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The GOP may be in dire straits in California, but a flurry of recent moves suggests the party of Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon is not willing to abandon the 2018 gubernatorial race, as it did four years ago.

The big question is if the party will be able to marshal enough support behind a Republican candidate for governor and avoid a repeat of last fall's Senate campaign, which, thanks to the top-two primary, was fought between two Democratic candidates.

Several Republicans are in the mix. They include conservative Orange County Assemblyman Travis Allen and Rancho Santa Fe venture capitalist John Cox. Speculation is mounting that former state Assemblyman David Hadley plans to announce a run. There also are furious efforts to recruit San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer into the race, because he is viewed as the strongest possible contender.

"It is exciting," said Shawn Steel, a Republican National Committee member from Orange County. He said the GOP could exploit what he calls Democratic overreach in Sacramento, including the passage of an unpopular new gas tax. That plus growing alarm over quality of life issues in California could give Republicans an opening among voters who have typically not supported his party's candidates, he said. "I'm not counting on anything as being certain in politics, but I never expected (President) Trump to win, for goodness sakes, and was delighted when he upset all the pundits."

A viable Republican top-of-the-ticket candidate could be crucial to driving GOP voters to the polls in seven California House races that are expected to be battlegrounds in the 2018 midterms.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., is concerned about next year's turnout, and has been working hard trying to convince Faulconer to enter the race and show him he has a path to victory, according to multiple people familiar with McCarthy's efforts who were not authorized to discuss them.

Party Chairman Jim Brulte has made at least one personal appeal to the mayor during a face-to-face visit to San Diego.

On paper, the efforts make sense Faulconer is the type of Republican that political observers believe has the best shot of winning statewide office in California. He's a fiscal conservative and social moderate who is not viewed as an ideologue. He has distanced himself from Trump. He's also the only GOP mayor leading one of the nation's 10 largest cities, and was elected twice despite Democrats' six-point voter registration edge in San Diego, evidence of his crossover appeal.

GOP strategists familiar with his thinking say he is now weighing entering the race, even though he previously said he had no intention of running. Faulconer's spokespeople did not respond to a request for comment.

After the candidate conundrum, there is the question of a GOP path to victory in a state were Democrats dominate.

Democrats unsuccessfully tried to use an anti-Trump message in four recent special congressional elections across the country. But Republicans had stronger advantages in those districts. In California, Trump was trounced by Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton by more than 4.2 million votes, a reflection of the party's domination of state politics.

Republicans last elected a statewide candidate more than a decade ago, have seen voter registration plummet to a 19-point disadvantage to Democrats, and have repeatedly allowed the opposition party to win super majorities in both chambers of the state Legislature.

In 2014, the party's leadership put no resources behind its standard-bearer who ran against Gov. Jerry Brown. And in 2016, the GOP's dwindling number of voters in the state splintered in the primary for the first open U.S. Senate seat in more than two decades. The result was that two Democrats and no Republican advanced to the general election.

Both elections left palpable anger that GOP activists expressed at their annual convention earlier this year. The state party has pledged to compete in the 2018 gubernatorial contest, although it was unclear if the pledge includes a plan or if leaders were offering wishful thinking to soothe party loyalists.

"It's important for morale and turnout to have a Republican candidate on the November ballot," said Jack Pitney, a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College and a former state GOP leader. "It was bad enough to be shut out of the Senate race in 2016, but the governor's race is a flagship race and the party needs to have a (credible) candidate, but whether that happens is an open question."

Allen, an assemblyman from Huntington Beach, is a traditional GOP conservative and a staunch Trump supporter. A favorite of the party's grass roots, Allen opposes the adoption of a government-run health care system and has voted consistently against increasing protections for immigrants who entered the country illegally, stances that do not align with the majority of California voters. But he says even Democrats are "turned off" by the party's recent moves. Earlier this year, Allen filed a ballot measure to rescind the gas tax passed by the Legislature. It's an issue Republicans plan to campaign on in 2018, and already has triggered a recall campaign against a Democratic state senator from Orange County.

Hadley, who represented the South Bay in the state Assembly for two years, shares an ideological profile similar to Faulconer's, though he is not as well known. He has filed paperwork with the state to open a campaign fundraising account, but has not formally launched a bid. He did not respond to requests for comment.

Former Los Angeles Rams football player Rosey Grier has said he plans to run but has taken no formal steps to establish a campaign.

Successful gubernatorial races in California cost tens of millions of dollars, and the three top Democratic candidates already have raised more than $20 million collectively.

