Amash Declares His Independence From The Republican Party

Sunrise, Independence Day... and Justin Amash's own personal Declaration of Independence was published in the Washington Post. "Today, I am declaring my independence and leaving the Republican Party. No matter your circumstance, I’m asking you to join me in rejecting the partisan loyalties and rhetoric that divide and dehumanize us. I’m asking you to believe that we can do better than this two-party system-- and to work toward it. If we continue to take America for granted, we will lose it." He wrote that he's become "disenchanted with party politics and frightened by what I see from it... the two-party system has evolved into an existential threat to American principles and institutions... True to Washington's fears, Americans have allowed government officials, under assertions of expediency and party unity, to ignore the most basic tenets of our constitutional order: separation of powers, federalism and the rule of law. The result has been the consolidation of political power and the near disintegration of representative democracy."

He's clearly not going to be caucusing with the Republicans. Will he be caucusing with the Democrats? Most of the Democrats in Congress I spoke tot this morning were unsure and didn't have anything to say about it. Jim Himes (CT) told me that "Justin has always marched to the beat of his own drummer. I don’t agree with him on much, but I admire his commitment to principle at a time when most other Republicans are happy to abandon theirs in service to Donald Trump." According to ProgressivePunch, Amash's crucial vote record for 2019 is tied for the 218th most progressive. There are 16 Democrats who have been voting to the right of him this year! Tied with Sharice Davids (KS) and Mike Sherrill (Blue Dog-NJ), Amash votes more progressively than (from bad to worse):

• Angie Craig (New Dem-MN)
• Abby Finkenauer (IA)
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)
• Cindy Axne (New Dem-IA)
• Conor Lamb (PA)
• Elaine Luria (New Dem-VA)
• Abigail Spanberger (Blue Dog-VA)
• Elissa Slotkin (New Dem-MI)
• Xochitl Torres Small (Blue Dog-NM)
• Jared Golden (ME)
• Ben McAdams (Blue Dog-UT)
• Kendra Horn (Blue Dog-OK)
• Anthony Brindisi (Blue Dog-NY)
• Joe Cunningham (Blue Dog-SC)
• Jefferson Van Drew (Blue Dog-NJ)
• Josh Gottheimer (Blue Dog-NJ)

Pramila Jayapal, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, also admires Amash's independence. This morning she told me that he "is a principled legislator. While we disagree on many issues, he truly understands the responsibility of legislators to our Constitution and to ensuring that nobody is above the law. I applaud him for following his values and standing up for the Constitution. I hope his example inspires other Republicans to do the same and save not just their party, but their country."

Another outspoken progressive Democrat, Jamie Raskin (D-MD), told me that "Amash is taking all the principles left in the GOP with him. The Democratic Party welcomes libertarians and true conservatives who want to conserve the land, the air, the water, the peace, the Constitution, the rule of law, the separation of powers and the Bill of Rights. Come on all the way over Justin to the party of the people!"

Pig-man has an instant comment, of course

The rest of the Republicans in the Michigan congressional delegation has been trying to blame Amash for their state losing out on a big Depratment of Defense contract for an ICBM interceptor site. 5 right-wing kooks-- Fred Upton, Bill Huizenga, Tim Walberg, Paul Mitchell, and Jack Bergman-- are pissed off because they feel the state is being punished for Amash's opinions. And they're blaming Amash instead of Trump. Amash, who now-- as of today-- had 4 GOP primary opponents (virtually guaranteeing his reelection)-- laughed in their faces. Now he'll be able to proceed to the general election with a primary.

This week, Amash was interviewed by Jane Coaston for Vox and they discussed a wide range of topics, far more interesting than the regular bullshit political interviews are lately. Notice that he distinguishes between conservative Republicans and "Trump Republicans."

Coaston: It seems to me that [the current debate over changing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in order to regulate social media companies’ moderation practices] is evidence of the breakdown in the relationship between libertarians and conservatives and kind of a tough time to be a libertarian-minded conservative.

Amash: I think it does play into a general shift within the Republican Party away from a fear of big government and more toward a sense of victimization that society is coming after them. And it might be corporations, it might be people who live in urban centers, [but] they’re coming after them to take away their freedoms and culture.

Coaston: But I think the fact that a Republican is suggesting that companies, private companies, submit to the government that they are being neutral-- not just the government, but to unelected FTC commissioners-- that is an inherently unconservative idea.

Amash: Well, it depends on what you mean by conservatism. It is more like Trump’s brand of conservatism, which is again, something very different. It’s nationalism and populism and again, a sense of victimization, like the rest of society is coming after us and we’ve got to defend ourselves against that at all costs.

A lot of Trump Republicans have this mindset that they have to fight this all out war against the left. And if they have to use big government to do it, they’re perfectly fine with that. So when I go to Twitter and talk about overspending or the size of the government, I get a lot of reactions now from Trump supporters saying, “Who cares how big the government is”, or “Who cares how much we’re spending as long as we’re fighting against illegal immigration and pushing back against the left.”

