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President Trump attacks Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) The House and Senate have yet to agree to a budget, putting in play a government shutdown. None of the big items on which Republicans ran health care, taxes, pulling out of the Iran deal, building a wall have been accomplished. Its no wonder Republicans in the House and Senate are grossly unpopular:

According to a new CNN poll conducted bySSRS, with nearly seven in 10 (68%) judging the Republican Congress a failure so far after last months repeal and replace plan died in the Senate.Approval of the current Republican leaders in Congress has dropped from 39% in January to just 24% now. Seven in 10 say they disapprove of Republican leaders in the legislature. More broadly, only about a quarter of all Americans (24%) judge the Republican Congress a success so far. President Trump gets the approval of 38% of Americans in the CNN poll.

Even Republicans are not pleased with Republicans. (Republicans themselves are evenly split 44% to 44% on whether the GOP-led Congress has been a success or failure so far.) Democrats arent that much more popular (34 percent approve), but as the minority party they have the most to gain inthrow the bums out midterm elections. Moreover, as Democrats work hard to keep their base engaged, Republicans may have trouble turning out their side. (Views among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents of their partys congressional leadership has plummeted over the last eight months, falling from 75% approval in January to just 39% now. Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents views of their partys leadership remains basically unchanged at 50% today.) Moreover, a plurality (38 percent) of Americans blame Republicans in Congress specifically for not getting things done.

Trump can read the polls, so he likely figures that beating up on Republicans wont hurt him much. He continues to taunt McConnell. If he doesnt get repeal and replace done, and if he doesnt get taxes done meaning cuts and reform, and if he doesnt get a very easy one to get done infrastructure if he doesnt get them done, then you can ask me that question, the president told reportersThursday when asked if McConnell should keep his job. He refused to say explicitly if he wanted McConnell to be replaced: Ask me that question. Lets hope he get it done. Trumps smackdown may help shift blame from himself, capitalize on public anger andmaybe light a fire under Republicans.

Unfortunately for him, popular support for repealing and replacing Obamacare has lagged:

Moving forward, a majority of all Americans (56%) says Republicans should work with Democrats to make changes to current health care policy. The rest are divided: One in five say the GOP should both stop trying to repeal Obamacare completely (21%) and the same share say Republicans should keep trying to repeal it anyway (21%). Republicans themselves are split on this question: 45% say GOP leaders should continue trying to repeal Obamacare on their own, 42% that they should work with Democrats to make changes.

And finally, Democrats are benefiting from the gender divide. (Six in 10 women back Democrats for Congress in 2018, while men back Republicans by a slim 5-point margin.)

Looking at this data Trump, might benefit from dumping Republicans and looking to make deals with Democrats on infrastructure and repairing Obamacare. Trump has always been about his own wins, so why should he care which congressional party helps deliver what he wants? By the same token, if Democrats could strike a deal with Trump on, say, infrastructure, theyd undercut the rationale for GOP majorities in the House and Senate.

That strategy is fraught with peril for both sides, however. Democrats want no part of items Trump might demand (e.g., the wall) as part of a bipartisan deal, and they would just as soon see Trump fail, dragging down the GOP House and Senate with him. Meanwhile, Trump needs to keep the support of Republicans, who are the only ones that can confirm conservative judges, pass a giant tax cut and, most important, protect him from not only removal but also more serious inquiries that would explore his conflicts of interest and receipt of foreign money. Trump might revel in sticking a knife in the back of the party he inhabited to reach the White House, but as a practical matter, a president as weak as this one, with brewing legal problems and waning support from the GOP base, cannot afford to be friendless.

In short, voters dont like Republicans in Congress, who these days dont much like Trump, who doesnt like Republicans but cannot afford to lose GOP majorities. Democrats would like nothing better than to see Trumps attacks and GOP inertia depress the GOP midterm electorate, but not if it means giving Trump wins he so desperately needs. In sum, no one likes much of anyone these days but neither do they want to risk blowing up the partisan status quo. That means we should be prepared for plenty of sniping and very little legislation.

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Republicans' biggest worry: A wave election against do-nothing lawmakers - Washington Post

If a presidential election were held today, President Trumps approval ratings suggest he would be in deep trouble. The good news for Trump is he doesnt have to face voters again until 2020 (though the fate of his Republican allies in 2018 is a different question). But what if he didnt have to face the voters then, either?