Pitney was skeptical the state's deep-pocketed GOP donors would invest in a race they know they are likely to lose, especially given that the battle for control of Congress would siphon money and attention to other competitive contests.

"Money would have to come from heaven," Pitney said. "Donors want to put the money where it can have some effect ... . Why throw it to a race where the outcome is very likely a big Republican defeat?"

Cox has the wealth to fund his own campaign, and already has put in a personal stake of $3 million. A source close to the candidate who was not authorized to speak publicly about the campaign said Cox is willing to invest a couple million more, but will not entirely self-fund his bid.

In 2014, such a dollar figure was enough for businessman Neel Kashkari to win the second spot in the primary and advance to the general, where Brown crushed him by 19 points. But Kashkari had only one serious Republican rival in the race, Tim Donnelly, a controversial then-assemblyman and former leader of the Minutemen border-patrol group.

This time around, it's more complicated. The more people jump in, the more they split up the shrinking number of Republican voters, increasing the likelihood of a Democrat-on-Democrat brawl next November.

Jon Fleischman, a conservative blogger based in Orange County and former state party official, summed up the problems with a crowded GOP field. "(I)t's entirely possible Republicans avoid the embarrassment of losing in November by simply losing in June."

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Republicans making moves in the 2018 California governor's race - MyAJC

Nine brave (and smart) Republican members of the House have decided to buck their leadership (not to mention the White House) over the issue of giving federal workers smaller pensions while requiring to pay more for those reduced annuities.

If all the proposals were enacted into law, the price tag to federal workers and retirees would be $149 billion in lost benefits over the next 10 years. Suffice to say, this potentially is a very big deal for federal workers and retirees.

Instead of looking at Washington as a swamp populated by wall-to-wall bureaucrats, the House members have looked within their own congressional districts, which have sizable numbers of federal and postal workers, all of whom are eligible to vote. They wrote a detailed letter to the House leadership, urging it to stop proposals that would force most current workers to pay as much as 6 percent more for their retirement benefits, reduce cost-of-living adjusts for retirees under the old CSRS plan and eliminate inflation-catchups, forever, for the vast majority of current workers who are under the less generous Federal Employees Retirement System.

There is also a proposal to eliminate a substantial gap payment that now goes to FERS retirees until they reach age 62 and qualify for Social Security. That can be worth thousands of dollars. Eliminating it would be especially tough, as in unfair, to law enforcement officers, federal firefighters, air traffic controllers and others who are generally required to retire no later than age 57.

Two of the pro-fed Republican House members are from Virginia, which is chock-full of federal and military personnel. And retirees. Reps. Barbara Comstock (R-Va.) and Rob Wittman (R-Va.) dont need a headcount on feds. They obviously realize how many are in their districts and how unhappy they are with the Trump administration austerity plan.

Other signers include Reps. Frank LoBiondo (R-N.J.) and Chris Smith (R-N.J.) from, as well as Reps. Rob Bishop (R-Utah), Tom Cole (R-Okla.), Walter Jones (R-N.C.), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Austin Scott (R-Ga.).

All of them have huge numbers of federal employees. But that sometimes goes unnoticed. Nobody is surprised to hear that Maryland, Virginia and D.C. have lots of feds. But Utah? It has a disproportionate number of feds, especially in places like Ogden,where the Air Force, Interior Department and the IRS are THE major employers.

North Carolina, Georgia and New Jersey also have lots of feds. For many years, the largest union in the state of Oklahoma not what comes to mind as a fed-friendly state was the American Federation of Government Employees. It may still be.

The letter to the House leadership stresses what many federal workers and retirees often cite that changing the rules mid-career, or after retirement, is a moral breach of contract. That if all the changes were implemented as they have been scored, it would save the government more than $4 billion (with a B) in the first year, and a total of $149 billion over the next 10 years.

Looking at that in the mirror, it means that federal and postal workers and retirees from letter carriers, to park rangers, to astronauts and NSA code-breakers would lose $149 billion (again with a B) that are now due to them by law.

The breakout of the GOP nine could gather momentum. Forcing other House Republicans to consider the fairness-to-feds issue and also to check on how many of their constitutes are or were civil servants.

At best, it could revive the coalition of pro-fed Democrats and Republicans that came together during the Clinton and Bush administrations to fight the White House regardless of who was in it for bigger pay raises and better things for feds. Or at least to prevent big ticket takeaways.