Coaston: You came into the House as part of the Tea Party wave that was very focused on rejecting “big government.” And now a lot of the folks who were part of that wave, if they’re still in Congress, have been much more inclined to argue that “if you can’t beat them, join them” with regards to big government. What has that shift been like for you?

Amash: I feel like I’m among the last of the Tea Party. It doesn’t really exist in any major form anymore. It’s been disheartening because the first few years while I was in Congress, I did feel like we were making progress in shifting the dialogue toward limited government and economic freedom and individual liberty.

And over the past few years, it has gone in the other direction, and a lot of the people who once stood with me are no longer there. Some of them got voted out of Congress, and others just don’t emphasize these issues anymore. I don’t think it started because of Donald Trump. I believe Donald Trump is the culmination of many years of shift in this direction.

Coaston: So on that, could you talk more about other ways that you saw that shift coming before kind of June 2015 and the rise of Trump?

Amash: Before then, it was gradual. [Like] this concept of nationalism that I started to see pop up more and more at town halls or on social media, where I heard Republican speaking favorably of nationalism. And at first I thought it was just people mixing up their terminology. I was like, “No, you mean patriotism.” Like we should be patriotic, [have] love for our institutions, in our country and the ideals of liberty, justice, and equality-- those are the ideals of patriotism.

But I started to hear [the word] nationalism more and more. And that’s a concept that really is about a love for your people simply by virtue of being your people, not related to any principles you hold or what your country stands for, what ideals you’re striving for. It’s about [how] Americans are just inherently better, or [how] particular Americans in some cases might be viewed as inherently better. And that’s a very dangerous ideology, and it is certainly not what this country was founded on.

Coaston: How would you define what limited government or small-government principles means to you?

Amash: I define them as adherence to the Constitution and to the principles of federalism. That is to say, a government that is closer to home may have more power over your daily life than a government that is far away from you.

So our constitution really follows this design where the federal government is given the power to handle things that are national and scope that affects everyone regardless of their circumstance. As an example, every state needs to be defended against foreign attack, whether the state has a population of 1,000 or 10 million. You have a federal government that defends the nation so that each state doesn’t have to have its own military force to defend against foreign invaders.

Whereas locally, you might have a government that is very involved in your day to day life, but because it’s such a small locale, you can easily avoid it. If you don’t like the government, you can move. You also have more influence over it because it is representing fewer people. So presumably your voice is louder in the mix if you want to complain about the government or change things.

Coaston: How concerned are you about government spending in the deficit?

Amash: Very concerned.

Coaston: Why? I know this is one of those very “conservatism 101” questions. But we now have a president has talked a lot about how much he loves debt. How do you make the case that this is still an issue?

Amash: I’ve been making the case since I started that it’s not sustainable and the next generation will pay the price if we don’t address it now. We have legislation every week that comes up and it will be offered without offsets. And these days Republicans seem okay with that, just spending more money without reducing spending elsewhere.

People talk about what they hear on TV. So if they hear on TV that a particular issue is the most important, that’s what they’re going to talk about. Or if they see on social media that particular Republican personalities are saying something, that’s what they’re going to talk about. And when you’re only one person presenting a different vision like I am, or maybe there are a few others, but we’re outnumbered, it’s obvious which way things tend to go in terms of public perception.

So right now, I think there aren’t a lot of polls that are going to show spending or debt as a major concern for people. But they remain, if not the biggest, one of the biggest problems right now especially at the federal level.

Coaston: What would be your ideal way to start solving that problem?

Amash: I think you probably need a balanced budget amendment. I’m really not keen on amending the Constitution because I think we have a fantastic framework. [But] my fear is that if you don’t have a balanced budget requirement, what ends up happening is they will either keep spending until we have a catastrophe. That’s it. They’ll just keep spending. There’s no either there. They’re just going to ... if you don’t have it, they will just keep spending until you have a financial crisis.

Coaston: What we’re seeing are two parties that are in a defensive crouch against each other, where Republicans want to protect Republicans, and right now that is Donald Trump, and Democrats presumably want to protect Democrats.

It seems to be that you’re currently one of the very few people, especially within the Republican Party, who believes that that’s not the job of Congress, that the job of Congress is to make laws and pass legislation, presumably. So when you’re talking with Republican colleagues, is that a challenge?

Amash: The purpose of government is to protect people’s rights. And Congress should serve as a deliberative body that ultimately reflects the will of the people through their representatives. What we have right now is a system that runs almost completely top-down, where the president, the speaker of the House and the Senate majority leader dictate everything to everyone.

And in a system like that, the parties inevitably become more partisan because everything is driven by just a few people, and the leaders in Congress spend a lot of their time figuring out ways to avoid putting their members on the record. They want it to be just a personality fight rather than a discussion of over policy matters.

You’ll have members in each party who are in districts that are moderate or maybe even lean against the incumbent. And those members of Congress in those districts will be inclined to vote in a way that reflects the will of their district. And that makes people like Nancy Pelosi and [former House Speaker] Paul Ryan nervous because they want to maintain control over everyone for purposes of a national message, because ultimately they view their job as maintaining the power of the party overall and continuing their own power.