In The Washington Post on Thursday, two professors revealed the results of a poll that asked some Republican voters that question. Using a scientific online survey, the authors asked GOP supporters whether theyd be willing to postpone voting in the 2020 election if President Trump said it was necessary to make sure only eligible voters participated. More than half52 percentsaid they would, and that number bumped up to 56 percent in a scenario in which congressional Republicans agreed with the president.

A presidential election has never been delayed, and temporary delays for pretextual reasons in other countries have often been a prelude to leaders attempting to bypass democratic control. Cue the horrified reaction: Republicans hate democracy! Trump is a totalitarian! But take a deep breaththe poll shows something horrifying about American democracy, but its probably not that.

First, there are some good reasons to be dubious about the results. The authors include a doozy of a to-be-sure paragraph, noting that their situation is a hypothetical, and if it were actually attempted it would produce strong backlash, including from Republicans, crash markets, and probably fail to pass constitutional muster.

But thats just a start. The researchers note that before asking respondents whether they would support delaying the election, they asked several other questions:

Respondents were asked whether Trump won the popular vote, whether millions of illegal immigrants voted, and how often voter fraud occurs. These questions evoke arguments frequently made by Trump and others about the integrity of the 2016 election.

In other words, the respondents were primed to be thinking about Trumps (spurious) claims of widespread voter fraud, already shading their impressions before they got to the central question. Pollsters and political scientists long ago showed that the sequence and tone of questions can help determine the way people will answer the question. Thats especially true with the idea of delaying the election, which few voters will have considered since its not a topic of open debate. Poll respondents often offer what are called doorstep opinions: Theyd rather answer a question than admit they havent thought about it. As the Harvard government professor Ryan Enos put it on Twitter, Ask people about something complex they've never considered and tell them somebody they trust supports it and they will also support it.

Besides, there are lots of dubious partisan views that show up in polls. Respondents consistently say things that are counterfactual or plainly nuts. How many voters really believed that Barack Obama was a Muslim, or born in Kenya? Probably fewer than told pollsters they did. Even the belief that Trump won the popular vote, which has shown up in other polls, could fall under the same umbrella. As Julian Sanchez has argued, such results look like symbolic beliefs, offered mostly to affirm fidelity to a party or politician. In the early 90s, bumperstickers suggested, Annoy the media: Re-elect Bush. In todays even more polarized, media-hating environment, the temptation to annoy the media, liberals, and Republican elites alike by backing outlandish ideas in polls is even stronger.

These weaknesses are not confined to Republican voters. The delayed-election result feeds the prejudices of progressives whose reaction to Trump is the potent cocktail of ridicule (those idiots!) and terror (those idiots are in charge!). But Democrats have sometimes expressed equally worrying views in polls. In the summer of 2016, for example, a pollster found that two-thirds of Democratic voters would trade an unconstitutional third term for Obama if it meant avoiding either Clinton or Bush. Perhaps you think, They must have been joking, and would never have followed through. But thats just the point: What happens in polling often stays in polling. (That gives us reasons to take polls like this with a grain of salt. But as Brendan Nyhan writes, it doesnt let people off the hook for unwise statements. Where can one draw the line between real and partisan beliefs?)

A better way to think about the delayed-election poll is in a broader context of eroding democratic norms. For the last few months, since shortly before the election, the Harvard lecturer Yascha Mounk has been publicly warning that voter support for bedrock principles of democracy is waning, both in the U.S. and overseas. Polls suggest the American public has never been as skeptical of democracy or as open to authoritarian alternatives like military rule as it is right now, Mounk wrote in October.

Thats particularly true among younger people, the cohort that will gradually make up a larger and larger share of the population. Fewer of them think its very important to live in a democracy. About a quarter of young Americans say democracy is a bad way to run a government. Theyre more open to a strong, authoritarian leader. Theres other evidence of this tendency in other places. A 2015 Pew Poll found that 40 percent of Millennials think censorship of offensive views would be acceptable.

Thats where Trump comes in. Even if the delayed-election poll is dubious, it is true that Trump was elected on a platform that was unusually, and in some cases pointedly, authoritarian. He has raged against the independent judiciarys check on his power. He supported a registry of Muslims that he could not or would not differentiate from Nazi religious registries. The president shows little regard for norms of all types, encouraging an iconoclastic tendency in society. At a time in which democratic norms are in question, it might be useful to have a president who could calm and reassure the population, but instead, the president has encouraged a more authoritarian mindset.

The bedrock principles of American democracy are often more revered than actually believed. The nation has often violated these principles, and with less sober political leadership at certain points in the past, many voters might have been willing to go much further. This is a much greater danger than Trumps shrinking base supporting a hypothetical delayed election three years from now: that a tendency toward illiberalism spread throughout society will be encouraged by a president with little interest in democratic norms.

