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Trump, Putin and Republicans Wall Street Journal An American President has enormous leeway on foreign policy, and generally that's better than being micromanaged by Congress. But there are exceptions, and one of them could be President Trump and Russia. Mr. Trump has made eminently clear he ... Republicans concerned, Russians pleased with Trump's moral relativism on state-sanctioned killingPRI On Russia, Trump Is a Code Pink RepublicanBloomberg Republicans seek distance from Trump's comments on Putin, USCNBC Politico -New York Magazine -Los Angeles Times -Fox News Insider all 951 news articles »

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Trump, Putin and Republicans - Wall Street Journal

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At public events, Republicans hounded over anti-health care plans MSNBC More than 1,000 people gathered in front of a venue that could seat 200, and many of those who got inside protested McClintock, a conservative who represents one of the state's few safe Republican seats, for favoring the president's executive orders on ... and more »

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At public events, Republicans hounded over anti-health care plans - MSNBC

The sentiment is beginning to simmer within the influential conservative wing of the Republican Party and hints at what could be the opening of an intra-party rift as the GOP's mission to overhaul the country's health care system appears to be losing steam.

In one faction are lawmakers increasingly wary of the pitfalls of a quick and sweeping repeal of the Affordable Care Act. In recent days, top congressional Republicans who are most intimately involved in health care policy have urged moderation: Fearing the consequences of a rapid repeal, they have begun to speak of "repairing" the law and even preserving aspects of it that are working.

That shift in tone has irked other Republicans who are eager to take a swift vote to roll back as much of Obamacare as possible. Their fear: their conservative constituents back home won't settle for anything else.

"For goodness sake, we should be able to put something on President Trump's desk that's at least as good as what we put on President Obama's desk. Not something watered down," Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told CNN in an interview. "Let's repeal it. Let's do what the voters sent us here to do."

Asked about the political ramifications of repealing less than what the House has voted for in the past, Jordan responded forcefully. "That'd just be the flat out wrong thing to do. No. Just flat out wrong," he said.

Even Trump now seems to lower expectations. In an interview with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly that aired before the Super Bowl Sunday, Trump referred to the process of overhauling the health care system as "very complicated" and wouldn't commit to a firm timeline on when an Obamacare alternative would be rolled out.

For the most conservative members of the House, that timeline might be unacceptable.

Jordan, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, along with the group's chairman, Rep. Mark Meadows, released a statement last week calling on House leadership to bring for a vote the Obamacare repeal bill that the House passed during the last Congress. (That measure was vetoed by President Barack Obama.)

House Speaker Paul Ryan and other top Republicans are currently crafting a similar budget reconciliation bill that would unravel big chunks of the law. But that process has become complicated by pressure to include Obamacare replacement measures in that legislation.

Ryan said at a news conference last week that he now hopes to move Obamacare legislation by the end of March.

Meadows told CNN that the party needs to move much faster.

"I don't know that there's any new revelations that are going to come up by waiting 60 to 90 more days," Meadows said. "We're making the whole idea of repeal and replacement far more complex and laborious than it needs to be and I think it's time that we just make some decisions and move forward with (the repeal bill)."

On considering anything less than what was voted on in 2015, Meadows quipped: "You don't get any credit with any of your constituents if you do that."

It's not clear how widespread the calls to vote on the 2015 Obamacare repeal bill could become.

But when members of the House Freedom Caucus gather for their weekly dinner in Washington early this week, they plan to discuss the topic and try to garner broader support, according to a source.

Meadows and Jordan said they support voting on a replacement bill at the same time as the repeal legislation, and are exploring potential legislation that they could rally around.

Last week, members of the Freedom Caucus met with Sen. Rand Paul to discuss the Kentucky Republican's Obamacare legislation and a potential cross-chamber partnership. Paul has been adamant that an Obamacare alternative must be ready before the GOP votes to repeal the law -- a priority echoed by many fellow Republicans.

