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Republican defectors boost En Marche party's chance at French poll Financial Times No Moreau has voted for the centre-right Republicans party all his life. The 46-year-old small business owner from the small medieval town of Verneuil Sur Avre in Normandy believes in lower taxes and a more flexible labour market. But in France's ...

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Republican defectors boost En Marche party's chance at French poll - Financial Times

Outside San Diego, a 14-year incumbent climbed atop the roof of his district congressional office to photograph protesters opposed to his support for a Republican health-care bill.

Just up the highway in Orange County, a 28-year incumbent mused about his belief in a conspiracy about a Democratic National Committee staffer slain in Washington last year.

And across the continent, in northern New Jersey, an eight-year incumbent faced a hostile crowd at a town hall, winning loud applause only when he denounced President Trump.

These are strange times for some longtime House Republicans. After years, sometimes decades, coasting to reelection in traditional GOP strongholds, these lawmakers find themselves under fire from angry constituents swept up in organized efforts to oppose Trump. And in some cases, they are already seeing Democratic opponents line up against them for an election 17 months away.

Collectively, Democrats are much more focused on dozens of seats held by relatively new Republicans who have never run into the head winds of midterm elections with their partys president facing deep unpopularity.

(Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

But Democrats have also turned a powerful spotlight on a collection of veteran GOP lawmakers whose districts have changed underneath them, even while these districts continued, all the way to 2016, to reelect their representatives by wide margins.

Theres Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), who told The Washington Post over the weekend that he hoped the conspiracy theory concerning the slaying of a DNC staffer might be true. First elected in 1988, Rohrabacher won reelection by almost 17percentage points last fall, even as Trump lost the district to Hillary Clinton.

And theres Rep. Leonard Lance (R-N.J.), who despite winning all five of his congressional races by more than eight percentage points is running as one of the most outspoken anti-Trump Republicans on Capitol Hill. Thats in large part because his district, in the states wealthy, well-educated suburbs, swung from favoring Mitt Romney by more than six percentage points in 2012 to backing Clinton over Trump last year.

[His district voted for Clinton, but this Republican congressman isnt worried]

History would seem to favor these entrenched Republicans as familiar figures in their districts. But history has also shown that when the House majority changes hands, a large chunk of the losses tends to come from these members of the old guard. In some cases, they lose touch with their districts over time. Just as often, they have never run modern campaigns and their political operations have grown too rusty to contend with a shifting political landscape.

The most famous of all was the stunning defeat of Rep. Thomas Foley (D-Wash.) in 1994, the first sitting House speaker to lose reelection, during a wave election in which Republicans won 54 seats and reclaimed the majority for the first time in 40 years. That year also brought down the sitting chairmen of the Ways and Means Committee and the Judiciary Committee.

Twelve years later, as Democrats swept back into the majority, their victories included the defeat of a 30-year incumbent from Iowa, Republican Jim Leach, and a 26-year veteran from South Florida, E.Clay Shaw Jr., who two years earlier had won with 63percent of the vote. And in 2010, en route to a 63-seat gain and the majority, Republicans claimed the political scalps of the Democratic chairmen of the Armed Services, Budget and Transportation committees among the veterans swallowed up by that wave.

Veterans of those prior waves wish that their incumbents had gotten as early a scare from the opposition party as Republicans are feeling this cycle. The GOP has fought like mad just to hold seats in deeply red districts in two special elections, with two more on the horizon. That sort of warning sign did not come until well into 1994, 2006 and 2010.

Republicans think these elections, plus protests at town halls, will get their longtime incumbents prepping for next years potential climate. Weve been pretty aggressive with making sure theyre ready, said Matt Gorman, communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

There are 40 House Republicans sitting in districts where Trump received less than 50percent of the vote; 23 of those districts actually favored Clinton. Of those 40 lawmakers, 14 will have served at least a decade by the time of the November 2018 midterms.

Out of the 14 GOP veterans in vulnerable districts, only Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has faced a tough campaign in the past five elections, having fought to win a bitter contest last year by less than one percentage point.

None of them have faced credible, well-funded challenges in the last decade, wrote David Wasserman, editor for House races at the independent Cook Political Report. And ironically, this could make them more vulnerable in a wave scenario than less senior but more recently battle-tested GOP colleagues.

Clinton even weighed in on the opportunity this week at the annual Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif.

Lets look at the House, she said. We have to flip 24 seats, okay? I won 23 districts that have a Republican Congress member. Seven of them are in California, Darrell Issa being one. If we can flip those, if we can then go deeper into where I did well, where we can get good candidates, I think flipping the House is certainly realistic. Its a goal that we can set for ourselves.

Democrats point to two recent moves by senior Republicans to suggest that shaky political instincts are at work within the GOP. On Tuesday, Issa, the former high-profile chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, had a brief encounter with hundreds of protesters outside his office, leading him to retreat indoors and then up to his roof to take pictures.

Issa told the local news media that he had wanted to address the group but was rebuffed. Still, the incident became something of a laugh line on the local TV news broadcasts.

Earlier this spring, Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.), the new chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee, sent a fundraising letter to a local banker that included a handwritten note letting him know that one of the ringleaders of liberal activists worked for him. That prompted accusations that the 26-year incumbent, who regularly coasts to reelection, was threatening a constituent.

GOP strategists brushed off Issas rooftop move as a goofy incident that will not resonate with voters. They think Frelinghuysens family lineage, dating to the Continental Congress, will insulate him from any Trump fallout.

Republicans do have time to shore themselves up but that also means these veteran lawmakers have time to make more mistakes.

The biggest advantage for these Republicans is that the election is still 18 months away and there is still time to batten down the hatches, Wasserman wrote. But sometimes, errors cascade.

