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On Sunday Sen. Bernie Sanders I-Vt., said it wascompletely unacceptable that the Senate Republicans have been secretively handling their health care proposal that would repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act in a closed-door process.

During an interview on Face the Nation host John Dickerson asked Sanders if he was on board with halting all Senate business because Senate Republicans are designing their health care bill in total secrecy. I believe it is 10 Republicans working behind closed doors to address 1/6th of the American economy. Thats what health care is. Republicans. The average Republican doesnt even know whats in that legislation, Sanders explained.

My understanding is that it will be brought forth just immediately before we have to vote on it. This is completely unacceptable, he added. I mean, nobody can defend a process which will impact tens of millions of Americans and nobody even knows whats in the legislation.

The most important part, according to Sanders, is that the Republicans have purposely kept the proposal hidden because its a disastrous bill.

Who is going to defend cutting Medicaid by $800 billion at the same time as you give massive tax breaks to the wealthiest 2 percent? So they want to keep it secret. They dont want the media involved. They dont want members of Congress involved. And in the last minute, they present it. They push it through, Sanders explained.

Sanders also said that the health care bill that passed in the House at the beginning of May was the worst piece of legislation frankly against working class people that I can remember in my political life in the Congress.

But Sanders is far from the only one who has taken issue with theclosed-door process, even some Republicans have spoken out about it. On Sunday Sen. Marco Rubio R-Fla., who was also on Face the Nation criticized his own colleagues and said, The Senate is not a place where you can just cook up something behind closed doors and rush it for a vote on the floor.

Especially on an issue like this, Rubio added.

Originally posted here:
The average Republican doesn't even know what's in that legislation: Bernie Sanders blasts GOP on health care An ... - Salon

Ever since Donald Trump became president, wary Republican elites have believed he was an anomalya unique candidate who owed his success to celebrity appeal and weak opposition, despite some noxious views and behavior. Take away Trump the person, they believed, and there would be no Trump phenomenon.

That viewpoint got a rude wake-up call this week, in a Virginia Republican primary that wasnt supposed to be a contest at all. And while the GOP establishments preferred candidate still won, the surprise result showed theres still a substantial appetite in the partys base for the populist impulses Trump represents.

Virginia elects governors in the odd-numbered years after presidential elections, and this year, it was Democrats whose primary looked like a pitched battle. Two well-credentialed progressivesone the sitting lieutenant governor, the other a former congressman and Obama administration officialwere locked in a battle for the partys soul. But despite polling showing a tight race, the Democratic establishment candidate, Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, pulled out an easy win, defeating Tom Perriello by a 12-point margin.

On the Republican side, meanwhile, Ed Gillespie expected to coast to an easy victory over his main challenger, Corey Stewart, a Trump acolyte who highlighted his hard line on immigration and support for Confederate monuments. It doesnt get much more establishment than Gillespie, a former D.C. lobbyist and chairman of the Republican National Committee. Polls had shown Gillespie up by 20 points over Stewart, a local county board chairman. Gillespie had all the major endorsements and many times as much money as Stewart.

But off-year elections, where turnout varies wildly and partisans are often late to decide, are devilishly difficult to poll. Virginia primaries have defied the pollsters before: In 2014, grassroots conservatives delivered a shocking defeat to Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, just weeks after Cantors pollster had told him he was winning by 34 points.

In this case, Gillespie and Stewarts vote totals hovered within a point of each other for hours after the polls closed. Gillespie was finally declared the winner by just over 1 percentage point, drawing 43.7 percent of the vote to Stewarts 42.5 percent.

I spent the weekend before Tuesdays vote following Stewart and Gillespie, on the theory that their primary was an early test of the Trump eras most pressing political question: whether the unorthodox new president represents a long-term political realignment or just a weird one-off. Had Gillespie walked away with the primary as expected, it might have been evidence that the Republican fever had broken, and that the GOP was looking to return to business as usual with sensible, practical candidates rather than race-baiting firebrands.

Virginia isnt exactly Trump country: The state went for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and Trump won the states primary by a narrow margin over Marco Rubio. Despite its Southern geography, Virginia today is an urban, transient, diverse, highly educated state, where many local Republican activists are wealthy consultants and lobbyists like Gillespie. When I went to see Gillespie campaign at a local fair, I met one such activist, a former mining-industry lobbyist who lives in the D.C. suburbs. Gillespies campaign was premised on the notion that Virginia Republicans were looking for a candidate who, while not openly repudiating Trump, was the polar opposite of Trump in temperament and orientation, emphasizing tax cuts and economic growth over culture-war controversies.

Stewarts theory was the opposite: that Trump changed everything and showed what the GOP base was really looking for. Serving as the Trump campaigns Virginia state chairman last October, he led activists in a march on the RNC headquarters, where he charged that the establishment pukes were undermining Trumps campaign. (He was fired for the stunt.) Last weekend, Stewart told me he had warmed to Reince Priebus, the former RNC chairman now serving as White House chief of staff, but still believed the Republican establishment was hampering Trumps presidency.

