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(Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)

BRUNSWICK, Ga. The long August congressional recess, which Republicans had hoped would begin a conversation about tax reform and must-pass budget measures, has so far seen another round of angry town halls focused on President Trump and the stalled effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Over just one day, in three small towns along Georgias Atlantic coastline, Rep. Earl L. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.) spent more than four hours answering 74 questions, many of them heated. Just three focused on tax reform; nearly half were about health care.

We did our job in the House, Carter said at the top of a town hall at the College of Coastal Georgia in Brunswick. It got over to the Senate, and it hit a stumbling block there. Now its in their court, and they need to get something done. Folks, were not giving up.

Carters town halls he is hosting nine, more than any other House Republican mirror what is happening in swing and safe Republican districts across the country. The failure of the health-care repeal bill kick-started a tax reform campaign backed by GOP leaders and pro-business groups, who have booked millions of dollars in TV ads to promote whatever might lead to an uncomplicated tax code.

In the first spots, paid for by the American Action Network, a laid-off steelworker worries that without lower taxes for working families, more jobs will be lost to China. At rallies and forums in several states, Americans for Prosperity has pitched tax reform as a way to unrig the economy. And in a polling memo made public this week, the AAN found that 65 to 73 percent of voters responded favorably to reform if it was pitched as a way to restore the earning power of the middle class and save billions of dollars each year on tax preparation services.

But at town hall meetings since the start of the recess, tax reform has hardly come up; health care has dominated. At a Monday event in Flat Rock, N.C., Rep. Mark Meadows (R) pitched a plan to devolve ACA programs to the states, then found himself fending off constituents who backed universal Medicare.

[Bipartisan health policy coalition urges Congress to strengthen the ACA]

You can take the top 1 percent and tax them fully, and it still wont pay for Medicare, Meadows said.

At a town hall in Chico, Calif., in the most Democratic portion of a deep-red district, Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R) faced furious complaints about the repeal vote, with constituents accusing him of acting to bring about their deaths.

I hope you suffer the same painful fate as those millions that you have voted to remove health care from, one constituent told LaMalfa. May you die in pain.

Carters town halls did not reach such a boiling point, but they showed what the tone of congressional listening sessions has become: angry, wistful and loaded with progressive activists.

Georgias 1st Congressional District, stretching from Savannah to the Florida border, has been held by the GOP since 1993. In 2016, the Trump-Pence ticket carried the district by 15.5 points, while Democrats could not find a candidate to run against Carter.

(Nolan Ford/North State Public Radio)

But this week, the constituents who signed up for the meetings on Eventbrite and walked past local police officers to take their seats seemed to skew left. Two groups founded after the 2016 election, Speak Up Now and Savannah Taking Action for Resistance, had members at town halls in Darien and Brunswick.

Carter, who peppered his answers with self-deprecating jokes, sometimes called on activists whod dogged him before. In Brunswick, he quickly pivoted from a question about Zionist influence in our foreign policy by promising to put America first. After three different constituents asked him whether he supported the presidents decision to ban transgender men and women from military service, he went from deferring to our commander in chief to saying what he believed.

I dont want em serving in the military, Carter said, as dozens of constituents booed and more than a dozen walked out. Im sorry.

At each town hall, Carter provided fact sheets to advance two messages: how much work Congress had done in 2017, and how his party would not give up on repealing the ACA. A one-pager titled Health Care Reform: Myth vs. Fact, with citations from the Department of Health and Human Services, revealed just how much the party had suffered from Democratic attacks. Instead of rebutting the line that the GOP plan would cut Medicaid, it framed the ACAs Medicaid expansion as a departure from the programs mission, and one that denied choice to the working poor.

Medicaid was designed to provide a vital health care safety net for elderly, children, pregnant women, and individuals with disabilities, it read. Low and middle-income adults capable of holding down a job should have health care choices.