If there’s one thing Speaker Pelosi wants more than anything, it’s to stay in power. You can see what she’s doing, for example, with impeachment. I don’t think it’s a sound strategy, unless she only cares about staying in power and not doing what’s right.

It is very hard to convince people to change this system, to decide that a system where members of Congress have to actually debate things and take tough votes and where the outcome is not predetermined, to convince them that that is the right system is very difficult. And the way our system is supposed to work is the outcomes are supposed to be discovered, not dictated. But for a lot of my colleagues, they’re not interested in that system of government, even though that is the system the founders designed.

Coaston: When you hear from your constituents, what are they concerned about that’s taking place, that you don’t think is getting enough attention?

Amash: Generally speaking, my constituents, and Americans on the whole, want a deliberative process in Congress. I think they care a lot more about the process and the way our institutions operate than most people in Congress recognize.

The partisans are the loudest. They tend to dominate social media, they tend to come to local events. They’re the ones who tend to be active in politics. For a lot of my colleagues, they hear from the most partisan people almost all the time. And they assume that that means those viewpoints are the ones that their district holds.

And I guess I’m aware enough to recognize that most Americans, including most of my constituents, are going about their day-to-day lives and they are not super partisan, they are not super concerned about whether Trump is the greatest or the worst. They’re desiring representation in Congress that will be honest and thoughtful and considerate.

Coaston: On that subject, what have you heard from your constituents when you talked about impeachment in your Twitter thread, or when you’ve talked about impeachment more broadly?

Amash: Again, it depends on which constituents you talked to, but on the whole, the reaction has been positive. Not because everyone agrees with me, but because people want their representative to think through the issues, to be impartial, not in the sense that the person doesn’t have principles or positions, but to not let their own outcome biases affect their judgment.

They don’t want someone who’s going to prejudge situations. And I think I’ve proven to my constituents over time that I’m independent minded. I’ll do what I think is right, and it’s not going to be based on what my party is saying, and I’m not going to prejudge the outcome.

Coaston: Something that’s been expressed by libertarians recently is that they’re not sure if libertarians can really work with Republicans. Has that been a challenge for you?

Amash: I have been openly a libertarian Republican in my district for many years. I haven’t shied away from the word libertarian. I’ve been very clear about it in the years I’ve run for office that I am a libertarian philosophically, and people have voted for me. They voted for me in the Republican primary, they voted for me in the general election and I won by larger margins in both cases than most other candidates running. It is possible to be a philosophically libertarian and operate within one of the two major parties.

One of the reasons I’ve always described myself as libertarian and use that word repeatedly is so that people will connect the word to the work I’m doing. One of the things I like to tell libertarians when I go to conferences and other places is that libertarians are not really a small minority in the country. Most Americans have rather libertarian tendencies or classical liberal tendencies-- the spirit of this country is very much libertarian or classical liberal.

Most Americans, in my view, fall within the sphere of libertarianism or classical liberalism. They might not call themselves libertarian, they might not call themselves classical liberals, but they fall within that sphere and could support a party that presents those ideas. And so I think that there is room for a third party presenting those, that presenting that vision.

Coaston: Do you think the Libertarian Party is doing that in the right way right now?

Amash: Right now it’s still a rather small party. I think that part of the problem, again, is that libertarianism has been presented in the wrong way. And I’m not blaming this on the party, to be clear, but generally speaking, libertarians have thought of themselves as some kind of a small minority within the country and everyone else is a big government statist. And that’s just not true. It really is the case that most Americans, certainly a plurality of Americans, hold fairly libertarian or classical liberal views on a multitude of issues. If you are looking for everyone to be [libertarian economist Ludwig] von Mises, then no, you’re not going to find those people out in society everywhere. But if you’re talking about people who hold dear to the philosophy on which our country was founded, then you’re going to find all sorts of those people. And that’s really at the heart of libertarianism. It’s a belief in a limited constitutional government and the rule of law and equality under the law, and those are things that are most Americans believe in.

Coaston: I would challenge you there.

Amash: Go for it.

Coaston: Many Americans, I would say, believe in personal libertarianism, as in the government should not get involved in what I do. But those people over there, the government should be very interested in what they do. When you’re talking about these issues, how do you combat this?

Amash: If I’m talking to people [at town halls] where they are supportive of liberty in their own life but not in other people’s lives, you just run through examples with them and you get them to rethink the contradictions that they hold. You show them that they are playing into a double standard or they are perhaps acting hypocritically. And I found that actually, if you do this in a thoughtful, measured way, a lot of people are receptive to it.

What this country is really about is following the process and if you can get them to see that process is really in itself a high ideal, something that we should strive for, a sound process, then you can get them to accept that sometimes this process means they will not get the outcome they want. Because they will recognize that it makes things better overall for most people most of the time.

We follow a set of rules and we all live within those rules. We treat everyone equally within those rules and that means that sometimes you won’t get the outcome you want, but on the whole, we will all be better off. And other countries that strive for outcomes, where the government just strives for outcomes, those are the ones that have a lot of unrest. They have more poverty. They are more likely to have a dictatorship.