Reassuring the public that the GOP won't allow millions to suddenly lose coverage will become an increasingly urgent task, as Republican lawmakers start to receive blowback from constituents for dismantling the Affordable Care Act at town halls across the country.

Doug Heye, who served as top aide to former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, scoffed at the complaints coming from some Republicans that the party isn't voting to repeal Obamacare quickly enough.

Heye, a CNN political commentator, witnessed first-hand the party's months-long effort in 2014 to craft an Obamacare replacement bill -- an exercise that didn't go anywhere.

"I can tell you chapter and verse about 2014 and all the meetings that I went to on replacement where we never produced draft legislation," Heye said. "We could do the repeal vote -- that was easy. Then we tried to craft the replacement legislation, which not having the Senate and not having the White House -- it was still very much of a political act. And now it's more than that."

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Republicans begin to grumble: Why haven't we repealed Obamacare yet? - CNN

(Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)

President Trump offered a fulsome defense of Russian President Vladimir Putin over the weekend, leaving Republican lawmakers frustrated and flummoxed yet again by the presidents warm feelings toward the rival nation.

In a Fox News interview, Trump, who during the campaign repeatedly praised Putin, again said that he respected the Russian leader and hoped to get along with Moscow, and he seemed to equate the United States with its adversary when pressed by host Bill OReilly, who said:But hes a killer, though. Putins a killer.

There are a lot of killers, Trump said in the interview, which aired Sunday before the Super Bowl. Weve got a lot of killers. What do you think? Our countrys so innocent?

Trumps comments came even as his U.N. envoy, Nikki Haley, on Thursday condemned Russias aggressive actions in eastern Ukraine and as both the Senate and House intelligence committees launched investigations into alleged hacking by Russia of the U.S. election that the intelligence community believes was intended to benefit Trump.

The issue of Russia dogged Trumps presidential campaign including after a news conference at which he suggested that Russia hack Hillary Clintons emails and his latest comments left Capitol Hill Republicans scrambling to distance themselves from the president and his unusually friendly stance toward Putin, who has praised the president as asmart man.

In an interview with CNNs State of the Union on Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), called Putin a former KGB agent and a thug, and he rejected any comparison between the two nations, citing Russias annexation of Crimea, its incursions into Ukraine and its interference in the U.S. presidential election.

I dont think theres any equivalency between the way that the Russians conduct themselves and the way the United States does, McConnell said.

The senator added that while he hoped not tocritique the presidents every utterance, he found significant differences between the two nations. I do think America is exceptional. America is different, McConnell said. We dont operate in any way the way the Russians do. I think theres a clear distinction here that all Americans understand, and no, I would not have characterized it that way.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) was similarly wary. Speaker Ryan has consistently and frequently spoken out on Russia and Putin and made his opinions well known, including the need for continued sanctions, spokeswoman AshLee Strong said Sunday.

She pointed to Ryans comments last month at a CNN town hall broadcast, during which he called Russia a global menace and said that Putin does not share our interests; he frustrates our interests.

Let me put it this way: The Russians are up to no good. We all know that, Ryan said, responding to a question about Russias election meddling. Weve got to make sure going forward that we do everything we can on cyber, on all of the other things to make sure that they cant do this again.

Congressional Republicans have broken with Trump over dozens of controversial statements he has made during his campaign, his transition and now his presidency. But few issues appear to have confounded lawmakers as much as his consistent defense of Putin. Trumps coziness is at odds with years of Republican foreign policy orthodoxy calling for a more aggressive stance toward Putins regime.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) weighed in on Twitter with two missives that he personally penned.When has a Democratic political activists ever been poisoned by the GOP or vice versa? We are not the same as #Putin, he wrote. In a second tweet, he said that the United States should lift sanctions on Russia only if it ends its violations in Ukraine.

And Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the daughter of former vice president Richard B. Cheney, also took to Twitter to say that Trumps statement suggesting moral equivalence between Putins Russia and the United States of America is deeply troubling and wrong.