Read more from Paul Kanes archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

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A Republican weak spot in 2018: Longtime lawmakers in shifting districts - Washington Post

Sen. Roy Blunt said Sunday that the Muslim communities must take responsibility for the fight against homegrown terrorism.

We need to talk about it, our friends who are Muslim need to admit that this extreme sense of Islam that results in these attacks has to be called for what it is and we have to try to do what we can to intervene, the Missouri Republican said on Fox News Sunday.

Mr. Blunt, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the forces driving young Muslim men to embrace the extremist ideology of Islamic State and other terrorist groups continues to pose a threat in the U.S., whether from low-tech attacks such as the van-and-knife rampage Saturday night in London or more sophisticated bombings and attacks on airliners.

He stressed the difficulty in identifying homegrown terrorists before they strike.

Youve got some groups that are looking at a big play like taking down an airliner. Youve got others who need very little support, very little planning, and can do incredible damage, he said, which is actually in many ways almost more of terrorism because you go anywhere, do anything, you wonder what could happen at any moment. It could happen here.

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Roy Blunt, Missouri Republican senator, urges Muslim communities ... - Washington Times

Communism is one of our top all-time lookups, and user comments suggest thats because it is often used in opaque ways. In some sources, communism is equated with socialism; in others, it is contrasted with democracy and capitalism. Part of this confusion stems from the fact that the word communism has been applied to varying political systems over time. When it was first used in English prose, communism referred to an economic and political theory that advocated the abolition of private property and the common sharing of all resources among a group of people, and it was often used interchangeably with the word socialism by 19th-century writers. The differences between communism and socialism are still debated, but generally English speakers used communism to refer to the political and economic ideologies that find their origin in Karl Marxs theory of revolutionary socialism, which advocates a proletariat overthrow of capitalist structures within a society, societal and communal ownership and governance of the means of production, and the eventual establishment of a classless society. The most well-known expression of Marxs theories is the 20th-century Bolshevism of the U.S.S.R., in which the state, through a single authoritarian party, controls a societys economy and social activities with the goal of realizing Marxs theories.

Communism is often contrasted with capitalism and democracy, though these can be false equivalencies depending on the usage. Capitalism refers to an economic theory in which a societys means of production are held by private individuals or organizations, not the government, and where prices, distribution of goods, and products are determined by a free market. It can be contrasted with the economic theories of communism, though the word communism is used of both political and economic theories. Democracy refers to a system of government in which supreme power is vested in the people and exercised through a system of direct or indirect representation which is decided through periodic free elections. Democracy is contrasted with communism primarily because the 20th-century communism of the U.S.S.R. was characterized by an authoritarian government, whereas the democracy of the 20th-century U.S. was characterized by a representative government.

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Democracy | Definition of Democracy by Merriam-Webster

We depend on the free press to shed light on deeds done in darkness, but diligent reporting will not in itself preserve the health of our democracy. If a democratic system is to endure, its citizens must hold their elected representatives accountable every day, not just on Election Day.

Obviously, citizens are powerless to affect their government if they dont know how it works. Yet studies routinely tell us that large numbers of voters do not know which elected officials are responsible for the issues they care about, and relatively few Americans understand the most basic process of how a bill becomes a law.

A recent headline proclaimed In major victory for Republicans, House passes Obamacare repeal. True, Republicans did publicly celebrate victory that day in the Rose Garden. Obamacare is dead, its essentially dead, President Trump said.

Unfortunately, I suspect that far too many of my fellow citizens read the headlines, watched the G.O.P. euphoria on television or online, and concluded that Obamacare was now dead. Even those who had no idea what was in the hastily written bill could easily assume thatwhatever it wasTrumpcare was now the law of the land.

Now were relying on journalists to provide us with information about exactly what is in the healthcare bill. Sorting out the facts of the matter is crucial, since Republicans say one thing and Democrats say another, but the facts are not enough. If our democracy is to survive and thrive, every American must understand that Obamacare is certainly not dead, and Trumpcare is not yet the law of the land. Americans must know how a bill becomes a law and how we can affect the outcome during the process. The alternative is apathy, even despair.

In regard to the healthcare bill, if ordinary citizens are to engage in the democratic process, we need to know the basics: The bill now moves to the Senate, where it needs a simple majority to pass. If the Senate does not vote on the bill in its current form, it may die, or the Senate can write its own bill and vote on it. If the Senate bill passes, the House must vote to either pass that bill as is, or go to a bipartisan conference committee to work out the differences. If the conference committee can reach an agreement, the compromise bill must be passed in both the House and Senate and signed by President Trump in order to become law. We can contact our Senators via the Congressional switchboard at 202-224-3121.

Why not add a short article sidebar with that very basic information whenever you report on a significant bill passed by the House? What about a whole range of bite-size civics lessons connected to articles? Human beings learn best in context, with repetition, and when we have a vested interest in the topic. USA Today and other media can strengthen our democracy by baking some civics education into daily reporting.

Politically ignorant citizens care a lot about what government does to hurt or help them, but apathy creeps in when we feel powerless. Why care about politics when its a depressing waste of time? We may be ignorant, but were not stupid.

The press can dramatically change our civic culture by showing us how to demand the best from our leaders. You empower us when you publish guest opinion pieces and letters to the editor. You give us hope when you cover constituents who express their concerns, because then powerful politicians cant afford to ignore their constituents. You strengthen us when you tell the success stories of ordinary people who work together to hold their elected representatives accountable. You motivate us when you report on a first-time candidate who runs for office and succeeds against all odds.

Civic-minded journalism has the potential to give us hope so we can cure our democracy, which is currently in critical condition.

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Democracy Dies In DarknessDone In By Ignorance And Apathy - HuffPost