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Ever notice that as Republicans try to unwind Obamacare, they keep prefacing their arguments with why Obamacare is so bad? In the case of President Trump, he often talks more about how bad Obamacare is than how good its replacement will be:

Republican senators are working very hard to get something thats going to be really, really good, the opposite of the big lie that was Obamacare, Trump said in his weekly address Friday.

Well, there's a reason for that. Polling suggests that the Republicans' framing of the health-care bill as the only alternative to Obamacare is about the only way to make it tenable to theirbase.

Notice I said to their base. That's another huge problem for Republicans as they struggle to pass health-care legislation: It's not popular, even when compared with Obamacare.

A new Washington Post-ABC News polling shows that, by a 2-to-1 margin, Americans prefer Obamacare to the Republicans' plan:

Same with independents:

But when you frame this either-or question to Republicans, you get the opposite response:

Less than 60 percent of Republican voters preferring their own party's plan to Obamacare might seem low, given that Republicans have spent the past seven years campaigning on and arguably winning on repealing Obamacare. And it is.

But the data actually shows a much more enthusiastic expression of support for the Republicans' bill than when GOP voters are asked simply if they like it.

The Fix's Aaron Blake has documented how Republicans don't feel strongly about this health-care bill as it plods its way through Congress: A recent Quinnipiac University poll found that just 18 percent of Republicans strongly approved of it, while 11 percent disapproved strongly.

In other words, Republicans constantly need to remind their base why they're passing this legislation in the first place just to get them to like it more. And not even their base isthat on board.

Which leavesRepublicans with two not-great options:

1) They can pass a law everyone but their base dislikes. 2) They can oblige their base and be charged with undoing a health-care law that the rest of the nation prefers.

To get out of that Catch-22, Republicans have to convince the rest of the nation that Obamacare is as bad as they say it is and/or that their bill is actually the opposite of what voters think it is. Basically, they have to change almost everyone's minds about this legislation.

Trump is doing the front end (talking about how bad Obamacare is), but he's not helping to sell the rest of the legislation to boost its stand-alone popularity. In fact, the president is doing the opposite. He has given mixed support for the bill, calling the House's version mean and saying the Senate's version needs more heart.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell introduced a new version of the Senate Republican health-care bill Thursday, July 13, with added provisions, aiming to gain enough votes to pass the bill. (U.S. Senate)

Meanwhile, moderate GOPsenators are basically acknowledging that Obamacare has helped to insure people in their state. Their sudden vocalization of that notion, plus estimates that upward of 22 million could lose their health insurance over the next decade under the Republicans' plan, could be contributing to Obamacare's rise in popularity as soon as Republicans make a serious attempt to repeal it.

I've said repeatedly, I'm not going to drop you off a cliff,Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) told CNN recently.

Republican operatives argue that it will be their party that drops off a cliff if they can't pass a health-care bill, as unpopular as it is. A failure to address a conviction among the base of the Republican Party, seven years in the making, is infinitely more damaging than the ramifications of a three-week snapshot that starts well underwater because of partisan polarization, former top Senate Republican aide Josh Holmes told The Fix's Blake recently.

One side is going to have to lose this standofffor Republicans to pass a health-care bill. But nomatter who wins, polling keeps on suggesting that the Republican Party will pay a price, too. Which is why the more the bill's popularity sinks, the more you hear theGOP talk about Obamacare just to try to save it.

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Republicans' Catch-22 on health care - Washington Post

The writers of Article I Sec. 2 of the Constitution, which mandates a census every ten years, did not have satellite analysis and probabilistic sampling in mind. Neither did they imagine a United States withmore than 325 million people spread across the fourth largest country on Earth. But having created a system that ties representation to population, certainly they understood that the seemingly simple question of how to count Americans would bea political battleground.

The results of the U.S. census are far more important than most Americans realize. Census data are the starting point for redistricting and reapportionment adding and removing House districts from states as population changes dictate not to mention the distribution of billions of dollars in federal funding. Housing assistance, highway maintenance and Medicare/Medicaidare just three examples of programs that distribute federal dollars to states in the form of grants based on census results. Undercounting populations guarantees that over the next decade, states will be strapped for funding in these areas.

And that is likely to happen if Republicans in Congress get their way.Under cover of the non-stop Trump circus, they are quietly working behind the scenes to ensure that the 2020 census fails and fails to their advantage.