And that’s why, again, I’m nervous about this turn toward nationalism within the Republican Party, just like there’s a turn toward socialism within the Democratic Party, because those are very much sort of outcome based philosophies. If those were dominant philosophies in the United States, we would be worse off in almost every way.

Coaston: What do you think about the rise of populism among conservatives more generally?

Amash: Populism has its place. But on the whole, if your system is based on populism to the exclusion of principles, then it will fail. The populism has to be bound by principals. And right now you have a lot of populism that is completely unbound. The idea is just to seek a particular outcome and principles be damned-- if big government is the way to achieve it, then so be it. And that means essentially discarding our entire system for the sake of a particular outcome.

Coaston: You now face a primary challenge, and the primary challenge seems to be based entirely on Trump. When you talk to your constituents in advance of that primary, how are you going to talk about Donald Trump?

Amash: The same way I’ve always talked about him. My oath is to support and defend the Constitution, and that’s what I do. I didn’t run on an oath to support and defend a particular person. If some candidate wants to do that, to claim that their oath is to Donald Trump, be my guest. I don’t think that flies as something that will be successful in the campaign in my district. I am who I am, and I wouldn’t want to do this job if I had to be something I’m not. I ran on a set of principles and I will uphold those principles. And I have a lot of faith in the people I represent.

Again, I think I have a better understanding of America as a whole than a lot of my colleagues here who think that America is just right-wing people and left-wing people.

I recognize that America is a diverse place with a lot of different opinions and most of my constituents, like most of America, want us to go to Congress and do the job with integrity and honesty and follow a set of principles. And whether the outcome is right, left or in the middle, they mostly just want us to do our jobs properly. I have a lot of faith in the people I represent.

UPDATE: Ro Khanna

Rep. Khanna (D-CA) has worked on bipartisan legislation with Amash. He just told me that he found him to be "one of the most thoughtful and independent members in the House. I have loved working with him on issues of restraint in foreign policy in particular. I will work with him whatever party he is in. He’s an asset to the House."

What Will Hurt Trump More-- His Lying Nature Or Justin Amash?

Perception by Nancy Ohanian

The thing about the Trump/Stephanopoulous interview that was so mind-boggling was how Trump admitted he would break the law to get his tiny little hands on Russian intelligence about the elections again. But there was something else that caught my attention-- and apparently other people's as well. Andrew Sullivan wrote it up for New York Magazine: Donald Trump and the Art of the Lie.

“I like the truth. I’m actually a very honest guy,” President Trump told a slightly incredulous George Stephanopoulos this week. Like almost everything Trump says, it was, of course, a lie. But it was a particularly Trumpish kind of lie. It was so staggeringly, self-evidently untrue, and so confidently, breezily said, it was less a statement of nonfact than an expression of pure power.

For Trump, lying is central to his disturbed psyche, and to his success. The brazenness of it unbalances and stupefies sane and adjusted people, thereby constantly giving him an edge and a little breathing space while we try to absorb it, during which he proceeds to the next lie. And on it goes. It’s like swimming in choppy water. Just when you get to the surface to breathe, another wave crashes into you.

This particular lie was in the context of a report from the New York Times this week, independently confirmed by ABC News, that Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio had found Trump lagging Joe Biden in most of the states he needed to win-- even in Texas. The Times reported that Trump had instructed his staff to lie about this polling. When asked about it by Stephanopoulos, Trump simply followed his own advice. “No, my polls show that I’m winning everywhere,” he said blithely. And when you hear him, it sounds as if he is telling the truth. He’s gooood.

In Michael Wolff’s new book, Siege... Bannon, Wolff writes, came to understand that the lies were “compulsive, persistent and without even a minimal grounding in reality.” This is not to deceive the public. This is simply the way Trump behaves-- in private and public. It’s why I have long believed he is mentally unwell.

At some point, the law usually catches up with this kind of con artist, and Trump has had quite a few close calls over the years (and paid out a lot in settlements). But a presidential con man at this level of talent, legitimized by public opinion, enlarged and enhanced by the office and its trappings, is far harder to catch. It seems to me we had one shot of doing this definitively-- the Mueller investigation-- and we failed. Trump’s lies about the report, and his attorney general’s genius move of lying about its conclusion before the rest of us could check it out fully, helped. So did conservative media’s blackout of the actual substance of the report. Trump’s Roy Cohn tactic of accusing his accusers of the same flaw-- it was Hillary who colluded with the Russians!-- was another masterstroke of distraction. But it’s hard to deny at this point that in the battle between Trump and Mueller, Trump just won.

...So, of course, Trump has upped the ante again. Why wouldn’t he? He has proven that he can obstruct justice and get away with it, so now he is not only refusing to comply with any subpoenas and barring critical witnesses from testifying, but claiming, through his lawyers, that the only branch of government that can investigate the president’s compliance with the law is the executive branch itself, over which the president has total control: “Congress is simply not allowed to conduct law-enforcement investigations of the president.” Congressional oversight of possible crimes by the president “improperly impinges upon and hence interferes with the independence that is imperative to the functioning of the executive branch.” The president, they argue, is the only person who can determine if the president breaks the law. The only possible exception, Trump’s lawyers grudgingly concede, is in an impeachment proceeding-- which they well know Pelosi doesn’t have the guts to invoke.

