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WASHINGTON It was only a few months ago when Republicans routinely blasted the president for what they called his executive overreach and his failure to tout America's superiority over other nations. Not so much anymore.

Now that Barack Obama is out of the White House, Republicans have become noticeably quiet on a host of issues that used to spark their criticism.

In the last few days, President Donald Trump's actions have thrown the spotlight on three things Republicans don't seem to mind now that their fellow Republican is in charge:

RELYING ON EXECUTIVE ACTION:

For years, Republicans skewered Obama for allegedly ruling by fiat, accusing him of acting like an "emperor" for using executive orders to push through his agenda. That was especially true when it came to Obama's decision to protect from deportation more than 700,000 young immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children.

But now that Trump is in the White House, their tune has changed.

Trump has spent his first weeks in office relying on executive action to make good on a long list of campaign promises. Most controversial: His order suspending the country's refugee program and blocking immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries, which is now held up in court.

Asked recently if President Trump was doing the same thing as Obama, House Speaker Paul Ryan scoffed.

"It's quite the opposite," he told reporters at a recent GOP retreat, arguing that Obama had exceeded his power and that Trump was merely trying to reverse it.

"He's restoring the proper balance," said Ryan. "And in our opinion he is undoing a lot of damage that was done by the last president, who exceeded his power."

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FAILING TO EMBRACE AMERICAM EXCEPTIONALISM:

It was a running theme during Obama's tenure: The president, Republicans would argue, failed to embrace a brand of "American exceptionalism" that sees the U.S. as morally superior to other nations.

"We have a president right now who thinks America's just another nation," once-GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney said during a 2011 primary debate. "America is an exceptional nation."

Obama defended himself, saying in 2014 that he believed "in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being."

Trump doesn't seem worried about the criticism.

In an interview with Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly that aired over the weekend, Trump dismissed concerns about befriending Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"But he's a killer though. Putin's a killer," O'Reilly said.

"We've got a lot of killers," Trump responded. "Boy, you think our country's so innocent?"

Pressed on the exchange in an interview with CBS'S "Face the Nation," Vice President Mike Pence stumbled on the question of whether he and the president think America is morally superior to Russia.

But he eventually said: "I believe that the ideals that America has stood for throughout our history represent the highest ideals of humankind."

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CRITICIZING THE JUDICIARY:

In 2010, President Obama delivered a rare, in-person rebuke of the Supreme Court. During his State of the Union speech, with justices sitting in the audience, Obama criticized the court's decision in the Citizens United campaign finance case.

Obama opened his remarks by saying his criticism was "with all due deference to separation of powers," but then argued the ruling reversed "a century of law" that would open the floodgates to money from special interests.

Critics decried the move as a breach of decorum that politicized the court.

And Trump has launched his own offensive against the judiciary branch with personal attacks on the federal judge who halted his immigration order.

"The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!" Trump tweeted over the weekend.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on CNN that it was likely "best to avoid criticizing judges individually."

But Pence defended the president's actions, telling NBC's "Meet the Press" that "the president of the United States has every right to criticize the other two branches of government."

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Follow Colvin on Twitter athttps://twitter.com/colvinj

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Republicans mum as Trump adopts Obama tactics - Minneapolis Star Tribune

And yet, we are hearing no pieties about American lives from Republican leaders on Capitol Hill, no sense that the cause of the failure should be investigated, let alone that Trumps role in it should be a major investigative focal point.

It is through events like Benghazi that we see just how paper-thin the GOPs commitments to its most defining ideals really are. What Republicans have held forth as fundamental principles are, thanks to Trumps election, revealed as hollow bromides and shibboleths. Trump will likely be president for at least four years; but starting now, and through the eventual end of GOP rule, we never have to take Republican sanctimony at face value again, and their phoniness ought to be a commanding narrative of the Trump era.

Over the weekend, Trump referred to James Robart, a George W. Bush appointee who temporarily enjoined his anti-Muslim immigration order, as a so-called judge, and directed his Twitter followers to blame future terrorist attacks on Robart and the entire court system.

This is the second federal judge Trump has attacked directly and his most undisguised assault on the judiciary in general since he became a national political figure. With a handful of exceptionsSenate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell notably said its best not to single out judges for criticismRepublicans on Capitol Hill have decided to pretend nothing happened.

Given the understated nature of their response to Trumps shameless and dangerous assault on the integrity of the judiciary, would you believe that when President Obama politely disagreed with the Supreme Courts 2010 Citizens United decision

conservatives lost their minds?

Whereas Trumps efforts to discredit the judiciary need to be resisted, he is free, as far as Im concerned, to undermine the National Prayer Breakfast however he chooses. To that end, he couldnt have done better than plugging The Apprentice during his speech there last week. He asked attendees to pray for the shows ratings, knowing evangelical conservatives would stick their heads in the sand, as they have for all of Trumps unholy outrages.

