactions from the left about robust citizen participation in the democratic process in 2009 almost make Trumps tweets circa 2017 seem downright reasonable. As Jerry Seinfeld once described it: Up is down, and down is up.

In 2009, I served as the head of FreedomWorks, where I helped to support and organize Tea Party activists. I know something about town-hall protesters. And I have some tough news for both parties. The Tea Party was real, not astroturf, we were not a mob, and we were certainly not domestic terrorists.

Likewise, the Womens March in January and the current flood of town-hall protests are equally real, and should not be dismissed or diminished. Citizens exercising their poweras long as they dont hurt people or infringe on others rightsis always a positive thing. Indeed, its one of the primary tools Americans have to hold the government accountable.

If it looks like chaos, I call it beautiful chaos. We are in the middle of a political paradigm shift that is giving access to knowledge and power back to end users. Citizens have more say today, and social media and other technologies make it easier to educate others about the issues and organize.

Welcome to the new normal in American politics.

***

Todays progressive town-hall protesters follow in a tradition of disrupting the old top-down status quoone that stretches back across the political spectrum, ranging from Howard Dean to Ron Paul to the Tea Party, and yes, even Donald Trump.

That said, there are some important differences between Tea Party and todays activists, and I think these distinctions will ultimately undermine the ability of todays protests to evolve into a social movement with real electoral consequences.

First, this movement feels strictly partisan, and many of the groups supporting the protesters have strictly partisan goals. Indivisible, the group bootstrapping a training manual on town hall disruption based on Tea Party tactics, is helmed by Democratic operatives. Several of the authors are, in fact, former staffers of Doggett. Likewise, the Center for American Progress, the Service Employees International Union, and Organizing for Action (President Obamas community-organizing operation formerly known as Organizing for America) are all involved, often with paid community organizers on the ground.

At FreedomWorks, we provided much of the same type of support: training, organizing, and providing logistical backing. Although we were savaged at the time as Astroturf, these wereand arelegitimate functions. But there is an important difference between advancing partisan political goals and advocating an ideological agenda.

Though my friends on the left may not realize this, they ignore it at their own peril: The Tea Party wasnt a partisan movement, especially in 2009 and 2010. Critics of the Tea Party forget (or ignore) the origins of our frustrations. At the massive Taxpayer March on Washington on September 12, 2009, every single activist I spoke with cited President George W. Bushs Wall Street bailout as their primary motive for getting involved. They would recite back to me his infamous rationale: I abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system. Thats what got folks off the couch and organizing. We were ideologues in 2009, and our shared philosophy bound us as a movement.

We targeted Republicans and Democrats with equal zeal, because, as our battle cry made clear at the time, we had to beat the Republicans before we could beat the Democrats. By contrast, todays protesters seem to be strictly targeting Republican town halls instead of making Democratic members of Congress feel the heat, too.

Second, its hard to find a focused, unifying set of issues or principles that connect todays Democratic protesters. Most seem motivated solely by Donald Trumps victory in November. But being anti-Trump is not enough: Even if they wanted to, Republicans in Congress cant really do anything about this. Are the disruptions today about the electoral process? Russia? Immigration? Health care? LGBT rights? One of the myriad other issues that seem to be drawing activists out? I cant tell. They will need to find unified principles and a cause.

The Tea Party, almost to a person, was unified on the principles of individual freedom, fiscal responsibility, and constitutionally limited government. Our policy agenda flowed from that: opposition to bailouts, deficit spending and government control of health care.

Third, if protesters want their cause to reach independents and disaffected Republicans (there are likely plenty), they had better keep it civil and respectful. Tea Partyers certainly got rowdy at the 2009 town halls, but they also came prepared, many having read and shared the contents of the health-care legislation that Pelosi had posted online. Surprising as it may be to some on the left, at FreedomWorks gatherings of Tea Party organizers, we were assigning readings about Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King, and other successful nonviolent social movements. Violence can kill your cause, and we did our best to police our own community. Fair or not, todays protesters will own the worst behavior associated with their efforts.

Just shouting down members of Congressor in the case of one recent town hall in Louisiana, booing both the Pledge of Allegiance and the chaplain offering an opening prayer wont play well with anyone you need to win over. Not all protesters are the same and most are real people with real frustrations, but all protesters will be tarred by the actions of the worst among the group. Try to show a little respect, and it will be more effective.

Republicans are making a big mistake if they dismiss or ignore this movement. Contra the political mythology, the Tea Party was far more independent than Republican, and that translated into a broader coalition when coupled with the existing GOP vote. Today, the same battle rages for the hearts and minds of independents and Republicans uneasy with Trumps rhetoric.

So, a little advice to Republican elected officials: Dont avoid town halls. In fact, schedule more of them, like Representative Justin Amash has done. Listen. Hear your constituents. Defend your positions. Dont abandon the promises you made to voters in the election. If needed, provide for security at the event so that all citizens feel safe. Set up a system where everyone gets a chance to speak and to hear your response. Answer democratic engagement with more democratic engagement.

I realize how difficult this all may be in practice, but I agree with former Democratic Representative Gabby Giffords: Have some courage. Face your constituents. Hold town halls. Democrats failed that test in 2009 and 2010. Republicans run the risk of making the same mistake in 2017.

Matt Kibbe is president and chief community organizer of Free the People, and a senior editor at CRTV. He is the author of Dont Hurt People and Dont Take Their Stuff: A Libertarian Manifesto.