If the president is judge and jury in his own case, he is a monarch, not a president. To add to this, we also have both Trump and his Botoxed dauphin, Jared Kushner, recently express the belief that they did nothing wrong in inviting, welcoming, and encouraging a foreign enemy of the United States to interfere in an American election. Trump, contradicting his own FBI director, told Stephanopoulos this week he’d be open to receiving dirt on a political opponent from a foreign power again in 2020. Hey, why not? “If somebody called from a country, Norway, [and said] ‘we have information on your opponent’-- oh, I think I’d want to hear it,” the president said. He might tell the FBI, or he might not. I know we’re used to this kind of thing-- he openly invited Russia to intervene in 2016, after all, and they did-- but it is vital to repeat that this is about as impeachable a statement as could be uttered by any president.

The worry about a president receiving assistance from a foreign country, let alone inviting it, was one of the central concerns of the Founders when they came up with the mechanism of impeachment. It need not be a conspiracy or a crime. It was about violating the integrity of the American political system-- to the advantage of another country. They were thinking of Britain and France, their equivalent of Russia and China. And they were understandably paranoid about it. “He might betray his trust to foreign powers,” Madison worried about waiting for the next election to call a president to account. Combine the blithe ease with which Trump considers this impeachable offense with his now-demonstrated attempts to obstruct justice, and now add a legal claim that the Congress cannot oversee what might be presidential criminality … well, you have a situation that impeachment was specifically designed for.

It is worth adding to this, for good measure, that, all the while, the president has been attempting to buttress Republican-- and essentially white-- power, by rigging the census to deny Democrats future seats, and thereby resources. We now have incontrovertible proof that this was the intention behind adding a citizenship question to the Census-- thanks to a leaked hard drive. Put all this together and you begin to get a sense of how contested the result of the next election could be. Trump is deliberately undermining public confidence in its integrity. He did this rhetorically as a candidate. Doing it as an incumbent president is an even graver assault on our liberal democracy. Imagine Bush v. Gore, but with an incumbent president who controls the executive branch and has the Supreme Court in his pocket, and you begin to see the risk we are taking by leaving him in place.

He will do anything, we have to understand, to protect his psychic attachment to his own self-interest. Anything. I’ll repeat what I believe: He will not leave his office if he narrowly loses in 2020. He’ll fight — and rally his supporters to fight with him. He’s not Nixon. He’s Erdoğan. When, since becoming president, has Trump conceded anything?

A tyrant’s path to power is not a straight line, it’s dynamic. Each concession is instantly banked, past vices are turned into virtues, and then the ante is upped once again. The threat rises exponentially with time. If we can’t see this in front of our own eyes, and impeach this man now, even if he will not be convicted, we are flirting with the very stability of our political system. It is not impregnable. Why is Putin the only person who seems to grasp this?

Although there are plenty of Republicans on Capitol Hill who understand all this as well as Andrew Sullivan does, they're all sticking with the tribe for one reason or another, political cowardice probably being the overwhelming factor. No one wants to mess with a pig like Trump. There's one exception: Justin Amash (R-MI). He not only repeatedly said Trump should be the subject of impeachment proceedings, on Wednesday he broke ranks with the other Republicans on the House Oversight and Reform Committee and voted to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt for refusing to comply with congressional subpoenas regarding the U.S. Census.

Trumpanzee, Jr already tried tangling with Amash-- and came out a laughing stock:

But there is little Trump, Sr can do to stop himself from going on the attack against Amash himself. There are now 2 crackpot Trumpists who have declared for the seat, state Rep. Jim Lower and perennial candidate Tom Norton. (There are also two Democrats engaging, Doug Booth and Amanda Brunzell.) Amash has fought off attempts by both the GOP establishment to beat him in primaries and the lame Michigan Democrats to beat him in a general election. He's very popular in Michigan and especially in Kent County, which decides election in his district. It's an independent-minded district where voters don't give a hoot about what party bosses want. In 2016, each of the district's 5 counties, for example, rejected Hillary-- the party establishment favorite-- and went heavily for Bernie:

• Kent-- Bernie- 62.5%, Hillary- 37.3%
• Calhoun-- Bernie- 51.5%, Hillary- 46.4%
• Barry-- Bernie- 62.8%, Hillary- 35.4%
• Ionia-- Bernie- 64.1%, Hillary- 34.0%
• Montcalm-- Bernie- 60.5%, Hillary- 36.8%

I wouldn't worry too much about an MIRS poll that shows Lower beating Amash 49-33%. You think voters are stupid enough to buy into this Lower talking point: "At this point, Justin Amash has more in common with Rashida Tlaib than he does the average Republican primary voter in the district?" The DeVos family has already cut off normal GOP funding for Amash. And if Trump gets too heavy-handed, Amash could very well wind up as the presidential nominee for the Libertarian Party, offering plenty of right-of-center voters who fancy themselves constitutionalists and detest Trump but won't vote for a Democrat, a place to go. If Amash runs as a Libertarian, not only can Trump forget about Michigan, he's likely to be critically wounded in states where he he can't afford it-- Arizona, Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada, Iowa, Georgia, North Carolina. Wisconsin...