It shouldnt be forgotten, though, that many of these same evangelicals were beside themselves (or claimed to be) when Obama implored Christian critics of Islam to be mindful of terrible things that have been done throughout history in the name of Jesus Christ.

Hypocrisy is a third-rate political crime. But it isnt just that conservatives apply different standards to different politicians on the basis of partisan affiliation; its that their appeals to like-minded voters are fraudulent. National security, rule of law, and religious faith are supposed to be central facets of conservative identity. Presumably some Republican voters around the country are genuinely motivated by conservative views on these issues. For the time being, its up to Democrats and the media to make clear to these voters that the GOPs commitment to their principles is illusory.

But eventually Trumps presidency will end, and just as quickly as they abandoned these pieties, Republicans will try to reclaim them. It will be a major failure of politics, and perhaps also the media, if they succeed in doing so. Republicans outed themselves when they submitted to Trump, and they cant be allowed to pretend it never happened.

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Never Believe the Republicans' BS Ever Again - New Republic

Two of the top Republicans in Congresson Mondaysaid they are pushing ahead with the plan to begin repealing ObamaCare this spring, despite any confusion caused by President Trump saying the process could spill into next year.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin BradyKevin BradyOvernight Healthcare: Republicans say ObamaCare repeal starts this spring Republicans: ObamaCare repeal starts this spring Four areas Republicans have moved to uproot Obamas legacy MORE (R-Texas) told reporters that he is working off of Speaker Paul RyanPaul RyanOvernight Healthcare: Republicans say ObamaCare repeal starts this spring Republicans: ObamaCare repeal starts this spring Bottom Line MOREs (R-Wis.) timeline of moving repeal legislation by the end of March.

Thats the timetable Im working off of, Brady said.

"We're continuing on a good, deliberate, but pretty steady pace," he added.

Sen. John CornynJohn CornynOvernight Healthcare: Republicans say ObamaCare repeal starts this spring Senate set for high-noonvote to confirm DeVos Republicans: ObamaCare repeal starts this spring MORE (R-Texas), the Senate's No. 2 Republican, told reporters that a repeal bill under the fast-track process called reconciliation could come up in the Senate even within the next 30 days.

Hopefully in the next 30 days or so, Cornyn said when asked when he thinks the reconciliation bill could come up.

That could be an ambitious timeline, given the thorny issues Republicans have to work through when it comes to repeal and replacement of ObamaCare.

Trumptold Fox Newson Sundaythat maybe itll take till sometime into next year to put forward a replacement plan, calling the process very complicated.

Asked about Trumps comments, Cornyn emphasized that the initial repeal bill under reconciliation is just the beginning of the process, and that a series of smaller bills will follow.

We've said all along we're going to start the process using budget reconciliation, but it's not going to be all in one piece of legislation, they'll be multiple steps, Cornyn said. You'll have to ask him what he meant, but I think it's going to take it's not going to be instantaneous, because there is going to need to be a transition period.

Putting off some elements of replacement in a step-by-step process, though, would call into question Trumps pledge to repeal and replace ObamaCare essentially simultaneously.

Congressional Republicans have said they could include elements of a replacement plan in the repeal bill. Yet they note that full replacement cannot pass under the fast-track rules of reconciliation that allow a measure to avoid a filibuster.

Trump has caught congressional Republicans off guard on ObamaCare before, like when he said last month that he would soon be putting forward his own replacement plan, something lawmakers said they had not heard of.

Republicans arefacing headwindsas they seek to promptly pass a repeal bill, though. Many Republican lawmakers are pushing to pass replacement at the same time, and there are tough disagreements on what the replacement should look like, including on how to handle ObamaCares expansion of Medicaid.

Lawmakers are also facing crowds of constituents pressuring them not to repeal the law.

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Republicans: ObamaCare repeal starts this spring - The Hill

Californias House Republicans have asked the Trump administration to block a pending federal grant that will ultimately support the states high speed rail project until an audit of the projects finances is completed.

The letter, signed by all 14 members of the states GOP delegation, including House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, was sent to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. Itcites cost increases, reductions in the projects scope and its failure to attract private financing.

Dated Jan. 24, the letter asks Chao to stop approval of a $650-million grant that the Transportation Department could make to the Bay Areas Caltrain commuter rail agency as early as next week aspart of an effort to install an electrical system. The bullet train would eventually use the same line from San Jose to San Francisco.

This latesteffort to at least temporarily derail the multibillion-dollar project comes at a particularly tense political moment.

President Trump on Sunday told a Fox News hostthatCalifornia in many ways is out of control and has vowed to cut funds to the state over immigration issues. But he has also said he will massively increase the nations infrastructure spending.