That pretty much unraveled during the Obama years both sides share the blame for the pay freezes, furloughs and shutdowns but shows signs of coming back in the face of the proposed big-time cuts.

ByJory Heckman

Dr. Seuss wrote the book Green Eggs and Ham after his publisher bet him $50 that couldnt write a book using only 50 words.

Source: Wikipedia

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House Republicans come out of political closet - FederalNewsRadio.com

Ron Brownstein, the editorial director of National Journal Group, has issued a challenge to Republicans who have criticized Trumps tweets against Mika Brzezinski. What, he asks, are they going to do about those tweets? Jennifer Rubin and John Weaver, two center-right opponents of Trump, have joined in deriding these Republican critics.

Criticism seems to me to be exactly the right response to this mornings presidential misbehavior. Im open to the argument that Republican officials should back up that criticism with action if only I saw a reasonable action they should take. What exactly do Brownsteinet al want the Republican critics of Trumps tweets to do about them?Speaker Ryancant take away Trumps Twitter account. Senator Graham cantgive Trump the self-restraint and decency neither nature nor upbringing seems to have supplied him. I asked the question on Twitter, and havent gotten a great answer yet. Is Senator Sasse supposed to impeach Trump over his tweets? Thats what some respondents suggested. I am sorry to say that it seems necessary to point out that this response is insane. If it were sane, it would mean that none of the criticisms of Trump made by Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumershould be taken seriously, either, since they havent declared for impeachment either.

Some liberal respondentssuggested that the problem is that the critics keep voting with Trump and supporting his agenda. The idea, I suppose, is that to register their opposition to obnoxious Trump behavior Republicans should delay the confirmation of conservative nominees they support, vote against legislation they favor, and so on. Even better, I suppose, congressional Republicans with misgivings about Trump could commit ritual suicide, or switch parties, whichever would bemore painful.

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Trump's Tweets and Republicans - National Review

Two days before an assassination attempt on Republicans, the NRA posted a video on Facebook warning of leftist violence. Progressive journalists are now pretending political violence is the NRA's fault.

Barely two weeks after a progressive Democrat activist attempted a mass assassination of Republican officials, progressives are outraged at the NRA for noting that the Second Amendment gives people the right to defend themselves, with arms if necessary, from people who might try to assassinate them or their families.

You might not remember it because the news media pivoted away from the story as quickly as possible, but just two weeks ago an anti-Trump Bernie Bro tried to assassinate a bunch of elected Republican officials while they practiced for the annual bipartisan Congressional baseball game. Just days after the New York Times revealed that Republicans regularly practiced at a public park in Alexandria with minimal protective detail, the shooter showed up at the park and started surveilling it. According to the FBI, he even took pictures of the location. Before opening fire on the lawmakers, the shooter also confirmed that the assembled officials were Republicans.

Unsurprisingly, a lot of Republicans responded to the attempted massacre by noting that unconstitutional laws in D.C. actually prevented the Republican officials from carrying firearms for the purpose of self-defense (although the shooting was in Virginia, most lawmakers reside in D.C., meaning D.C. law effectively bans them from carrying anywhere in the area since they would eventually have to return to their homes with the firearms).

Progressives, however, are outraged at Second Amendment defenders for having the audacity to claim a right to self-defense in the wake of a mass assassination attempt. On Thursday, failed Baltimore mayoral candidate and Black Lives Matter gadfly Deray McKesson raged at Dana Loesch and accused her and the National Rifle Association (NRA) of white supremacy for noting in a prophetic promotional video filmed in April that progressive activists were becoming increasingly violent.

They use their media to assassinate real news. They use their schools to teach children that their president is another Hitler. And then they use their ex-president to endorse the resistance, Loesch states in the video. All to make them march, make them protest, make them scream racism and sexism and xenophobia, to smash windows, burn cars, shut down interstates and airports, bully and terrorize the law abiding until the only option left is for the police to do their jobs and stop the madness.

And when that happens, theyll use it as an excuse for the outrage, Loesch concludes. You can watch the full video here. Rather than undercutting Loeschs claim that progressives reflexively scream racism whenever anyone challenges them, McKesson only underscored her point by accusing her of being a white supremacist for pointing out violence committed by leftists.

On June 12, just two days before the progressive Democrat activist opened fire on GOP members of Congress and other innocent civilians just minding their own business, the NRA reposted the video on Facebook. That aroused the ire of Michael Goldfarb, a liberal journalist who writes for the Guardian, who took to his Facebook page to condemn the NRA.