Republican Establishment vs Justin Amash

In 2012, the Democrats decided to try beating Justin Amash with someone more socially conservative, an especially vile Blue Dog type (think Lipinski) named Steve Pestka. How much more conservative is Pestka? Amash isn't homophobic. Pestka is a real hater and refers to gay people in incredibly vicious ways ("fudge-packer," etc). They're both anti-Choice but Pestka doesn't allow for an exception for rape and incest and Amash does. When David Malone, PAC Director of Right to Life of Michigan was asked why they didn't endorse Amash that year, he said "Right to Life of Michigan PAC has chosen not to endorse the candidacy of Representative Amash in the 2012 primary election. While he was previously endorsed in the 2010 general election and during his time in the state legislature, his voting record in Congress led the state board of the Right to Life of Michigan PAC to decide to not endorse his candidacy in the upcoming election. In his first term in Congress, Representative Amash voted "present" twice on legislation to defund Planned Parenthood (America's leading abortion provider) and voted "no" on legislation to outlaw sex-selection abortions." Michigan Right to Life rated Pestka's voting record 100% when he was in the state legislature and he did join the extremists in voting to defund Planned Parenthood. Pestka was the only Democrat in a congressional race to win the Michigan Right to Life endorsement.

Blue America doesn't endorse Republicans but we urged our members in MI-03 to not vote for Pestka, who spent $2,076,680 to Amash's $1,193,611. Amash beat him handily:

In 2008, Obama beat McCain 49.7% to 48.6% in the district. Romney beat Obama in 2012-- 53.1% to 45.8%. And in 2016-- after Bernie won the district in the primaries-- Hillary was decisively beaten by Trump, 51.6% to 42.2%. The PVI is R+6. Most people in the district live in Kent County (Grand Rapids, Michigan's second biggest city). These were the totals on primary day, 2016:

• Bernie- 43,375
• Ted Cruz- 35,185
• Hillary- 25,899
• Kasich- 25,562
• Señor Trumpanzee- 22,742

The presidential election saw Trump win districtwide with 51.6% while Amash won his race among the same voters on the same day, beating Democrat Douglas Smith 203,545 (59.5%) to 128,400 (37.5%). When the Republican establishment has gotten behind primary challengers to Amash, they never got too close. In 2014, the last big one, the establishment helped recruit a multimillionaire businessman, Brian Ellis, and Amash beat him 39,706 (57.4%) to 29,422 (42.6%).

Trump allies-- basically the whole GOP-- were in freakout mode after Amash made the case for impeachment over the weekend. McCarthy and Scalise ran to Trump TV to attack Amash. You can imagine how Trump-- already getting testy with Fox-- feels about his base seeing and hearing stuff like this that they wouldn't normally see and hear. Watch Scalise attempt to reiterate all the false talking points that Fox viewers/the Trump base are brainwashed with. Not even a mention of Fox when responding to the first question, just the rote party line lies.



But that's just the beginning. The GOP also has another primary opponent for Amash, an obscure right-wing state Rep from Montcalm County, Jim Lower, who has to give up his state House seat to run. Lower's district has a tiny part of the MI-03 district's voters. Last year, for example, 210,525 people voted in the MI-03 congressional election and 48,925 people from Calhoun County voted. Way in the northeastern part of the district, Montcalm provided just 1,758 votes.

According to the Detroit Free Press, Lower says he's been planning to run for some time and had expected to make an announcement closer to July 4. Amash's tweet storm against Trumpanzee was too big an opportunity to forgo. Lower: "I am a Pro-Trump, Pro-Life, Pro-Jobs, Pro-2nd Amendment, Pro-Family Values Republican. Congressman Justin Amash tweets yesterday calling for President Trump’s impeachment show how out of touch he is with the truth and how out of touch he is with people he represents. He must be replaced and I am going to do it."

Like most Beltway reporters, the Washington Post's Isaac Stanley Becker is impressed that Amash "enlists social media to do something unusual: explain why he bucks his party in terms his constituents can understand." Amash explains his approach on his Facebook page: "I defend liberty and explain every vote here." According to Becker "The simple formula has turned the libertarian, who rode into the House on the tea party wave, into something of a sensation. In 2012, the Independent Voter Network called Amash the 'coolest member of Congress.'"

But Lower doesn't think he's cool at all. He accused him of joining hands with "radical liberals"-- naming Detroit Democrat Rashida Tlaib in particular-- "to try and bring down our President."

In an interview with Becker, Lower came off just like every other GOP zombie, admitting he hadn't read the Mueller report but has already decided there was "no collusion, no obstruction." A friend of mine in Congress told me she hasn't spoken to a single Republican who has read it other than Amash. "Trump tells them what to say, what to think and they're too scared to do anything else. So why bother reading hundreds of pages? Sometimes I ask myself," she continued, "how many of them have read the Constitution since graduating from high school."

On Sunday, Lower changed his profile picture on Facebook to an image of himself standing in front of a Trump 2020 banner.