In its earliest years, census-taking was labor intensive. Census workers walked door-to-door counting heads. The relatively small size of the country and its limited population made this feasible into the 19th century. Explosive population growth after 1850 made this impractical, though, so the mail-and-return census form was added to supplement the work done on foot. As long as sending and receiving mail was part of daily life for most Americans, this worked well.

Which brings us to today. When was the last time you mailed a piece of paper? Your answer to that question might reveal why the census is nowhampered by the low response rates on mailed forms. Given the sheer size and density of the population, door-to-door head counting is not a workable solution either. So the Census Bureau has added new tools to its arsenal. It now doesBig Data analysis of U.S. Postal Service records, satellite analysis of housing blocks and statistical projection of population in dense areas where it is not practical to find every last resident. These are efforts to overcome a simple and obvious problem: It isn't easy to count every person in a large and populous country.

Ahead of the 2010 census, Republicansexpressed skepticism about the Census Bureau's increasing use of statistical methods to estimate population in cities. Taking their usual approach of dismissing as voodoo all things scientific and data-driven, they labeled the bureau's efforts a plot to fabricate liberals out of thin air. Their objections had little effect on that year's census, though, since Democrats controlled Congress from 2006 to 2010 and, of course, the White House after 2008. You'll no doubt be shocked to hear that their complaints died down when it became clear that the 2010 censusproduced favorable results for Republicans.

This time around, the GOP controls the White House and have House and Senate majorities pending the 2018 midterm elections. The Trump administration and Congress are working to ensure that the Census Bureau is required to do its work the old-fashioned way counting heads door-to-door, using mail-and-return forms or asking households to respond to an online survey while simultaneouslydepriving the bureau of the funding necessary to do so effectively.

If they get their way, and a cash-starved Census Bureau is prevented from supplementing its direct counting methods with the latest technology, the predictable result will be a census based largely on mail-and-return paper forms and voluntary online responses. As we saw in late-20th-century censuses, there will be a serious undercount one that particularly underrepresentsAfrican-Americans andHispanics.

This can happen because the Census Bureau is now led by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, a Trump crony and former leveraged buyout specialist who infamouslystruck a deal with Trump Taj Mahal investors allowing Trump to retain control after bankrupting the casino in the early Nineties. The Census Bureau has been without a director since 27-year bureau veteran John Thompsonresigned in May over the politically motivated defunding of his department.As with most vacancies under Trump, no replacement has been appointed.An interim director was quietly named in late June, suggesting that the position will remain unfilled.

And it gets worse. Few Americans, even in Congress, realize that the census is a count of population, not of citizens. Every man, woman and child in a given area is counted, whether U.S. citizen, legal resident or undocumented immigrant. Trump-era Immigration and Customs Enforcement crackdowns, thoughlargely fruitless, are highly likely to have a major chilling effect on non-citizens, regardless of legal status. Even under ideal conditions for the Census Bureau, thefear generated by aggressive and well-publicized ICE raids are expected to suppress the counts of Hispanics,immigrant communities and non-U.S. citizens.

It's a deceptively simple scheme: Trump and his commerce secretary impose rules on the Census Bureau based on the belief that science and data analysis are fake news. Congress squeezes the bureau's funding, reducing the quality of the work it can do. ICE threatens non-citizens with deportation to seriously dampen enthusiasm for participating. And then the results of the 2020 census will be based largely on voluntary responses to mail-in and online surveys, giving an incomplete and demographically skewed picture of the U.S. population.

The method for reapportioning seats in the House and, therefore, inthe Electoral College is sensitive to relatively small changes in state populations. Therange of predictions online shows that slightly different estimates produce different results. The last few seats assigned could go to one state or another based on a relative handful of residents. This process doesn't require a heavy hand to influence the outcome.

No one is eager to add yet another item to the list of issues that require attention right now, but efforts to undermine the census rely on the fact that voters and the media won't notice or care. We will live with the political consequences of the 2020 census for a decade. It is imperative we get it right.

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Why Republicans Want the 2020 Census to Fail - RollingStone.com

"Pro-growth international tax policies are instrumental to both the ability of American companies to compete globally and grow not only their global footprint, but also U.S. jobs and operations," the Chamber of Commerce said in a recent letter to Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, chairman of the finance committee.