Trumps and Chaos view on the bullet train, the nations largest infrastructure project, is largely unknown. The unified position against further federal funding by the states own Republican representatives will be an early test of the new administrations direction.

California Democrats quickly countered the Republicans letter with one of their own, asking that the grant be approved, and charging that the Republicans letter misstated the fact that the grant was being sought by the rail authority, rather than the Caltrain joint powers board.

A spokesman for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) issued a statement Monday, saying the Republicans letter was rife with inaccuracies and innuendo and arguing that blocking the train would cost California thousands of jobs and make commutingbetween San Francisco and Silicon Valley, dirtier, slower and more crowded.

Rep. Jim Costa (D-Fresno), an early and staunch supporter, called the idea that the project is a waste of tax money false, adding: The positive impacts of High Speed Rail construction can be seen in my district and throughout the Central Valley.

The rail authority did not respond to a request for comment.

If the administration cuts off related money for thebullet train and attempts to enforce stricter controls on existing multibillion-dollar grants, it could cause significant stress on a project that is already facing increasing costs and schedule delays.

Ultimately, California may have no other choice than to increase its commitment of state tax money to Gov. Jerry Browns signature project, even as the statefaces a projected budget deficit.

The letter notes that the original cost of the bullet train was estimated about $33 billion for a system that would run from San Diego to Sacramento. Since then the cost has risen to $64 billion, while the scope of the project has been sharply curtailed.

It also cites a risk analysisby the Federal Railroad Administration projected a potential $3.5-billion increase in cost forthe first segment of the project from Merced to Shafter. The analysis was made public last month by The Times.

The GOP congressionalletter, which was obtained by The Times, says providing additional funding at this time to the authority would be an irresponsible use of taxpayers dollars. In light of the new revelations from the confidential FRA report, we request no further monies be granted to the [California High-Speed Rail] Authority or the state of California for high speed rail until a full and complete audit of the project and its finances can be conducted and those finding be presented to the public.

Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Turlock), chairman of the House rail subcommittee, has said repeatedly that serious problems in the project were not made public by the Obama Administration and has vowed to stop any future federal funding for a project that he had branded as a fiasco.

The Republican letter did not specify who would conduct the requestedaudit, but House staffers said it could be the Transportation Department inspector general or the Government Accountability Office. Such wide-ranging audits often take many months and once completed could be subject to congressional review or hearings that would take additional time.

The grant in questionis a key part of the $2-billion electrification project, which would convert Caltrains system from diesel locomotives to electric-powered cars. It was put into motion in the Obama Administrations closing days.

It requiresa 30-day notice to key members of Congress before it canbe approved. Thatwindow closes Feb. 17.

If the grant is not funded some time this month, it would have potentially devastating effects on the Caltrains electrification project, said Seamus Murphy, the rail systems chief communications officer.

The rail system, operated by a joint powers agency on the Peninsula, already has signed contracts that pledge to give a formal notice to begin work by March 1. If the agencyfails to provide that notice, it could incur penalties so severe that we might not be able to do the project, Murphy said.

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California Republicans ask Trump administration to block bullet train ... - Los Angeles Times

Fox and Friends, which for years counted Donald Trump as a regular call-in guest, has in recent weeks become a pillar of his defense. On Super Bowl weekend, the show's hosts talked about how Trump's friendship with New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft was the sort of story he should tell more often, and how reasonable policies such as the travel and refugee bans were being badly spun. On Sunday, a Fox and Friends co-host asked White House press secretary Sean Spicer if people are being paid to protest the Trump administration.

Protesting has become a profession now, Spicer said. They have every right to do that, dont get me wrong. But I think we need to call it what it is. Its not these organic uprisings that we have seen over the last several decades. The tea party was a very organic movement. This has become a very paid, Astroturf-type movement.

It was the clearest endorsement yet of an idea that has become taken for granted in conservative media that the protests hounding Republican members of Congress are fabricated by big money. The chief culprit is seen to be George Soros, a financier who has plowed hundreds of millions of dollars into progressive and pro-transparency causes since the 2004 election. That year, not only because of his money but also a speaking tour, Soros became a bte noire of the right, whose influence is seen wherever shadows loom, from the Syrian refugee crisisto the Holocaust.

"No, George Soros has not paid protesters or to transport protesters," said Soros spokesman Michael Vachon in an e-mail.

The idea that 2017's protests are Soros-backed largely came from a Jan. 10 article from the Media Research Center, headlined Soros Gave Nearly $90 Million to Liberal 'Women's March' Partners. The large list of Soros-aided Women's March co-sponsors, from Human Rights Watch to the Hip-Hop Caucus, was turned against the organizers and conflated with the idea that Soros had funded the march itself. (He did not.)