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Do Republicans Actually Want to Postpone the 2020 Election? - The Atlantic

Six weeks before the government is set to run out of money to pay its bills, congressional Republicans are trying to cobble together an agreement to skirt a dramatic showdown within their own caucus.

Four Republican congressional sources told The Daily Beast that GOP lawmakers have explored attaching a clean increase of the debt limit to an unrelated, popular, potentially-bipartisan piece of legislation rather than vote on it as a stand-alone measure.

This approach has been used non-controversially in the past, usually via spending bills. But in recent years, conservative lawmakers have tried to use the prospect of a debt-ceiling-triggered default, and the potentially massive economic consequences that come with it, to secure domestic spending cuts.

Republican leaders are now trying to find a way to win over enough lawmakers to prevent that standoff. But the problem they face is finding the type of legislation that would both serve as a vessel for lifting the debt ceiling, and be so agreeable that the Houses influential bloc of around three dozen conservatives, the Freedom Caucus, wont try to block it.

The party could ultimately end up passing such a measure with the help of Democratic votes. But doing so would risk inflaming intra-party tensions at a time when GOP leadership is already finding it difficult to keep those tensions in check. The government reaches its federal borrowing limit at the end of September.

The efforts by Republicans to find a debt ceiling work-around is another reflection of the diminished leverage that the Freedom Caucus has heading into the potentially bruising fight. Already, the Trump administration has said it wants Congress to pass a clean, no-strings-attached debt ceiling hike, with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin explicitly conveying this message to the Freedom Caucus during a meeting in July. (An aide told The Daily Beast that Mnuchin faced strong pushback.)

Moreover, GOP leadership has signaled that it, too, wants a drama-free resolution to the debt ceiling debate. Earlier this summer, Republican leaders explored attaching a clean debt ceiling hike to a Veterans Affairs reform bill, according to two aides and one lawmaker who requested anonymity to reveal private negotiations. But they ultimately passed the bill through without that provision, and Trump signed it into law in June.

Further complicating matters for GOP leadership is that the debt ceiling hike isnt the only tough vote that they will have to take once they return from the August recess. The party is considering passage of a new authorization of Obamacare subsidies that health care officials say are instrumental for the individual market, and which most GOP senators have said theyd support. It will be a heavy lift to get those cost-sharing-reduction (CSR) payments through the House on top of a request for a debt ceiling hike.

One concern among conservatives in the chamber is that the two measuresa debt ceiling hike and continuation of the CSR paymentswill be thrown into the same legislative package with the goal of ramming it through the chamber with, potentially, bipartisan support. Freedom Caucus members would strongly oppose it.

Think about how wrong that would be. Thats increasing the credit card limit, at the same time youre increasing spending, and also, by the way, youre going to throw in a bailout for the insurance companies. I dont think that makes a lot of sense, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), a Freedom Caucus member, told The Daily Beast in an interview.

On the other end of the spectrum, Rep. Charlie Dent (R-PA), a member of the moderate Tuesday Group caucus, urged Congress to take a holistic approach to addressing these deadlines. He encouraged lawmakers to come up with a bipartisan, bicameral budget agreement to which they could attach a clean debt ceiling increase; all before the end of September.

I would do those things together, Dent said in an interview. If history is any judge, too often our leadership tries to make it easier for the no votes rather than the yes votes, when it comes to the debt ceiling.

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The likelihood of lawmakers being able to accomplish all of that, however, seems slim. Major, substantive disagreements remain apparent within the Republican party and even non-Freedom Caucus members, like Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK), have said they would likely defy the Trump administrations request for a clean debt ceiling hike. Beyond that, there are only 12 legislative days in September before the debt limit is reached.

Thats whats so frustrating. I thought there was actually going to be part of the time in August that we were going to be there, Jordan said. And voters find that just ridiculous. And its why we shouldve stayed. So when we get back, well see.

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Congressional Republicans Are Scrambling for a Debt-Ceiling Workaround - Daily Beast

It is almost impossible to overstate how important a role crony capitalism played in the right-wing critique of Barack Obamas policies. It was the heart of Mitt Romneys charge that Obama was smothering the economy. (Hes been practicing crony capitalism. And if you want to get America going again youve got to stop the spread of crony capitalism.) Elites in Washington should NOT be picking winners & losersthats a recipe for a closed economyfor cronyism, said Paul Ryan. Obamacare represented corporate Americas worst crony-capitalist impulses, charged Marco Rubio.

