Mediaboss Marketing

White House deputy press secretary Sarah Sanders stole a line from President Trump on Wednesday to celebrate Republicans' winning their fourth and fifth special election less than a day earlier.

"Frankly, I think Republicans are going to get tired of winning at some point if the Democrats don't ever get an agenda," Sanders told Fox News' "Fox and Friends" Wednesday.

Sanders said conservatives were able to pull out wins in Georgia's 6th Congressional District and South Carolina's 5th Congressional District on Tuesday because Republicans have campaigned on an agenda, while Democrats have not touted a plan for leading.

"The American people put him and other Republicans in place for a reason they have an agenda, they want a healthcare system that works, they want an environment where we're creating jobs and growing the economy," Sanders said. "That's what this president is focused on. That's why he was elected in the first place, and that's why he continues to keep winning."

Trump's line about winning became famous during a speech he gave while visiting the Iowa State Fair during the presidential campaign. He continued to use it throughout the campaign and it became a signature phrase.

Excerpt from:
Sarah Sanders: 'Republicans are going to get tired of winning' - Washington Examiner

Republican Karen Handel won a nationally watched congressional election Tuesday in Georgia, and she thanked President Donald Trump after she avoided an upset that would have rocked Washington ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.

Returns showed Handel, a former Georgia secretary of state, winning about 52 percent of the vote over Democrat Jon Ossoff, who won nearly 48 percent in Georgia's 6th Congressional District.

"A special thanks to the president of the United States of America," she said late Tuesday night as her supporters chanted, "Trump! Trump! Trump!"

It was Handel's most public embrace of the man whose tenuous standing in this well-educated, suburban enclave made a previously safe Republican district close to begin with.

Handel's margin allows Republicans a sigh of relief after what's being recognized as the most expensive House race in U.S history, with a price tag that may exceed $50 million.

Yet the result in a historically conservative district still offers Republicans a warning that Trump, for better or worse, will dominate the looming campaign cycle. Georgia's outcome follows similar results in Montana, Kansas and South Carolina, where Republicans won special House races by much narrower margins than they managed as recently as November.

Republicans immediately crowed over winning a seat that Democrats spent $30 million trying to flip. "Democrats from coast to coast threw everything they had at this race, and Karen would not be defeated," House Speaker Paul Ryan said in a statement.

Democrats still must defend their current districts and win 24 GOP-held seats to regain a House majority next November. Party leaders profess encouragement from the trends, but the latest losses mean they will have to rally donors and volunteers after a tough stretch of special elections.

Handel, 55, will become the first Republican woman to represent Georgia in the U.S. House, according to state party officials.

Her win comes after losing bids for governor in 2010 and the Senate in 2014, and it builds on a business and political career she built after leaving an abusive home as a teen.

"It's that fighting spirit, that perseverance and tenacity that I will take to Washington," she said Tuesday night.

Handel is the latest in a line of Republicans who have represented the district since 1979, beginning with Newt Gingrich, who would become House speaker. Most recently, Tom Price resigned in February to join Trump's administration. The president himself struggled here, though, edging Democrat Hillary Clinton but falling short of a majority among an affluent, well-educated electorate that typically has given Republican nominees better than 60 percent of the vote.

Handel emphasized that Republican pedigree often in her campaign and again in her victory speech.

She also noted throughout the campaign that she has lived in the district for 25 years, unlike Ossoff, who grew up in the district but lives in Atlanta, a few miles south of the 6th District's southern border.

In victory, she commended Ossoff and pledged to work for his supporters. She noted last week's shooting of Republican Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana and said politics has become too embittered.

"My pledge is to be part of the solution, to focus on governing," she said.

Ossoff, taking the stage at his own party after conceding the race, told his supporters his campaign "is the beginning of something much bigger than us," adding, "The fight goes on."

Party organizations, independent political action committees and donors from Los Angeles to Boston sent a cascade of money into a race, filling metro Atlanta's airwaves with ads and its 6th District neighborhoods with hordes of paid canvassers.

Contrary to the chants at Handel's victory party, she insisted for months that voters' choice had little to do with Trump. She rarely mentioned him, despite holding a closed-door fundraiser with him earlier this spring. She pointed voters instead to her "proven conservative record" as a state and local elected official.

Her protestations aside, Handel often embraced the national tenor of the race, joining a GOP chorus that lambasted Ossoff as a "dangerous liberal" who was "hand-picked" by House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California. She also welcomed a parade of national GOP figures to Atlanta to help her raise money, with Ryan and Vice President Mike Pence holding fundraisers following Trump's April visit.

It was enough to help Handel raise more than $5 million, not a paltry sum in a congressional race, but barely a fifth of Ossoff's fundraising haul. The Republican campaign establishment, however, helped make up the difference. A super PAC backed by Ryan spent $7 million alone.