Hatch requested public input last month as he attempts to lay the groundwork for support on the Republicans' signature issue, and the committee has received hundreds of thousands of responses, a spokeswoman said. On Tuesday, the House is slated to release its fiscal 2018 budget, which is expected to provide an outline of its plans for reform.

One open question is whether the administration intends to pay for any tax cuts and if so, how.

In the White House's 2018 budget, officials assumed that the reductions would not add to the deficit because they would be offset by economic growth and eliminating deductions. However, budget analysts have declared those projections unrealistic, and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office declined to score the administration's plan because it lacked "specificity."

The path lawmakers choose will help determine the size and scope of any tax package. If the legislation adds to the deficit, congressional rules prevent Republicans from passing it in the Senate with a simple majority vote. Instead, lawmakers would have to settle for a smaller, temporary cut a compromise that business groups warned would be disappointing.

"The goal of tax reform should be to level the playing field for American businesses and American workers. Without lowering rates and moving to a territorial tax system, corporate inversions and the movement of intellectual property and earnings abroad will continue to accelerate, while factories and jobs continue to relocate to lower tax jurisdictions," read a letter that the Made in America Coalition, which represents major manufacturers such as GE and Boeing, sent to Hatch's office on Monday.

"These fundamental issues cannot be effectively addressed with a modest, temporary tax cut," the group added.

The group has been among the most vocal proponents of the controversial border adjustment tax backed by House Speaker Paul Ryan. The proposal would allow U.S. companies to deduct the cost of goods manufactured in America providing a boost to exports but raising the cost of imports. The measure was estimated to raise roughly $1 trillion to help pay for lower rates for all businesses.

But border adjustment has run into widespread opposition on Capitol Hill, where retailers have lobbied hard against it. On Monday, the coalition signaled it was open to alternatives.

"The House blueprint is just one example of how tax reform can reduce the cost of investing and help restore America's communities and job base," its letter stated.

The Financial Services Roundtable, an industry advocacy group headed by Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, also expressed a sense of urgency in getting reforms pushed through.

The group said it "strongly supports the [Senate Finance Committee's] goal of enacting a simpler, fairer and a more efficient tax code that significantly reduces tax rates on individuals, businesses and investment income, while also shifting to an internationally competitive territorial tax system.

"Such reforms will create jobs, increase wages, bolster economic growth, and make America a more attractive place to invest.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn have met with Republican leadership on Capitol Hill at least four times in recent months to discuss the framework for tax reform.

At the White House and on Capitol Hill, the hope is that negotiating key components of the plan before it is released will help secure its passage in the long run. The administration has said it expects to release those details late this summer.

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Republicans getting pressure from big business to move on tax reform - CNBC

Tom Price, Secretary of Health and Human Services Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post/Getty Images

Republicans have spent eight years assuring the public that they, too, shared the goal of protecting people with preexisting conditions from price discrimination. Sunday, Health and Human Services secretary Tom Price tore down the tattered faade. Asked why insurers called the Republican health-care plan, which allows them to charge higher premiums to the sick than the healthy, unworkable, Price insisted they would just go back to the way things worked before Obamacare. Its really perplexing, especially from the insurance companies, because all they have to do is dust off how they did business before Obamacare, he said on ABC. A single risk pool, which is what theyre objecting to, is exactly the kind of process that was that has been utilized for decades.

Republican policy elites consider such an admission obvious, even banal. To the great mass of the voting public it would come as a shock. I want to keep preexisting conditions. I think we need it. I think its a modern age, promised Donald Trump during his presidential campaign. Mike Pence, delivering what the campaign billed as its seminal health-care address just a week before the election, likewise pledged, We will protect Americans with preexisting conditions so that they are not charged more or denied coverage, just because they have been sick, so long as they have paid their premiums consistently.

There is no mystery why Republicans made this promise. Regulations preventing insurance companies from excluding or charging higher prices to people with expensive medical needs is the single most popular feature of Obamacare. In in the darkest moments of Obamacare, Democrats have highlighted this feature, and Republicans have assured the public they would keep it in place. In January, Mitch McConnell dismissed this charge: We already know their central contention, that Republicans somehow want to go back to the way things were before Obamacare which, of course, everyone knows is untrue. And yet here was Price casually admitting that going back to the way things were before Obamacare was exactly their intention.