The denunciations of crony capitalism served two crucial purposes. It dramatized the Republicans belief that the tea-party insurgency had cleansed them of the corruption and failure of the Bush administration, for which they could no longer be held responsible. And it likewise allowed conservatives to deflect the charge that they favored the rich it was Obama who favored the powerful, through his support for policies like green-energy loans and the auto bailout that saved selected industries. Republicans stood for an impartial government that allowed the invisible hand to work its magic.

That idea, so central to the partys self-conception, has fallen by the wayside in the Trump era. Obviously Trump himself has never had any use for free-market dogma, having spent his career as a developer seeking government favors for his business, and then seamlessly transitioning into using his public powers for self-enrichment. But Trumps casual disregard for a once-cherished conservative principle has been widely shared within his party.

West Virginia governor Jim Justice, who just switched his party registration from Democratic (which was tenuous) to Republican, proposes that the federal government spend $4.5 billion a year to support his states coal industry. It is not only that Justice believes coal in general needs to be subsidized in relation to the cheaper, cleaner energy sources that are beating it out. He believes Appalachian coal in particular needs support vis--vis coal from the West. The survivability of the Eastern coalfields is very, very iffy, Justice says. And if you lose the Eastern coalfields, you are putting the country at risk beyond belief.

In Wisconsin, Governor Scott Walker is pushing a $3 billion package of state tax incentives, which could be paid out in straight cash, for Foxconn to build a plant in his state. Under the most generous assumptions, a study concludes, it would take the state 25 years to break even. The unemployment rate in Wisconsin is already 3.2 percent, and as Danielle Paquette points out, Employers there already complain about having trouble finding workers.

The plant would be located in Paul Ryans district, and the House Speaker has played an instrumental role both in wooing Foxconn and pleading with the state legislature to approve the massive cost. Obviously I tell state lawmakers, lets get this done, he says.

Kevin Seifert, an adviser to Ryan explains, In Wisconsin, you are judged on results if you are actually improving peoples lives. Not freedom and capitalism? Results? Improving peoples lives? It is almost impossible to defend the Foxconn deal on that basis anyway, unlike the maligned energy loans in the stimulus or the auto bailout, which produced huge public benefits at little cost. But the mere fact that improving peoples lives is the standard shows that the Obama-era posture of strict free-market purity has been relegated to a historical relic. The conservative movements hair-on-fire posture against Obama, whose socialist radicalism was allegedly snuffing out the last vestige of economic liberty, rested substantially on the strict application of a principle of convenience.

Kim Jong-un might not care about wiping the tiny U.S. territory off the map, but he does want Americans to think he might.

Why a shocking poll tells us a lot about the state of the party.

The president finds a way to undo all the clean-up the White House just did on his fire and fury comments.

Bloomberg says Robert Mueller is working hard to turn the former Trump campaign manager into an asset for the prosecution.

Republicans block early voting opportunities in areas favoring Democrats, while expanding them on their own turf.

Sam Clovis, nominee for the Department of Agricultures chief scientist, has a history of troubling statements.

The U.S. has expelled two Cuban diplomats in retaliation.

It made for a bizarre scene, captured on video by one subway passenger.

A central tenet of Obama-era conservatism dies a quiet, lonely death.

An analysis of approval data shows Trump struggling with college-educated white voters, and even with his blue-collar base, in battleground states.

Billionaire Robert Mercer has already ponied up $300,000 to evict Jeff Flake from the Senate for sullying Donald Trumps good name.

If Trump said it was delayed to prevent voter fraud, 52 percent would support him, a new survey shows.

Fear of a Trumpocalypse is helping too.

Their unsuccessful effort to gut the Affordable Care Act spooked insurers and helped drive up premiums for next year.

Seemingly undeterred by Trumps red line, they offered more details on their potential plan to strike the U.S. territory.

Allies of the Venezuelan president are swiftly cracking down on the opposition.

The Senate Majority Leader suggests Trumps impatience led to Trumpcares defeat. Trump thinks McConnell is just making excuses.

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Republicans Fall Back in Love With Crony Capitalism - New York Magazine

Austin Petersen is trying to pull off a difficult task: doubling the number of libertarian-leaning Republicans in the U.S. Senate.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., was re-elected just last year with 57.3 percent of the vote in a mostly quiet election cycle for Republicans inspired by his father's two GOP presidential campaigns. He is so far the only one to make it into the upper chamber.

"Libertarians have a messaging problem, not an ideas problem," said Petersen, 36. Ambitious and energetic, he is running for Senate in Missouri, a state President Trump carried by nearly 19 points in November, hoping to win the Republican nomination to challenge incumbent Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill.