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Wake Up, Republicans: This Could Be the Democrats' Tea Party - POLITICO Magazine

posted at 6:21 pm on March 1, 2017 by Ed Morrissey

This new progressive project, called We Will Replace You, could just as easily be called Operation Cutting Off Our Noses to Spite Our Faces. According to The Hill, the frustration from the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party will take aim at Senate Democrats they deem to be too cooperative with the Donald Trump administration. They plan to challenge those Democratic incumbents in primaries next year as punishment for straying from the resistance:

We fundamentally reject the assumption that Democrats can only win in red states by pandering to racists and big bankers, said Claire Sandberg, a co-founder of the progressive political action committee We Will Replace You.

The way we beat Trumpism and take back Congress and statehouses is offering a coherent vision of our own to put people back to work. We dont need to completely compromise our own values and principles.

We Will Replace You is the most visible effort gearing up to back primary challenges from the left. Spearheaded by a group of progressives, including two former senior staffers on Sen. Bernie Sanderss (I-Vt.) presidential campaign, the groups website includes a warning for Democrats looking to avoid a competitive primary race.

Do everything you can to Resist Trump, or we will replace you with someone who will, the groups statement reads.

Well, thats quite a choice either lose a general election or lose a primary. The progressives at WWRY argue that Democrats can retain these seats through a purity campaign that will turn out like-minded voters enough to beat Republicans in these states. Progressives tried that strategy in at least one winnable state in 2016, the Senate election in Wisconsin, with disastrous results. Rather than look for a fresh face that might appeal to a changing electorate, they hauled Russ Feingold out of mothballs to run as a true progressive against incumbent Republican Ron Johnson. As they now argue, progressives figured that a presidential-turnout model and a pure candidate would provide more than enough turnout lift to win the seat back. Not only did they miscalculate on the turnout model, they also miscalculated on the attractiveness of progressivism in Wisconsin a state that had been turning red ever since Johnson and Scott Walker first won in 2010.

This project takes aim at Joe Manchin (WV) and Heidi Heitkamp (ND) most, but probably will attempt to put pressure on Claire McCaskill (MO), Jon Tester (MO), and Joe Donnelly (IN) too, among others. Manchin could just decide to switch parties if progressives attempt to primary him, as he remains very popular at home, leaving Democrats with a huge hole and a thin bench in West Virginia to fill it. Donnelly and McCaskill are on thin ice in very red states, and a progressive primary challenge might force them to abandon moderate Republican support in the general election. McCaskill only won her last election by hand-picking Todd Akin as her opponent, and Donnelly only won his first Senate election because of a purity campaign against then-incumbent Richard Lugar. With Ryan Zinke out of the way, Tester has the best chance of escaping a tough challenge unless progressives force Tester to go left, in which case Republicans might be able to grab that seat with a lesser-known candidate. Pushing any of these to the Left would be suicidal, and in Donnellys case deliciously ironic.

How serious is this effort, though? The inclusion of former Sanders staffers makes it look at least potentially significant. That also provides another point of irony, however. WWRY explains their threshold for action on the home page of their website:

Three Democratic Senators voted yes to confirm Rex Tillerson, a Big Oil baron with close ties to Putin who conspired to destroy our climate by suppressing evidence about global warming. Fourteen Senate Democrats joined with Republicans to confirm Rep. Mike Pompeo to be our new CIA director, despite Pompeos past Islamophobic remarks and ties to far-right conspiracy theorists, his position in favor of unconstitutional surveillance on Americans, and his enthusiastic support for torture and secret detention. And Senate Democrats like Dick Durbin, Claire McCaskill, and Jon Tester have all voiced the opinion that Trumps Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch deserves a fair shakeafter Republicans refused to even meet with President Obamas nominee Merrick Garland for almost a year and effectively stole a Supreme Court nomination.

This cannot stand. We will only defeat Republicans on the local, state, and federal level if we go on the offensive.

The irony? Bernie Sanders himself doesnt meet this standard, having voted to confirm three of Trumps Cabinet picks so far. If Sanders doesnt pass a progressive purity standard, its probably not worth imposing.

Read the rest here:
Progressives begin push to primary red-state Senate Dems for being too Trump-friendly - Hot Air

Some of President Trump's opponents have criticized him for honoring the widow of fallen Navy SEAL during his first congressional address, arguing she was used as a "prop."

Carryn Owens, the widow of William "Ryan" Owens, who died in a U.S. Special Ops raid in Yemen last month, was brought to tears by a two-minute standing ovation during Trump's speech.

Michael Moore and Bill Maher accused Trump of using the grieving widow as a "prop," while "The View's" Sunny Hostin said it was "so exploitative."

Tomi Lahren and Bob Beckel joined Sean Hannity tonight to react to the most emotional moment of Trump's address and the liberal reaction.

Lahren, host of "Tomi" on The Blaze TV, said she was stunned by "condescending" liberals talking down to a grieving widow.

"Clearly, they could learn a thing or two fromCarryn Owens," Lahren said. "All the women out there that are holding up their 'F Trump' signs and marching in their little pink hats, I would encourage them to look at someone like Carryn Owens and see what a real woman is and what real sacrifice looks like."

Beckel, co-host of "The Five," agreed that these remarks from some on the left are indefensible.

"The guy was an American hero," Beckel said. "At a minimum, the idea of being able to stand up for five minutes and applaud his widow seems to be perfectly legitimate."

Lahren argued that liberals still can't accept Trump as president, so they are forced to criticize everything about him, even a touching moment during an amazing speech.

"The left in its entirety is probably going to hate this, but that is our president," she said. "And I couldn't be happier."

Watch more above.

How Trump's Address Went Over at a CA Bar Near the Mexico Border

Oprah Winfrey Rethinking Idea of Presidential Run After Trump's Win

Judge Jeanine on Trump's Address: 'It Was Presidential, He Spoke to Everyone'

VP Pence on Trump Speech: 'It Was a Great Night for America'

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Tomi Rips 'Condescending' Liberals for Calling Navy SEAL's Widow a 'Prop' - Fox News Insider