This new NRA propaganda piece is the most disturbing video Ive seen, Goldfarb wrote in response to the June 12 NRA post on Facebook featuring the Loesch video. Not surprising but disturbing. Reinforces my despair that America is not going to get out of its mess without bloodshed.

Two days after that Facebook post by the NRA, a Democrat political activist tried to murder a park full of Republican politicians.

Judging by his Twitter and Facebook feeds, neither of which mentions the June 14 anti-GOP assassination attempt even a single time, Goldfarb appears to be unaware that bloodshed happened quite recently, that it wasnt perpetrated by the NRA, and that the shooter was a vocal progressive activist who loved Bernie Sanders and hated President Donald Trump. Goldfarb did, however, take time to attack Trump and his supporters, Vice President Mike Pence, GOPygmies, and British conservative Boris Johnson. He does not appear to have ever condemned the June 14 shooter who nearly killed Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.)

Anne Applebaum, another liberal journalist and former member of the Washington Post editorial board, hopped onto Twitter and did her best to amplify Goldfarbs rage at the NRA for noting on Facebook, two days before an anti-Republican assassination attempt, that progressives were becoming increasingly violent and unhinged in their opposition to the Trump administration and the Republican Congress.

Like Goldfarb, Applebaum also appears to be under the misimpression that no major political violence occurred in the U.S. in recent weeks.

Rather than attempting to exploit what happened in Alexandria earlier this month, Dana Loesch and the NRA predicted it. And rather than acknowledging the reality of what happened, McKesson and Goldfarb and Applebaum chose instead to close their eyes and stick their fingers in their ears and scream at the NRA and its allies for pointing out the need to protect the right of self-defense in the wake of a politically motivated assassination attempt on Republicans. Projection in this case, progressives accusing people on the Right of plotting violence while completely ignoring excusing constant violence being perpetrated by the Left is one thing. But what we see in these examples isnt just projection. Its outright denial of reality. Its the Big Lie on steroids: dont just refuse to acknowledge one of the most heinous acts of political violence in recent memory, convict the other side for acts that havent even been committed.

The fact of the matter is that it wasnt the NRA that tried to murder a bunch of its political opponents. It wasnt the NRA that published the location and security details of its foes. It wasnt the NRA that surveilled a park and confirmed that everyone in it had the wrong politics before unloading on them. No, that was done by a progressive Democrat activist. All the NRA did was point out leftist violence and note that Americans have a God-given right, affirmed by the U.S. Constitution, to defend themselves and their loved ones from that very violence.

To Golfarb and Applebaum and McKesson, the NRAs crime wasnt committing or fomenting violence. The NRAs crime was refusing to let leftist violence go unnoticed.

Sean Davis is the co-founder of The Federalist.

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Progressive Journalists Are Outraged At The NRA For Pointing Out Leftist Violence - The Federalist

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Posted: Jun 30, 2017 12:01 AM

Years ago Marxist-socialist leftists, embarrassed at being Marxist-socialist leftists, made up a shiny new name for themselves, progressives. Its a word that sounds like a garden of forward-thinking delights, but is simply code for the failed, human-spirit-destroying government-command-and control that birthed all the evil isms of the past. Thats why every time I hear a conservative commentator in print, radio, or on TV call lefty-socialists progressives my 200 billion brain cells swoon.

The Fourth of July brings to mind how far alleged progressivism deviates from this nations founding freedoms. The government command-and-control against which the American revolutionaries fought was King George III and British rule that denied the colonists basic human rights and the freedom to govern themselves. The Kings officials and soldiers bullied the colonists and tried to break their independent spirit with oppressive laws. The Declaration, Constitution and Bill of Rights gave citizens the electoral power to choose their own leaders, make their own laws, and the right to freely speak their minds without reprisal from the powerful.

But today, progressives are trying to destroy our God-given Constitutional rights by force and intimidation, the traditional tactics of despotism. Wearing black masks, they smash cars and stores, rioting at college campuses and violating the law and the First Amendment to shut down speakers they dont like. Prominent progressive voices in the media, celebrities, even some in Congress actually call for physically harming conservatives. Some actually gloated when Rep. Steve Scalise and other Republicans were attacked at a baseball practice by a leftist wacko whose heroine is leftist wacko Rachel Maddow.

Once content with telling us what light bulbs we could buy and how much soda we could drink, now progressives mimic ISIS terrorists by holding up a bloody fake beheaded Trump, or not too subtly suggest presidential assassination in a public play partly funded by taxpayers. Celebrities adored by millions of impressionable fans say they want to blow up the White House or ruminate about actors assassinating presidents.

