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GREAT FALLS, Mont. Republican Greg Gianfortes closing motivational speech to voters ahead of Thursdays special House election in Montana is the same thing GOP strategists are whispering in private: This race is closer than it should be.

Its a recurring nightmare of a pattern for Republicans around the country, as traditional GOP strongholds prove more difficult and expensive for the party to hold than it ever anticipated when President Donald Trump plucked House members like Ryan Zinke, the former Montana Republican now running the Interior Department, for his Cabinet. Gianforte is still favored to keep the seat red, but a state Trump carried by 20 percentage points last year became a battleground in the past few months.

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Democrat Rob Quist, a folk singer and first-time candidate, has raised more than $6 million for his campaign, including $1 million in the past week alone as energized Democratic donors pour online cash into political causes this year. Quist hopes that enthusiasm also contributes to an outsize turnout as it did in special elections in Kansas and Georgia earlier this year for the oddly scheduled Thursday election, happening just before a holiday weekend.

"I remember talking to people when it first started who said this was a slam dunk, Gianfortes it. And its not there anymore, said Jim Larson, the Montana Democratic Party chairman. It is a lot closer than people ever thought it would be.

Gianforte, a technology executive, has led consistently in polls for the special election, but Quist has narrowed that lead to single digits in recent weeks, according to private surveys. Gianforte has an edge, but its not going to be a slam dunk, said one national GOP strategist.

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Republicans have called on Vice President Mike Pence and Donald Trump Jr. to calm their nerves about turnout and prevent Democrats from having the only energized voting bloc in the special election. Both have rallied voters with Gianforte, and Pence recorded a get-out-the-vote robocall. Gianforte, who said little about Donald Trump when Gianforte ran for governor and lost in 2016, has cast himself as a willing and eager partner of the president this time around.

On Tuesday, surrounded by Trump stickers and some Trump hat-wearing supporters Gianforte said he was eager "to work with Donald Trump to drain the swamp and make America great again," invoking two of the president's campaign slogans. Pence's robocall may give another boost to Republican turnout efforts.

But the environment has changed since Trumps presidential win last fall. One senior Republican strategist warned that, based on the partys performance in special elections so far, if Republicans cannot come up with better candidates and better campaigns, this cycle is going to be even worse than anybody ever thought it could be.

The fact that we're talking about Montana a super red seat is amazing, said John Lapp, who led the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee during the 2006 cycle. It's also amazing how much money Republicans have to pour into these seats to defend them. It's still a steep climb in Montana, but we know that the reaction there means that there's a tremendous amount of Democratic energy across the country, a tremendous amount of fundraising that will then feed into races that are much fairer fights."

Democrats hope the passage of House Republicans health care bill just three weeks before the election will put the wind at Quists back. It has been the subject of Quists closing TV ads, and he has called the plan devastating to Montana.

GOP outside groups have ensured that Republicans have a spending advantage, though, airing more than $7 million worth of TV ads, versus about $3 million from Democrats. House Majority PAC, Democrats main House outside group, on Tuesday added a last-minute $125,000 TV ad buy to the race, on top of $25,000 announced last week.

But those ads may have reached a point of diminishing returns in a state that prefers retail politics, said Matt Rosendale, the Republican state auditor.

"The airwaves are saturated, and when people see political commercials come on, they completely block it out. I think theres a lot of money wasted on it," Rosendale said. "Its a necessity in Montana to meet people. You have to be able to go out and meet with them, look them in the eye and answer difficult questions face-to-face."

Operatives in both parties privately grumble about the quality of their candidates, with each arguing their paths to victory might be clearer with a standard-bearer carrying a little less baggage.

Republicans acknowledge that Gianforte has flaws Democrats exploited mercilessly in last years gubernatorial race, likely cementing negative feelings about him from some voters. Gianforte is dogged by reports that he sued Montana to block access to a stream in front of his ranch, kicking up a public lands dispute that hits home with Montana voters and has probably followed him into this House race, said Jeff Essman, the states GOP party chairman.

Democrats, too, acknowledge that Quist isnt without his problems. Republican TV ads repeatedly attack Quists various personal financial problems, including "a defaulted loan, tax liens, collections, foreclosure notices. Republican groups dug into Quists medical records and questioned his musical performance at a nudist colony.

"I havent seen this kind of opposition research on both sides on a House race in a long time, said one Democratic strategist whos worked in the state. This is what you get when candidates are chosen in a nominating process and there's no vetting. Some people would say Quist is authentic, an outsider, a la Donald Trump, but Quist has a problematic record because he hasnt spent his career in politics being careful."

Quist called in his own big-name reinforcements to activate the Democratic base and cater to the populist streak in the state, as Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders headlined a handful of rallies alongside Quist last weekend.