What has brought the Republican Party to this point is a public-opinion backlash so overwhelming that the normal rules of politics cease to apply. Americans prefer Obamacare to the GOP alternative by a two-to-one margin. By nearly a three-to-one margin, Americans want the GOP to work with Democrats to repair the Affordable Care Act rather than repealing and replacing it. Even Trump voters are split evenly on this question:

It might seem obvious that Republicans should surrender to public opinion, abandon their loathed plan, and work with Democrats to fix the health-care system. Instead, they seem to be calculating that they have more to lose than to gain by fixing the health-care system, and implicitly conceding that their eight-year crusade to destroy Obamacare has been a lie. There is a logic of sorts to this position: They are on the dark side of the moon, and see their only path as going farther away.

Josh Holmes, a former high-level adviser to McConnell, tells the Washington Post that passing the Senate plan gives his party the best chance in the midterm elections. If you can find me an election cycle where Democrats havent run ads accusing Republicans of throwing the poor and elderly off of health care, Ill buy you a beer, he argues.

It is true that Democrats have spent several decades accusing Republicans of trying to deny health insurance to the poor and sick. That is because Republicans have indeed spent several decades trying to deny health insurance to the poor and sick. As Paul Ryan said earlier this year, he has been dreaming of deep cuts to Medicaid since his kegger days. It is not a popular position by any means. But fanatical hatred of the welfare state does have a constituency among the major institutions of the conservative movement, many of which are well-funded and important to rallying base voters.

Holmess case seems to concede that, if Democrats are going to run against his party by pointing out that they plan to deny insurance to the old and sick, they might as well go ahead and deny insurance to the old and sick.

This is why he wanted a really fast vote.

Riiiight.

Someone broke into Dean Hellers Las Vegas office and left the threatening message.

The press secretary took the presidents picture in a big-boy fire truck.

Sean Duffy (like Donald Trump) wants to blame the threat of filibusters for blocking GOP bills. But the big ones arent subject to filibusters.

No state has gotten more special treatment from the Senate (and the administration) than Murkowskis Alaska. If its not enough, Trumpcares dead.

Nothing better to start off your week than a hellish commute.

If the Pimp of the Nation is serious about the Senate, Dems want to be ready.

Trumps strikes are killing more than 12 civilians per day.

In supporting the blockade of Qatar, the president appears to have fallen for a fraud perpetrated by hackers in the United Arab Emirates.

Tom Price admits that insurance companies will go back to weeding out the sick.

The Trump administration reportedly has its act together on tax reform. Also, its only idea for how to finance tax cuts is blow out the deficit.

Thanks to Trump, many will follow.

The vote has already been delayed by at least a week, and each day its passage becomes less likely.

Made in America week is already shifting the conversation to the Trump familys fondness for overseas manufacturing.

A scorecard on how Trump has advanced Russian interests (whether knowingly or unknowingly), from easing Russian sanctions to the Syrian cease-fire.

The rise and meaning of an ubiquitous term of abuse.

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Republicans Give Away the Game on Trumpcare - New York Magazine

By James Goldgeier By James Goldgeier July 17 at 11:44 AM

President Trump Monday morning tweeted that most politicians would have done what his son, Donald Trump Jr., and other Trump campaign officials did when they met Russians promising secret information on Hillary Clinton.

This is a remarkable claim for a Republican to make. Republicans used to compete with each other over who was tougher on Russia (or, more precisely, the Soviet Union), and to condemn Democrats for their purported softness. Now, Trump sees nothing wrong with his son meeting a person who had been described to him as a Russian government attorney, in order to provide high level and sensitive information that was described as part of Russia and its governments support for Mr. Trump. Heres how dramatically the Republican position has changed.

Being tough on Russia was once the name of the game

During the Cold War, anti-communism was the glue that held the GOP together. In the 1970s and 1980s, Republicans of all stripes took great political advantage in criticizing Democratic presidential candidates, such as George McGovern and Michael Dukakis, as being too weak to stand up for U.S. interests in the face of the threat from Moscow.

Conservative Republicans saw it to their advantage to criticize not just Democrats but members of their own party for showing any signs of appeasement of Moscow.