These are the behaviors of tyrannical anarchists who are the very opposite of progressive which Webster defines as continuous improvement; the development of an individual or group in a direction considered more beneficial than and superior to the previous level. Theres nothing beneficial for us as citizens or our nation about lawlessness, property and First Amendment destruction, deadly threats, and calls for personal attacks and assassination. Yet as long as we let them get away with calling themselves progressive, we allow them to claim moral and intellectual superiority over the rest of us.

Its an insult to all Americans when so-called progressives try to claim they are the new revolutionaries, freedom fighters like the original colonist tea-dumpers. Theyre actually freedom-destroyers, bent on ripping apart the freedom of expression and the elective will of the voters, scorning the Constitution and torching the flag of liberty. Their goal is the death of liberty, not its advancement. Their heroes are murdering monsters Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, while they revile white-privileged Washington and Jefferson who pledged their lives for freedom.

The progressive credo is the same as the Cuban dictators and their mentors Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot: oppressive government control under the guise of leveling the playing field or equality and redistribution of wealth. But the people on the receiving end of the progressive promises of that eravariously known as socialism, Communism, or Marxismrather than thriving, have instead died in huge numbers thanks to the benevolent progressive policies imposed on them. The innocent victims of progressivism amount to 120 million or so expiring at the hands of their own governments, according to historians.

Now multi-billionaire progressives like Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and entrepreneur Elon Musk are calling for an exciting new way for government to ensure equality, today called social justice. While America was founded by brave settlers who built the new nation with their fierce spirit of independence, personal responsibility and achievement based on hard work, Zuckerberg (whose name means Sugar Mountain in German) wants to replace all that with the ultimate Sugar Daddy, a government that would provide everyone with a universal basic income.

Zuckerberg feels guilty that not everyone has the financial safety net to become entrepreneurial billionaires like he did with Facebook. But everyone should its only fair! Hopefully millions of people immediately sent him their addresses so he could start cutting their monthly checks.

Actually a universal basic income is already here for millions. The number of Americans receiving assistance from about 79 federal poverty programs is up 32 percent since 2008, the year Barack Obama was elected president. Now more than 100 million nearly one in three Americans get benefits from at least one of these programs, not including Social Security and Medicare payments.

This huge redistribution of taxpayer wealth toward welfare benefits is making Americas founding values of personal responsibility and self-reliance seem not only quaint, but unnecessary. Amazingly, in 35 states combined welfare benefits pay more than minimum-wage jobs, which means many have no reason to work. According to a Cato Institute study, a worker would need to make more than $60,000 in Hawaii, and more than $50,000 in Washington D.C. and Massachusetts, to earn more than collecting welfare would bring.

So its no mystery that U.S. labor participation is at an all-time low and that those numbers pretty much mirror the number of people collecting government benefits. Just before the 2016 elections fully 37.2 percent of our non-institutionalized, civilian population over 16 was not working or even looking for work. Of course, free money becomes an effective bribe to vote for the party that will keep the checks coming: the Democrats.

Given human nature, it only makes sense that for many, if you dont need to work to support yourself and your family, you wont. Those who continue to work will be ridiculed by those who feed at the government sugar dispenser.

But the satisfaction of work, almost any kind of work, is essential for a healthy sense of self-worth in humans. Even FDR, the Democrat president who created the New Deal to aid the jobless in the Great Depression, warned against the habit of welfare; relief as it was called then. The lessons of history show that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber, he said in 1935. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. The federal government must and shall quit this business of relief. But it has only increased.

Government is a fickle master as the victims of the isms discovered. Dependency breeds subservience and finally bondage after it destroys the aspirational nature fundamental to human happiness.

Since its been abundantly demonstrated for centuries that the progressive approach leads to more human suffering rather than an improvement in the human condition, the leftist/socialist/Marxistists are actually taking us backwards, not forward. Their plans would regress humanity to an earlier and utterly failed model thats left a trail of blood across human history. So lets call them what they are: regressives, not progressives. And lets celebrate Independence Day, not Dependence Day.

Joy Overbeck is a Colorado journalist and author who writes for Townhall.com, The Daily Caller, The Washington Times, American Thinker, BarbWire and elsewhere. More columns: https://www.facebook.com/JoyOverbeckColumnist Follow her on Twitter @JoyOverbeck1

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Stop Calling Them Progressives - Townhall