On policy, she mostly echoes party leaders. She said she'd have voted for the House Republican health care bill, though she sometimes misrepresented its provisions in debates with Ossoff. She touts traditional supply side economics, going so far as to say during one debate that she does "not support a living wage" her way of explaining her opposition to a minimum-wage increase.

View original post here:
Republican Karen Handel wins Georgia special election for hotly contested House seat - Chicago Tribune

The paradox of secrecy in American politics is how much attention it gets. Over the last couple of weeks, the penchant of the White House and the Republican Senate for blocking the release of information has become a central issue in Washington. Its a case of making lemonade from lemons: If you cant cover the story, cover why you cant cover it.

Perhaps most immediately important is the Senate GOPs refusal to reveal anything about the bill the health-care bill currently under consideration. Meanwhile, the administration has been quietly clamping down on various forms of access, from public schedules to visitor logs to the daily briefings at the White House. The executive branch has taken to refusing requests for information from congressional Democrats too.

The White House Press Briefing Is Slowly Dying

The result is a weird reversal of the normal course of business: Gossipy nuggets leak out of the White House on a daily basisTrump is yelling at TVs! Trump is angry at Jared! Sean Spicer/Reince Priebus/Steve Bannon is on the chopping block!and the president tweets as fact things his lawyers claim are not true, yet next to nothing is known about a huge bill that could change health coverage for millions of Americans.

This kind of secrecy is bad for policymaking and bad for democracy, but since abstract arguments like that are difficult to plead effectively, its customary to argue that secrecy is also politically unwise. For example, it is clearly hypocritical. When Obama was president, Republicans complained that the White House was too secretive, and that Democrats were trying to railroad through health-care reform without public inputeven though the process behind the Affordable Care Act was far more public and lengthy than the present process. But hypocrisy is seldom lethal for any politician, let alone a party, especially in todays partisan climate.

Another argument is that clamming up will actually hurt the clams. As Politicos Playbook puts it today, This could be bad for the White House, as it will be far more difficult for them to drive a message and respond to questions. This might be true, but take it with a healthy dose of skepticism. For one, its obviously self-serving for journalists to say that giving journalists more access is good for them, and the press corps, smelling blood, is out for damaging stories about Trump. Sometimes openness is not a zero-sum game, but in this case, it probably is.

Second, wheres the proof? The George W. Bush administration was more secretive than the Clinton administration; the press howled; and Bush got reelected. The Obama administration was more secretive than the Bush administration; the press howled; and Obama got reelected. Part of Obamas success was that he found other ways to get his message out: Social media, for example, and interviews with non-traditional interlocutors, from Zach Galifianakis to YouTube stars. Trump may be different in degree and extremity from his predecessors, but his administrations secrecy is part of a disturbing, bipartisan progression.

The secrecy will continue as long as it works. It certainly worked in the House, where GOP leaders watched a first attempt at a health bill go down as its flaws became public. For the second try, they acted fast and quietly, not even waiting for the Congressional Budget Office to score the bill.

And so far, the strategy is working for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as well. Its not just Democrats and the press who are upset; some Republicans are speaking out too:

But until enough members of the GOP caucus actually demand that McConnell open up the process, their complaints will make little difference. In fact, that might be by design. McConnell and his lieutenants would much rather have an argument about process and take the lumps they get from that fight: They can write complaints off as either the whingeing of a biased press or hypocrisy from Democrats who did the same thing. Thats far better than trying to defend an unpopular bill that will likely push millions off insurance, redistribute money to the wealthy, and slash popular entitlements. The secrecy gives disgruntled Republican members of the caucus something else to complain about instead.

(The general public may not really be the audience from whom the Senate leadership is hiding its bill; public disapproval of the House health bill is already very high, and Democrats will vote en masse against it. The bigger danger for McConnell is that Republican constituenciesfrom the business lobby to GOP governorswill react fiercely to the bill and convince Republican senators to defect.)

Meanwhile, Senator Chuck Grassley, the Iowa Republican, has taken a bold stand on behalf of Democratic colleagues, writing a letter to President Trump complaining about the executive branch ignoring document requests. But as long as Grassley stands alone, and has only angry letters to write, the White House can blithely ignore him, too.

In the long run, shutting out public attention can have some ill effects. Just ask Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who has gone to historically drastic extents to avoid dealing with reporters. The result has been that the State Department cant seem to ever present a clear message about what its policies are, and keeps getting undercut by the president. Perhaps cutting down on briefings will make the administrations message control even worse, though its hard to imagine what that would look like. (The White House did belatedly add an on-camera briefing to Tuesdays schedule.) Perhaps enough Republican senators will get upset about the closed-door health-care process to force it out into public hearings. But for as along as it continues to succeed, secrecy is likely here to stay.