Its a gamble, Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) said, that could alienate some in the state, where Trump remains popular.

"Rob Quist is too liberal for Montana he is very liberal. Democrats who have won statewide in Montana tend to be moderate, and Quist is no moderate, said Daines, who campaigned alongside Gianforte in the final stretch of the race. Who did he parade across Montana this weekend? Bernie Sanders.

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Republicans: Montana special election 'closer than it should be' - Politico

New York Times

Republicans, Pushing Aside Trump's Budget, Find Few Alternatives New York Times WASHINGTON Congressional Republicans greeted President Trump's first full budget on Tuesday with open hesitation or outright hostility. But it was not clear that they could come up with an alternative that could win over conservatives and moderates ... Republicans give Trump's budget the cold shoulderThe Hill Trump budget faces criticism, indifference from some Senate RepublicansABC News Icy Reception to Trump Budget From Fellow RepublicansU.S. News & World Report Wichita Eagle -ThinkProgress -Business Insider -WhiteHouse.gov all 1,555 news articles »

The rest is here:
Republicans, Pushing Aside Trump's Budget, Find Few Alternatives - New York Times

(CNN)As Republicans try to find agreement within their ranks to repeal and replace Obamacare once and for all, there is one Obamacare-era issue that needs Congress' attention sooner rather than later.

On Monday, the Trump administration requested another three-month delay in a case over Obamacare subsidies known as cost sharing reduction payments -- government payments aimed to reduce deductibles and co-pays of low-income participants.

The payments, a pillar of the Affordable Care Act, have been controversial since they started, so much so that the House of Representatives sued the White House, arguing that the Obama administration couldn't lawfully make the payments to insurers because they weren't appropriated by Congress.

Now, however, congressional Republicans find themselves in a precarious political position. While the Trump administration has been making the payments, and will continue to do so, mixed messages from the White House -- including a Politico report last week that Trump personally told aides he wanted to stop the payments -- have insurers spooked that the subsidies' days may be numbered.

If the subsidies end, some insurers will likely try to pull out of Obamacare immediately. But just the uncertainty over the payments' future is a main reason why some carriers have already decided to exit the Obamacare market for 2018 and others have filed for big premium increases. Without the payments, Republicans could be blamed for a mass exodus of insurers from the Obamacare marketplace next year, potentially leaving many of their constituents without any options.

So Republicans, having put in the effort to fight Obamacare, now ironically say its time for Congress to step in and spend the money. Some Republicans say they are talking behind closed doors and publicly about how they can pass something in the short-term to stabilize the market.

"I've stated in the meetings and publicly, I'd be in support of doing something very quickly, short term to stabilize the insurance markets for 2018," said Sen. Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin. "This process dragged on longer than I would have liked it and in fairness to the insurance companies and even more importantly the American people, they need some certainty in terms of what's going to happen in 2018."

Sen. Susan Collins, a moderate Republican from Maine, said that she thinks there needs to be some kind of certainty for people who rely on the cost-sharing reduction payments.

"It's my understanding that the administration's asked for another stay of the court's decision," She said. "I'm not sure what that portends. I don't know whether that means that the administration is considering allowing those cost sharing subsidies to go forward in an attempt to stabilize the market and help low income people or what. I just don't know."

Collins added "It's my understanding that the House has not be interested in appropriating the funds. The problem is that if you don't have cost-sharing for people who are below 250 percent of the poverty level, then the insurance becomes far less useful to them because they can't afford the deductible or the co-pays."

Since the subsidies began, House Republicans have railed against the payments, and some Republicans fear allocating the money now could make the GOP look like they are trying to prop up Obamacare, a law they are actively trying to dismantle.

Making CSR payments in a separate bill could get in the way of repealing Obamacare all together.

"It's controversial," said Florida Republican Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart.

Many Republicans asked about the payments rebuffed questions entirely.

"I'm still looking at it," Sen. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican said. "There are negotiations going on over the whole health care fix and I'll leave that to those that are involved."

"I have no thoughts," Rep. John Shimkus, a member of the House's Energy and Commerce Committee, told CNN when asked about whether Congress needs to appropriate the money now for the Obamacare subsidies.

But after not making the payments during the Obama administration, making them now could make Republicans look disingenuous.

Rep. Mark Meadows, a North Carolina conservative and leader of the House Freedom Caucus said he would support Congress making the payments in the short term "as long as we're looking at Obamacare from a historical perspective."

"Then a smooth transition with CSR payments seems to be the most practical way to make sure we don't create a crisis for people on Main Street," Meadows said.

But he acknowledged the political risks of the situation.

"Part of it is that if you just put forth those payments and continue those payments without actually repealing Obamacare, you're reinforcing the very thing that you're campaigning against and so I think you want to make sure it doesn't send the narrative that you're supportive of Obamacare as much as you're trying to create a smooth transition," Meadows said.