Appearing on four Sunday news shows, Vice President Pencerejected the notion that Trump had equated Russia to the United States.

I simply dont accept that there was any moral equivalency in the presidents comments, Pence said on CBSs Face the Nation. There was no moral equivalency. What you heard there was a determination to attempt to deal with the world as it is to start afresh with Putin and to start afresh with Russia.

Pressed by John Dickerson, the shows host, on whether he believed the United States was morally superior to Russia, Pence repeatedly dodged the question, instead finally saying,American ideals are superior to countries all across the world.

Pence, who would not commit to maintaining sanctions against Russia if it continues to violate a cease-fire agreement in Ukraine, nonetheless took a slightly harder line than the president on Russia.

Asked on ABCs This Week whether the White House planned to put Russia on notice, as it had Iran, over violating the cease-fire, Pence said, Were watching, and very troubled by the increased hostilities over the past week in eastern Ukraine.

But healso broadly defended his boss, saying, Theres a new style of leadership, not just a new leader in the White House.

President Trump is bringing a very candid and direct type of leadership to the White House, Pence said. And in conversations with leaders around the world, frankly, I think they all find it very refreshing.

Not everyone seemed to agree. Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, who ran against Trump during the 2016 Republican primaries, issued a sharp rebuke on Twitter.America has been a beacon of light and freedom, he wrote.There is no equivalence with the brutal regime of Vladimir Putin.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called for an investigation by the FBI into Trumps financial, personal and political connections to Russia.

I want to know what the Russians have on Donald Trump, she said on NBCs Meet the Press. We want to see his tax returns so we can have truth in the relationship between Putin, whom he admires, and Donald Trump.

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Trump's continued defense of Putin confounds Republicans - Washington Post

Congress, as you know, is unpopular.

The countrys legislative body has done a lot to foster that attitude, of course, with cynical hypocrisies and partisan nonsense. Some of our attitudes toward Congress are steeped in tradition; like airline food, Congress is something that were just supposed to dislike.

But something interesting happened recently, according to new polling from CNN and its pollster, ORC. Congressional leaders the faces of Congress that people are more likely to know beyond their own senators and representative are slightly more popular than they used to be. Or, at least, Republican ones are.

Job-approval ratings for Democratic congressional leaders have generally been higher than Republican ones since the dawn of the Obama era. This is in part simply because Democrats generally have a more positive inclination toward government, certainly, but its also because having a Democratic president offered them a boost.

Notice what happened to opinions of Democratic leaders as Barack Obama campaigned for and won the presidency. The approval honeymoon didnt last for Obama or his colleagues on Capitol Hill but it helped.

More recently, opinions of Democratic leaders have been fairly flat at least during the points at which CNN-ORC polled.

Compare that with attitudes on Republican leaders.

The new number is fascinating in part because of how dramatically the Republicans fortunes shifted over the past year or so. Twelve months ago, the party appeared to be on the verge of splintering, forced apart by the apparently doomed candidacy of Donald Trump, whose nomination might rend the GOP into two dissimilar factions. Republican leaders who opposed Trump appeared to be poised to be at distance from the partys Trump-enthusiastic base.

But winning is a wonderful political salve. The sudden uptick in approval for Republican leaders on the Hill is strongly linked to improved opinions from within the Republican Party. In fact, since 2008, attitudes about Republican leaders from Republicans have never been anywhere near where they were in CNN-ORCs new poll.

Opinions of Democratic leaders among Democrats, meanwhile, are at a low.

Notice in that second graph that Republican leaders, too, benefited from the onset of the Obama era, which appeared to be poised to bring about a new comity in politics for about a day. This is the lesson that Republican leaders should probably heed. Approval of the job theyre doing is at a new high. It very well could be at a high-water mark, and they may have nowhere to go but down.

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Republicans have finally fallen in love with their leaders in Congress - Washington Post