Read the original post:
Republicans Will Continue to Stick With Secrecy as Long as It Works - The Atlantic

Sen. Bernie Sanders has spoken out against the progressive lefts ongoing efforts to suppress free speech on campus, stating that it only contributes to rising political tensions in the United States.

Sanders statements come in the wake of James Hodgkinsons mass shooting of GOP congressmen during a morning baseball practice in Alexandria, VA, which hospitalized Majority Whip Steve Scalise and wounded several others. Following the shooting, Sanders deplored Hodgkinsons actions, describing the violence as despicable and unacceptable in our society.

I condemn this action in the strongest possible terms. Real change can only come about through non-violent action, and anything else runs against our most deeply held American values, said Sanders at the time.

Speaking on CBS, Sanders said that efforts to suppress free speech contributed to the rising tide of political violence.

Look, freedom of speech, the right to dissent, the right to protest, that is what America is about, he said, per PJ Media. And, politically, every leader in this country, every American has got to stand up against any form of violence. That is unacceptable. And I certainly hope and pray that Representative Scalise has a full recovery from the tragedy that took place.

The senator stated that people have a right to speak on campus, even if their speech is considered disagreeable or problematic. In February, leftist activists at UC Berkeley shut down a speech by conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos using violence.

And you have a right, if you are on a college campus, not to attend. You have a right to ask hard questions about the speaker if you disagree with him or her, Sanders said. But what why should we be afraid of somebody coming on a campus or anyplace else and speaking? You have a right to protest. But I dont quite understand why anybody thinks it is a good idea to deny somebody else the right to express his or her point of view.

What is very clear is, we are in a contentious and difficult political moment in our countrys history, he added. I have very grave concerns about the Trump agenda right now.

Ian Miles Cheong is a journalist and outspoken media critic. You can reach him through social media at@stillgray on Twitterand onFacebook.

Link:
Bernie Sanders Tells Progressives to Stop Suppressing Free Speech on College Campuses - Heat Street

ATLANTA The call came earlier than last time for the Jon Ossoff campaign: The Democrat failed to prevail in the special election for Georgia's 6th Congressional District. After the 30-year-old declared defeat, Democratic and progressive leaders said there was nothing more they could have done to beat out Karen Handel, the victorious Republican, in the traditionally conservative district.

With a historic commitment of money and people, Democrats and progressive groups drew a lower level of support for Ossoff on Tuesday night than he attracted in the April primary.

In the campaign's final days, the Democratic National Committee sent 40 staffers and interns to Tuesday's special elections in Georgia and South Carolina, a party aide said. A majority of those party operatives went to Georgia, the aide noted, saying the support was "a significant amount" of staff members for the DNC to commit to a House race.

A progressive organizer in Georgia said the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the party's campaign arm in the House, sent at least a dozen staffers to the Georgia race, including Steve Sisneros, a high-ranking DCCC official.

The crowd of supporters at Jon Ossoff's campaign headquarters in Atlanta on Tuesday night

"As we look towards key races in 2017 and 2018, its clear that the enthusiasmfor Democratsis growing across the country," said Sabrina Singh, the DNC's deputy communications director, in a statement. A DCCC spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The DCCC alone spent $5 million backing Ossoff's House bid. Tuesday's failure is made more painful by the outpouring of support among local grassroots groups, some of which pointed fingers at the national party for failing to effectively support Ossoff.

Ossoff cited those groups in his concession speech. "It's not been about me. It's about you," Ossoff said, citing the more than 12,000 people who volunteered on his campaign. As he paused in his address to the crowd of supporters, a woman shouted: "Someone has to lead us!"

Isaac Bloom, the national organizing director for Indivisible, said in an interview that he was proud of the work done by grassroots groups he helped coordinate with. "Indivisible Georgia left it all on the field," Bloom said. "No matter what happened tonight, we are changing the map for 2018."

Supporter Jan Yanes, center, cries as Democratic candidate for 6th Congressional District Jon Ossoff concedes to Republican Karen Handel at his election night party in Atlanta on Tuesday.

Adrienne Lever, campaign director for SwingLeft, canvassed for Ossoff and coordinated with her organization's 200 phone banks around the country to push Ossoff toward victory. Lever, who worked on Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential bid, was optimistic going into the evening, but later said the Georgia 6th would always be "a very difficult race" for Democrats.

"The fact we had an opportunity to play here says a lot about the state of politics," Lever said. Her organization's 300,000 volunteers work to push Republican-held House districts toward Democrats. SwingLeft is currently targeting 63 districts nationwide, Lever said.

Of those districts, the Georgia 6th "was, by no means, the closest district and the most viable district for Democrats to win," Lever said.

More:
Democrats and progressives on Jon Ossoff's defeat: We "left it all on the field" - Mic