Behind the microphone, Carter found himself making that point repeatedly, about a slew of ideas for expanded government programs, as Democrats cheered and Republicans simmered. In Brunswick, after Carter told a college student that free tuition was a pipe dream weve got a $20trillion debt an older man took the mic and advised the student to get a job.

It wasnt the only time Carter stood back and watched as his constituents argued among themselves. Mary Nelson, 73, used her question time at the Darien town hall to insist that Republicans were all wrong about single-payer health care. She talked about an experience that her Australian relatives had gone through and described a cheap system with no hoops to jump through that could be copied in America.

They are taxed out the wazoo in Australia, interjected Adrienne Stidhams, 48, a Trump supporter.

How much do we pay for premiums? Nelson asked rhetorically.

Like Meadows, Carter suggested that Democrats and Republicans could work together on health-care bills with the repeal effort stalled.

When multiple constituents asked Carter if he would let the probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 election play out, he defended the president and suggested that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, a good man, would probably find out the facts before long.

Im worried about some of the people he has around him, Carter said, apparently referring to lawyers hired for the probe who have been attacked in conservative media for donating to Democrats.

There were no questions about the debt limit, which must be raised when Congress returns to avoid default. The three questions about tax reform focused on the possibility of a fair tax, a national sales tax to replace taxes on income; whether companies keeping profits overseas could be taxed; and tax fairness in general.

Carter jumped at the opportunity to talk about it. Whats being proposed right now is to bring our corporate tax down from 35percent one of the highest in the world down to 15 percent, he said, citing a tax reform blueprint released this spring and a positive analysis from the conservative Tax Foundation. That will create jobs.

No constituents followed up with questions. Instead, there was more skepticism about the president and his plans, countered by constituents who asked Carter to defend the president from media attacks.

I tell ya, I dont think Ive ever seen a president thats been disrespected by the media like this, Carter said. He had more to say, but drowned out by booing, he moved on.

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At raucous town halls, Republicans have faced another round of ... - Washington Post

President Donald Trump doesnt do diplomacy. He hurls broadsides.

Calling out unstable North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is a recipe for disaster. Thats how you tumble into a war. Nothing good can come from Trump lashing out at Kim on a whim, three times in the last week alone.

But our question is this: Where are voices of prudence within the presidents own party? Where are the Republicans, especially in Congress, who are prepared to call out Trump for his irresponsibility, putting our country first?

EDITORIAL

On Friday morning, Trump put Kim on notice via Twitter. Military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely, he tweeted. Hopefully Kim Jong Un will find another path!

Earlier in the week, with the same schoolyard bluster, Trump told reporters, North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.

And a few days later, Trump doubled down rather than calmed down. If anything, he said, maybe that statement wasnt tough enough.

And what did the United States get for all that? Kim, another man-child, promised to launch test missiles near the American island of Guam.

Any hope that Trumps new chief of staff, the respected Marine Gen. John Kelly, could restrain the president evaporated quickly. And Secretary of State Rex Tillerson doesnt have the presidents ear.

The job falls to the Republicans in Congress, who have the power of the bully pulpit, to put at least a rhetorical check on Trump.

Sen. John McCain came closest, warning Trump on Tuesday of the dangers of his fire and fury tweet. I take exception to the presidents words because you got to be sure you can do what you say youre going to do, McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told a Phoenix radio station.

Congress should dust off legislation proposed in January by Sen. Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts and Rep. Ted Lieu of California, both Democrats, to prevent Trump from preemptively launching a nuclear strike. The president would not be limited, however, in using nuclear weapons to respond to a strike against the United States.

The United Nations Security Council voted this month to hit Pyongyang with new sanctions, yet Trump still has wasted no time launching his own verbal assault. This is a time for restraint, and for standing up to the president.

Send letters to: letters@suntimes.com

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EDITORIAL: Why won't Republicans call out Trump on North Korea? - Chicago Sun-Times

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

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