Most people remember Ronald Reagans victory over Jimmy Carter as the victory of a Republican champion of a strong defense in the face of the Soviet threat after four years of weak Democratic foreign policy leadership. But Reagan had built his political fortunes within his own party by attacking the detente, or lessening of tensions, with Moscow initiated by Republican Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford and national security adviser/Secretary of State Henry Kissinger as too accommodating of the Soviet Union.

Once in office, however, even Reagan himself was not immune to such critiques. As he prepared to meet with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev for the first time in November 1985, who was out in front leading the charge against him? None other than Newt Gingrich, who called that meeting the most dangerous summit for the West since Adolf Hitler met with Neville Chamberlain in 1938 in Munich.

The battle between realists and neoconservatives dominated the GOP

GOP foreign policy debates were not just over exactly how tough to get with the Soviets. The main battle for the direction of Republican policy over the past four decades has been between realists, who traditionally focus on other states power but are less concerned with their domestic politics, and neoconservatives, who looked for the United States to use its power to promote its ideals.

Neoconservatives applauded Reagans critique of the Nixon/Kissinger policy of detente (an easing of hostilities). When the Soviet Union disappeared in December 1991, the realism of George H.W. Bush, national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, and Secretary of State James Baker was dominant and was quickly attacked by the neoconservatives for not taking enough advantage of the Cold War victory to promote democracy across Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The realists and neoconservatives continued to argue throughout the 1990s, culminating in the battles in the George W. Bush administration over the war in Iraq.

Today, both realists and neoconservatives are united in their displeasure over U.S. foreign policy in general and Americas Russia policy in particular: simply peruse Scowcroft protege and Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haasss Twitter feed or his colleague Max Boots commentary. In the face of the intelligence communitys assessments of Russian interference in the 2016 election, the old GOP would have shown outrage. The new GOP seems to be trying to sweep the issue under the rug.

Trump is an outlier, but everyone is following

If Trump were a realist, he would be seeking to deal with Russia from a position of strength, not looking to accommodate Putin from the get-go. If he were a neoconservative, he would be pressing Putin on his abysmal human rights record. Instead, he is praising Putin for being strong and being tough. And it is unimaginable that any other president would have merely accepted Putins denial of election interference and moved on.

So why hasnt the GOP spoken up? Yes, there are occasional remarks by Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey O. Graham suggesting Donald Trump is getting hoodwinked by Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose efforts working with the Trump campaign to swing the 2016 presidential race are under daily scrutiny.

For the most part, however, GOP voters and GOP elites have shrugged off behavior that would have led to outrage in the past. Since it is hard to imagine that a Jeb Bush or Ted Cruz or even John Kasich would have been this accommodating of Putin, is the party of Ronald Reagan really prepared to become the party of Trump on foreign policy, especially in Americas relations with Russia?

The New York Times recently noted that some conservatives have admired Putin even before Trumps rise; today, a number of conservatives are cutting Trump slack because they see Putin as a strong leader willing to stand up for traditional values. But that does not explain why many other Republicans, particularly in Congress, have stayed so quiet even as the revelations pile up.

Republicans didnt pay attention to Russia for a long time

Part of the problem for the GOP is that the partys attention was elsewhere for so long. In the 1990s, with Russia weakened and seemingly embracing democracy during the Boris Yeltsin years, the neoconservatives turned their attention to China, Iraq and Iran. Realists, meanwhile, largely lost interest as Russias standing as a great power declined. While the 2008 Russia-Georgia war grabbed some attention, it wasnt really until Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 that many in the GOP dusted off the old Cold War playbook to attack Obama for not being tough enough. Coupled with the alternative conservative narrative about Putin as a strong leader, the GOPers who want to get tough on Russia face head winds, and theyre out of practice.

For now, Republican leaders like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan are saying as little as possible. Potential 2020 Republican candidates serving in the administration, such as Vice President Pence and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations,Nikki Haley, are doing their best to distance themselves from the swirling controversy. Across the GOP, there is fear of antagonizing Trumps base going into the 2018 midterm elections.

Are Republicans really ready to capitulate to Vladimir Putin, whose No. 1 foreign policy priorities since he became president have been to undermine U.S. power and create opportunities for Russia to flex its muscle? It is hard to imagine they are, but in the era of Trump, they appear to believe that keeping the Party together requires them to do so.

James Goldgeier is Dean of the School of International Service at American University.

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Republicans used to compare talking to Moscow to talking to Hitler. Trump's startling new tweet shows that's changed. - Washington Post