CNN's Tami Luhby contributed to this report.

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Why some Republicans want to consider -- gasp -- funding Obamacare - CNN

Another day, another piece of news about the Republican Party's continued problems with young voters. Generally, bad news for Republicans with this group isn't shocking. But a new study shows that the slow bleeding that has occurred for more than a decade has seemingly accelerated, with half of the young Republicans who remain having wandered away from the party in the last 14 months.

A few weeks ago, I debunked the notion that younger voters would one day naturally drift back toward the GOP through the natural aging process that as time passed, young people would become more and more Republican.

Now, an incredible new study by the Pew Research Center shows that Republicans are not only failing to make gains with young people as time passes but are also shedding them at a rapid clip.

To gain this data, Pew conducted a panel study where the same set of voters were interviewed multiple times over the course of 14 months. In doing so, the Pew team was able to ask people what their party affiliation was and to see how often people changed their answer when reinterviewed months later. In general, Pew finds that most party identification is "sticky" and voters rarely budge from their party affiliation.

Except young Republicans.

It's been reported often and for many years that Republicans are losing younger people, but what is most shocking about the Pew study is the narrow window in which this wave of defections occurred. In the relatively short time frame of December 2015 to March 2017, nearly half of all young Republicans left their party at some point, with roughly a quarter bidding the GOP adieu for good.

No other group, by age or party, wavered so much or defected in such substantial numbers.

Let's think about where things stood in December 2015. By that time, Republicans had already had such epic and long-standing struggles with young people that I'd written a whole book about it. Additionally, Republicans had already had a bruising start to their primary season. Donald Trump was the top story in America, the center of every debate stage. At least four presidential primary debates had occurred on the GOP side.

The half of young Republicans who left the party were not ones who left in 2008 because of former President Barack Obama, or ones who left over Republican obstruction in Congress, or even ones who left over the emergence of President Trump as a front-runner in the GOP. By December 2015, those folks were long gone.

No, the half of young Republicans who wobbled or left the party altogether were die-hard enough to be on board with the GOP all the way through the moment that Trump sat well atop the primary polls.

What makes these figures even more striking is the stability of nearly every other age group within both parties. On the Democratic side, roughly three-quarters of their voters stuck with the Democratic Party through and through including those younger voters who supposedly felt so disillusioned with the Democratic Party over the treatment of Bernie Sanders.

The only other age group that shows anything close to the young Republican level of switching are Democrats on the younger end of the Baby Boomers, among whom a quarter shifted their views and 14 percent of whom left the party for good. These voters no doubt played a large role in the success of Trump in states and counties with many "Reagan Democrats" who were drawn to the GOP with Trump's message. In the short run, the tradeoff seems to have been worth it, at least for Trump, and the higher turnout levels among the Boomer generation made his victory possible.

But the new Pew data makes clear that Republicans' problems with young voters are not just about young independents breaking for Democrats at the ballot box or the increased energy and excitement among young Democrats who are enthusiastically signing up for #TheResistance. Even the Republican Party's own remaining young people show signs of unease, with their increased propensity to wobble or jump ship altogether.

Kristen Soltis Anderson is a columnist for The Washington Examiner and author of "The Selfie Vote."

The rest is here:
Time to panic? Young Republicans ditching GOP like never before - Washington Examiner

(Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

President Trumps proposal to cut federal spending by more than $3.6 trillion over the next decade including deep reductions for programs that help the poor faced harsh criticism in Congress on Tuesday, where even many Republicans said the White House had gone too far.

While some fiscally conservative lawmakers, particularly in the House, found a lot to praise in Trumps plan to balance the budget within 10 years, most Republicans flatly rejected the White House proposal. The divide sets up a clash between House conservatives and a growing number of Senate Republicans who would rather work with Democrats on a spending deal than entertain Trumps deep cuts.

This is kind of the game, said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Tex.). We know that the presidents budget wont pass as proposed.

Instead, Cornyn said he believes conversations are already underway about how Republicans can negotiate with Democrats to avoid across-the-board spending cuts that are scheduled to go into effect in October. Those talks could include broad spending increases for domestic and military programs that break from Trumps plan for deep cuts in education, housing, research and health care.

I think thats the only way, Cornyn said of working with Democrats on spending. It would be good to get that done so we can get the Appropriations Committee to get to work.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said such spending talks would be inevitable.

Well have to negotiate the top line with Senate Democrats, we know that, McConnell told reporters Tuesday. They will not be irrelevant in the process, and at some point, here in the near future, those discussions will begin.