The Stewart supporters I spoke to, at a campaign rally in a diner in Fredericksburg, were galvanized by his nationalist message. There were numerous Confederate flag bumper stickers in the parking lot, and one woman wore a stars-and-bars hat with the word REBEL. They told me they were disgusted with Republican leaders like House Speaker Paul Ryan, and put all their faith in Trump.

On Tuesday, there turned out to be a lot more of these types of Republican voters than Ed Gillespie expected.

Trump had an effect on the Democratic side of Tuesdays primary as well. More than they competed on policy, the Democrats vied to be the most virulently anti-Trump, with the winner, Northam, airing an ad in which he called the president a narcissistic maniac. And Democrats were clearly energized: More than 540,000 turned out to vote in the Democratic primary, compared to 370,000 in the Republican primary.

In Fredericksburg, I asked Stewart if he believed Trump had changed the face of American politics. Thats what this election is going to help answer, Stewart replied. He certainly was a different kind of Republican. The question is, did that start a new era in Republican politics? Or are we going to revert back to the same old same old, with more establishment candidates winning nominations?

Stewart, of course, believed he was going to win, and he didnt. But in coming as close as he did, he gave the Republican establishment a scareand showed that a sizable portion of the GOP base doesnt want to go back to business as usual. Far from being weary of the controversial and unorthodox president, a lot of Republicans want more candidates like Trump.

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Virginia's Wake-Up Call to the GOP Establishment - The Atlantic

New York Times

Alexandria Gunman Carried List With Names of 3 Republican Lawmakers New York Times WASHINGTON The gunman who targeted Republican congressmen this week at a baseball field in suburban Washington was carrying a list with the names of at least three lawmakers, and had pictures of the ballpark stored on his cellphone, two law ... Scalise shooter James Hodgkinson had list of Republican lawmakers' namesFox News List of Republican congressmen found with baseball practice shooterCNN Congressional Baseball Shooter Hated Republicans, Has Died of InjuriesSlate Magazine (blog) USA TODAY -Twitchy -POLITICO Magazine -Washington Post all 1,573 news articles »

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Alexandria Gunman Carried List With Names of 3 Republican Lawmakers - New York Times

New York Times

The Shooting Attack on Republican Lawmakers New York Times On Wednesday morning there was a shooting at a baseball field filled with Republican members of Congress practicing for a charity game. Only the diligence of their police protectors prevented a mass killing. The gunman has been identified as a ... Dems Win Congressional Baseball Game, Give Trophy to Republican Steve ScaliseBreitbart News Democrats Down Republicans, Both Down the RhetoricRoll Call Somber Republicans miss Scalise in first post-shooting meetingCNN International ESPN -New York Magazine -The Atlantic all 5,575 news articles »

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The Shooting Attack on Republican Lawmakers - New York Times

Now that the U.S. House Of Representatives, a swirling vortex of lobbyists and guys who did thousands of chest bumps in their college fraternities, has passed the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, and then celebrated by cackling at the thought of watching millions lose their coverage and die for the sake of a slight reduction in taxes (though not while chugging Bud Light, let us remember), its time for the Senate to take action. This more elite and august body was constructed by the founding fathers to act as a check upon the passions of the more impulsive body of legislators in the lower house, a means whereby, We pour our legislation into the senatorial saucer to cool it, George Washington is reputed to have said. Certainly, pouring it out of the boiling cauldron of enfant terribles who crafted a health care bill so shitty, those same sponsors made sure to exempt themselves from its regulations, is probably a wise idea.

Naturally, given the tempestuous nature of this debate, its important to have the wise and sage elected officials of the Senate put their heads together and come up with a superior version of the bill. Because when a president so mean he publicly mocks the handicapped says your bill is mean, mean, mean, its smart to revisit some of its components. So these esteemed congresspeople have been drafting their own version, reportedly just taking the house version and messing around with it in hopes of coming up with something that makes them look less like assholes. And given there is literally not a single state that favors the bill, there must surely be some changes and improvements made on this bill that is supposedly being voted on very soon, right?

According to a series of interviews conducted by Vox, not so much. The site spoke with eight Republican senators, all of whom happily went on the record to give a series of answers to simple, elementary-level questions about whats in their version of the billor even just what they hope is in their version of the bill, basic things they might want it to includeand every single one tap-danced like it was the climax of On The Town.

It just goes on like that. In the face of cruel and life-ending Machiavellian ideas to strip Americans of the meager protections they possess, to treat being a woman as a pre-existing condition, and to transfer the burden of paying for all of it onto the backs of the poorest and most needy in the country, the alternative is literally people who have no ideas at all.

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Originally posted here:
Oh good, Republican senators have no idea what's up with their own healthcare bill - A.V. Club