Maine state Sen. Eric Brakey, 29, is running on a similar platform to become the Republican challenger to Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats. "He's much less of a Bernie Sanders independent and much more of a Hillary Clinton corporatist type who hands out favors to big-government cronies," Brakey said of his would-be opponent.

"Angus King has been around in politics in the state for as long as I've been alive," said Brakey. "There's a big opportunity here in the state of Maine for us to pick up this U.S. Senate seat."

Both Petersen and Brakey plan to run to the right of the Democrats on fiscal issues while expanding the Republican coalition by hitting their opponents on criminal justice reform and corporate welfare.

"Conservatism runs deep in both parties here," said Petersen. "Even the Democrats in Missouri are very strongly traditional on issues like abortion and gun rights." Yet he believes he could do better appealing to African-American voters in places like St. Louis County, where criminal justice issues boiled over in Ferguson, than more conventional Republicans. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., squeaked through to another term by three points last year even as Trump was winning the state handily.

"I see this in my own state senate races," said Brakey. "A constitutionalist, libertarian message can appeal to the very strong conservative base of the Republican Party while also appealing to independents and even socially liberal voters."

Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, is the most established figure who is popular with the libertarian wing of the party who will try his hand at a statewide race next year. Labrador, a Freedom Caucus member, announced in May that he is running for governor. "Idaho needs a proven conservative leader who will stand against the special interests and politicians that have picked the winners and losers in our state Capitol for too long," he said in a statement.

Former Texas Rep. Ron Paul served 12 terms in the House as a Republican, most of them in obscurity, before becoming a national political figure with his 2008 presidential bid. He ran a second time in 2012, nearly doubling his raw primary vote total to more than 2 million and finishing in the top three in both Iowa and New Hampshire.

That was good enough to get other like-minded candidates to run as Republicans on platforms that included opposing the Iraq war, ending the Federal Reserve and making deep cuts to federal spending. Paul's son Rand was first elected to the Senate in the Tea Party wave of 2010. Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., won his House seat that same year. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., joined them in 2012.

Since those quick early victories, the momentum has stalled. The elder Paul retired from Congress. His son was believed to have a legitimate chance of capturing the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, but saw Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and even the populist upstart Trump steal some of his base. The younger Paul dropped out after a disappointing finish in Iowa, a state where his father's supporters briefly captured the party leadership and won him a majority of the unbound delegates four years earlier.

Petersen has picked an easy general election target in McCaskill, who is widely considered to be one of the most vulnerable Democrats up for re-election in 2018. "You could beat her just by calling her Obama's senator or Hillary's senator," said Jeff Roe, a Missouri-based Republican strategist. When one pollster tested several potential GOP candidates against McCaskill, Roe said, "Everyone beat her."

But you can't make it to the general without winning the primary first, which will be no easy feat. Republican insiders consider Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley, who opened an exploratory committee earlier this month, the overwhelming favorite. The national party and conservative outside groups are prepared to devote considerable resources to supporting Hawley.

If anyone is able to put a roadblock in the way of Hawley's nomination, Republicans familiar with the race expect it will be Missouri Treasurer Eric Schmitt, who garnered national interest himself. Petersen may not even have the libertarian wing all to himself as state Rep. Paul Curtman, a 2012 Ron Paul endorser, launched an exploratory committee in July.

Petersen sought the Libertarian Party presidential nomination last year, although he won praise for his strong stand against abortion from conservatives seeking an alternative to Trump. The eventual nominee, Gary Johnson, and his running mate, William Weld, both former Republican governors, supported abortion rights.

King is at present heavily favored for re-election in Maine. There has been persistent speculation about whether Gov. Paul LePage will enter the race on the Republican side.

"The Rand Pauls of the world, when they come along, great," said Cliff Maloney, president of Young Americans for Liberty. "But we need to start building a bench at the local level."

The focus on national races has obscured some libertarian Republican successes in local contests, Maloney said, such as the mayor's offices in Aberdeen, Md., and Ocean Springs, Mississippi. "There's a big difference in perception between running as local schmuck versus local mayor," he added. "It's really about having credibility."

"Everyone starts as a guy in the community," said Brakey. "But it's a lot easier to run for mayor, or run for state senator and try to prove yourself before you run for Congress. People take you a lot more seriously."

The libertarian message for government may apply to politics too. "It's better," he said, "to start small."

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Libertarian Republicans seek Rand Paul reinforcements - Washington Examiner