Amash has stood under a different banner. At the top of his Facebook page, he has pinned a warning from President George Washington about the “baneful effects” of party loyalty, delivered in his farewell address in 1796.

...[Amash] served one term in the state House in Lansing before he was elected to Congress in 2010. There, he allied with hard-line conservatives to form the House Freedom Caucus, whose members have mostly fallen in line with Trump.

A darling of conservative and libertarian groups, Amash has only once faced a credible primary challenge. He beat his Republican rival, Michigan businessman Brian Ellis, in 2014 by nearly 15 percentage points. Trump won the district handily in 2016, even flipping one county that had been secured by Barack Obama in both 2008 and 2012.

The congressman’s survival may now depend on whether he has cultivated devotion among voters sufficient to override their loyalty to the president. His political prospects run through Facebook, where he has labored to convince constituents that he is accountable to them at a time when public trust in the government is mired near historic lows.

His heterodox moves have been the ones requiring most careful explanation on social media. He bucks his party in not voting for measures he supports, such as approval of the Keystone XL pipeline or the preservation of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, because he disagrees with the underlying legislative approach.

Social media, the very tool used by Trump in 2016 to bypass media and party gatekeepers and speak directly to voters, could be a bulwark against the president’s attacks. It could help test whether Republicans can break with their standard-bearer and survive. Each Facebook post, in which voters add comments and raise questions, serves as a miniature, and digitized, town hall. Amash has more than 136,000 followers on the platform, about one-fifth of the total number of people 16 and over in his district, according to census estimates.

“Social media is revolutionizing government and making Congress more accountable,” Amash said in 2012, when he emerged as a winner of a Republican new media challenge. “I use Facebook to explain every vote I take on the House floor, and I personally interact with my constituents online. This not only empowers people at home but also shapes me into a better Representative.”

The social networking site has also been a powerful tool of personal branding, helping Amash earn his nickname, “Mr. No,” based on the sobriquet “Dr. No” embraced by Ron Paul, the former Texas congressman whose small-government philosophy the Michigan lawmaker shares.

Amash uses Facebook to make Star Wars jokes and flaunt his literacy in emoji. Some of his posts are personal, thanking God for his family or extolling the memory of Friedrich von Hayek, the Nobel Prize-winning economist and apostle of the free market.

But mostly, he explains his “no” votes. No to executive action on immigration. No to federal aid to Flint, Mich., during the height of the water contamination crisis. No to budget plans to keep the government open. No to the National Security Agency’s dragnet collection of phone records.

He even declines to approve the record of House proceedings, protesting, “we are never given adequate time to review the Journal.”

On the question of impeachment, however, Amash answered in the affirmative. Not only did the president’s conduct meet the constitutional standard for impeachment, he argued, but the attorney general, William P. Barr, had “misled the public” about the special counsel’s findings as they pertained to Trump’s possible “high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

“While impeachment should be undertaken only in extraordinary circumstances, the risk we face in an environment of extreme partisanship is not that Congress will employ it as a remedy too often but rather that Congress will employ it so rarely that it cannot deter misconduct,” the congressman wrote.

Instantly, voters took to the congressman’s Facebook to register their reactions, both positive and negative. He was by turns lauded as an independent thinker, with the best interests of the country at heart, and castigated as a turncoat, interested only in attention.

A professor at Oakland University in Rochester, Mich., thanked him for representing the state with “honesty and honor.” Another woman wrote, “Thank you so much for the courage to speak the truth.”

But he was also told, “You’re fired,” and instructed by an incensed Republican to, “Register immediately as a Democrat and turn in your man card.” Several critics invoked his father’s Palestinian heritage in questioning his loyalty to the Trump and to the United States.

Amash has yet to respond.

Sunday, Seattle progressive Pramila Jayapal, an influential member of the House Judiciary Committee was on State of the Union and say that Amash's statement of conscience is "a watershed moment. For weeks, Speaker Pelosi has saying this needs to be bipartisan if it's going to move forward just from the practical perspective of impeachment moving forward. And I think Justin Amash coming on board means that there is now bipartisan support for really understanding the seriousness of what is in the Mueller report." Adam Schiff was on Face the Nation where he noted that Amash is showing "more courage than any other Republican in the House or Senate." But Pelosi is Trump's bulwark against impeachment and she is unmoved and unwilling to do her duty. She should be removed.

Amash's ProgressivePunch crucial vote score for 2019 is 42.86%. The next highest Republican score is 21.43%, a 3-way tie between Nrian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), John Katko (R-NY) and Will Hurd (R-TX). All wish they had the guts to make an announcement like Amash's. But what I wanted to point out is that there are two Blue Dog freshmen-- Kendra Horn (OK) and Xochitl Torres Small (NM)-- with the same score as Amash and five Democrats who vote less progressively than Amash. From terrible to worst:

• Anthony Brindisi (Blue Dog-NY)- 35.71
• Joe Cunningham (Blue Dog-SC)- 35.71
• Ben McAdams (Blue Dog-UT)- 35.71
• Jeff Van Drew (Blue Dog-NJ)- 35.71
• Josh Gottheimer (Blue Dog-NJ)- 28.57

Cathy Albro, the garden variety Democrat who Amash beat in 2018, is running again. He'd beat her again if she's the nominee, but a more progressive Democrat, Doug Booth, has announced his candidacy as well. He's certainly not a DCCC-type candidate, more of an independent thinker. This morning, the first page of his website had this message:

"Having read the report, I am in agreement with Representative Justin Amash’s tweets regarding the Mueller Report. The acts committed by the President are impeachable while Attorney General Barr intentionally misled the American public on findings within the report. Amash has now joined a majority of Americans who have come to this same conclusion. Congress must take meaningful action now to ensure that behaviors exemplified by Trump will not become the status quo for the Office of the President.