[How protesters plan to get under Trumps skin wherever he goes]

Similar stories about Soros's money ran on Breitbart and WorldNetDaily, among other sites, up to the march itself. Since then, viewers of Fox News Channel have been informed by both its hosts and by members of Congress that the protests were Soros-funded.

What Americans have to understand is that there is an organized effort to get Donald Trump out of office, Bill O'Reilly told viewers on Jan. 23. This is a largely unreported story. The Women's March over the weekend, a perfect example. That wasn't a spontaneous event. It was organized by far left groups, which received millions of dollars from the liberal activist George Soros. In fact, Soros has ties to 50 of the groups that attended the woman's march this weekend. Fifty. And according to the media research center, sources pumped $90 million into those groups. Some of the top of march organizers were members of the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton's campaign, Bernie Sanders campaign.

A week later, on The Five, co-host Greg Gutfield hinted that the protests so well-organized ahead of time, you know, to get on buses, to go places" -- might have a funding source. Other guests were more explicit.Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), a favorite of tea party activists in 2009 and 2010, said on Fox Business that the Democrats throwing up roadblocks to President Trump's nominees were doing it to please the megadonor.

They are winning over George Soros and his pocketbook, Blackburn said in a Jan. 30 interview. Because my understanding is he's the one who is funding a good bit of this.

Fox Business host Lou Dobbs has repeatedly dashed off references to Soros-funded protests, too. I've got to ask you about George Soros funding protests, demonstrations, lawsuits, Dobbs asked Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on Jan. 30. At what point does he become a subversive? I'm just curious.

I don't know, Jordan said. But what we do know is what we learned back during the campaign, when the Democrat Party was involved in disrupting Trump rallies. So we know what the left is capable of. We know what the Democrat Party was caught doing.

That was a reference to a sting, carried out by James O'Keefe's Project Veritas, that found a Wisconsin Democratic operative named Scott Foval bragging about how he'd helped bring protesters to 2016 Trump rallies and hoped for reckless Trump voters to embarrass themselves by starting fights.

We know what the national left-wing media is capable of, Dobbs said, and that is not covering it!

In reality, the mushrooming protests have been organized similarly to the very first tea party rallies, by novice political activists (some with campaign experience) getting permits or crowdsourcing their tactics. The Washington Post and other outlets have reported on the Working Families Party's Resist Trump Tuesdays, and the Indivisible Guide designed by former Democratic congressional staffers to share effective protest tactics. (According to a Lexis-Nexis search, no Fox News Channel prime time series has covered the Indivisible Guide.)

What has been missing, ironically, has been well-funded institutional support from progressive organizations. Some is in the planning stages, but it is running behind what helped the tea party in 2009. At that time, Americans for Prosperity, founded and then chaired by David Koch, was endorsing tea party events and recruiting activists to its formerly sleepy policy forums. (Americans for Prosperity has remained a grass-roots organizing juggernaut, especially in organizing the one-on-one lobbying of state legislatures.) FreedomWorks, which had tried and failed to spur anti-tax protests before 2009, similarly helped provide speakers for tea party rallies, and connected Republican candidates to a grass-roots base.

In 2009, Democrats responded to this with the same word that Spicer used: Astroturf. This [tea party] initiative is funded by the high end we call it Astroturf, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in an interview the morning of a wave of tea party rallies on April 15, 2009. Its not really a grass-roots movement. Its Astroturf by some of the wealthiest people in America to keep the focus on tax cuts for the rich instead of for the great middle class.

In hindsight, despite detailed reporting on the funding that helped grow the tea party, many Democrats view this framing as ineffective. (Only when the Koch network plunged more strategically into campaign funding though dark money did Democrats seem to win votes by attacking them.) The activists who were targeted by the Astroturf line remember it as not just ineffective, but immensely irritating.

I was annoyed then about the attacks from the left, and am still annoyed, said Brendan Steinhauser, who in 2009 and 2010 was director of grass-roots organizing at FreedomWorks. I certainly believe that while I disagree with the left's policies and politics, I think they should organize and protest, and make their case to the voters. They certainly have the right to do that, and that's their best option now given their recent electoral defeats. I'm not going to be inconsistent and call them Astroturf or attack them in the way they attacked us.

Greg Greene, who was a Democratic National Committee spokesman at the height of the Tea Party protests, recalled that the pushback didn't do much for his party.

"No one reacts well to hearing their sincere beliefs dismissed as the product of paid advocacy," said Greene. "If anything, that response entrenches the people who've been moved to protest in their antipathy toward the administration. That said, it's not as if Republicans might listen to any Dem saying, with experience, that this tactic doesn't work. But as Obama said on his way out of the White House, reality has a way of asserting itself."

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In echoes of 2009, Republicans see 'Astroturf' in Democratic protests - Washington Post