As Senate Republicans were discussing a bipartisan spending agreement, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney stood across town pitching Trumps proposal to dramatically alter the role of government in society, shrinking the federal workforce, scaling back anti-poverty programs and cutting spending on things like disease research and job training. The $4.094 trillion proposal for fiscal 2018 includes $1 trillion in cuts over 10 years to anti-poverty programs including Medicaid, food assistance and health insurance for low-income children.

It would slightly increase spending on the military, immigration control and border security and provide an additional $200 billion for infrastructure projects over 10 years. It would also allocate $1.6 billion for the creation of a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico.

Budget experts questioned many of the economic assumptions that the White House put into its plan, saying it was preposterous to claim that massive tax cuts and spending reductions will lead to a surge in economic growth. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, for example, said that using normal economic projections, the White Houses proposal would not eliminate the deficit and would allow U.S. debt to continue growing into the next decade.

Rather than making unrealistic assumptions, the president must make the hard tax and spending choices needed to truly bring the national debt under control, it said.

The White House proposals represent a defiant blueprint for a government realignment that closely follows proposals made in recent years by some of the most conservative members of the House, a group that once included Mulvaney himself. Trump has alleged that safety net programs create a welfare state that pull people out of the workforce, and his budget would cull these programs back.

Mulvaney pointed specifically to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the modern version of food stamps. The White House plans to propose forcing states to pay a portion of the benefits in the program, which reached more than 44 million beneficiaries in 2016.

We are not kicking anybody off of any program who really needs it, Mulvaney said. We have plenty of money in this country to take care of the people who need help. ... We dont have enough money to take care of ... everybody who doesnt need help.

Mulvaney, who served in the House from 2011 until earlier this year, is a co-founder of the House Freedom Caucus. Many of the provisions in Trumps first budget reflect long-standing priorities of the Republican Partys far right in cutting back federal spending to get the nations long-term fiscal picture under control largely by cutting entitlement programs that mainly benefit the poor.

Republicans are keenly interested in passing a budget this year because they hope to use that legislation to lay the groundwork for a GOP-friendly rewrite of the tax code. Many GOP members hope to attach the tax reform to the budget process in order to advantage of special Senate rules that would allow both the budget and tax rewrite to pass with 51 votes, rather than the 60 that are needed to pass most other legislation. That special treatment could be critical to the success of the GOP tax effort in the Senate, where Republicans control a slim 52-to-48 majority.

White House officials knew their budget proposal would be jarring and launch a political fight, but they think it is a necessary debate given a wing of the Republican Party that wants the government to shrink.

But the cuts were met with intense criticism even among the majority of GOP members who hailed Trumps desire to pare back spending, including many who worried about the size of some of the proposed cuts.

Rep. Mark Meadows (N.C.), chairman of the hard-line Freedom Caucus, said he was encouraged by early reports of new curbs on food stamps, family welfare and other spending. But he said he draws the line on cuts to Meals on Wheels, a charity that Mulvaney earlier this year suggested was ineffective.

Ive delivered meals to a lot of people that perhaps its their only hot meal of the day, Meadows said. And so Im sure theres going to be some give and take, but to throw out the entire budget just because you disagree with some of the principles would be inappropriate.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said he backs Trumps proposal for a temporary burst of new defense spending, which White House officials say would allow them to add 56,400 service members in 2018. But he worries that Trump would finance those increases by cutting critical programs like the National Institutes of Health.

My number one goal is to have a more balanced budget, said Graham, who also endorsed the idea of entering into spending talks with Democrats. NIH is a national treasure, and it would be hurt, too.

Graham is part of a long-standing alliance between defense hawks who want increased military spending and Democrats who are willing to back military programs in exchange for more spending on domestic priorities. The two sides have forged several past agreements, including a two-year plan for increased spending that is set to expire at the end of September.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that formal spending discussions have not yet begun but that he is prepared to work with GOP leaders when the time is right.

The idea that well work on a bipartisan budget independent from the presidents is ripe in the air, Schumer said.

But such a deal is sure to anger conservatives in the House, where many of the most hard-line members staunchly defended aspects of Trumps proposal.

Although Meadows said Meals on Wheels cuts might be a bridge too far, he praised much of the rest of the Trump budget. It probably is the most conservative budget that weve had under Republican or Democrat administrations in decades, he said.

Rep. Scott DesJarlais (Tenn.), a Freedom Caucus member, rejected the argument that Trumps budget represented a betrayal of some of his populist campaign promises, notably to protect Medicaid spending.

If we dont do something to protect the program for the people who really need it, then theyre not going to have access to that, so I think we cant continue to ignore these big-ticket items, he said. If were ever going to get our budget to balance and pay down our debt, were going to have to make these tough choices and have these tough votes.

Read more at PowerPost

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Even some Republicans balk at Trump's plan for steep budget cuts - Washington Post