There is no specific call for action in Amash’s series of tweets. I believe that the full unredacted report should be made available to the American people. Furthermore, Congress must begin additional investigations to address any findings of wrongful acts and formally begin the impeachment process.

Our district deserves a Representative whose words are followed by meaningful action. Upon election, I vow to focus on policies that benefit working families in our country and build a democracy that works for all Americans."

In a series of 10 rapid fire tweets late this afternoon, Amash made it clear he's not backing down. Here they are in a pre-tweet presenation:

He began simply enough, in answering a White House rationale for why Trump shouldn't be impeached: "People who say there were no underlying crimes and therefore the president could not have intended to illegally obstruct the investigation-- and therefore cannot be impeached-- are resting their argument on several falsehoods:"

1- They say there were no underlying crimes

In fact, there were many crimes revealed by the investigation, some of which were charged, and some of which were not but are nonetheless described in Mueller’s report.

2- They say obstruction of justice requires an underlying crime.

In fact, obstruction of justice does not require the prosecution of an underlying crime, and there is a logical reason for that. Prosecutors might not charge a crime precisely *because* obstruction of justice denied them timely access to evidence that could lead to a prosecution.

If an underlying crime were required, then prosecutors could charge obstruction of justice only if it were unsuccessful in completely obstructing the investigation. This would make no sense.

3- They imply the president should be permitted to use any means to end what he claims to be a frivolous investigation, no matter how unreasonable his claim.

In fact, the president could not have known whether every single person Mueller investigated did or did not commit any crimes.

4- They imply “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” requires charges of a statutory crime or misdemeanor.

In fact, “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” is not defined in the Constitution and does not require corresponding statutory charges. The context implies conduct that violates the public trust-- and that view is echoed by the Framers of the Constitution and early American scholars.

I found this nice meme a few times in Amash's Facebook page's comments section:

Constitutionalist Justin Amash vs Señor Trumpanzee, The GOP And The DCCC

Blue America is not affiliated with the Democratic Party in any way. We're a progressive PAC. We often back progressive candidates-- like these this cycle running against corrupt Blue Dogs and New Dems in primaries-- but we've never endorsed a Republican. The closest we ever came was in 2012 when we pointed out that the Democratic Party hack running against Justin Amash-- Steve Pestka-- was far worse in every way. Pestka even won the endorsement of Michigan's top anti-Choice organization. In the current session, Amash scored a 47.22 ProgressivePunch Crucial Vote score. , the same as 3 right-of-center California quasi-Democrats (Ami Bera, Lou Correa and Raul Ruiz) and better than 16 other creatures who run as Democrats and vote as Republicans. These are the current scores:

• Justin Amash (R-MI)- 47.22
• Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)- 47.06
• Gene Green (TX)- 47.06
• Al Lawson (FL)- 45.71
• Ron Kind (New Dem-WI)- 44.44
• Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY)- 44.44
• Scott Peters (New Dem-CA)- 44.44
• Jacky Rosen (NV)- 44.44
• Charlie Crist (Blue Dog-FL)- 42.86
• Tom Suozzi (NY)- 42.86
• Stephanie Murphie (Blue Dog-FL)- 40.00
• Dan Lipinksi (Blue Dog-IL)- 33.33
• Josh Gottheimer (Blue Dog-NJ)- 30.56
• Tom O'Halleran (Blue Dog-AZ)- 30.56
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)- 27.78
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)- 25.00
• Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ)- 19.44

The video up top is of an interview the libertarian website, Reason.com, did with Amash in Las Vegas last week. It's gotten some national attention because Amash calls for the disintegration of both political parties. Keep in mind, both Boehner and Ryan-- consecutive leaders of the House Republicans-- have financed Republican primaries against Amash and have continued to punish him for his independent stand on issues. Since being elected in a Grand Rapids-based swing district, Amash has worked across the aisle on several issues-- especially around national security and domestic spying-- in ways that drove the GOP establishment bonkers. He also signed on to a resolution for an independent commission to investigate Putin-Gate. Trump is demanding that some nut case fro his crackpot wing of the GOP primary Amash.

He started the interview by responding to a question about the White House looking to fire Jeff Sessions and Non Mueller by pointing out that Señor Trumpanzee "doesn't really understand how the Justice Department works, and that he really needs to keep some distance from these investigations. But, it's Donald Trump, and he's gonna do what he's gonna do... Setting aside the constitutional concerns, there are ethical concerns, there are rule of law concerns, so we want to make sure that when a president is in the White House that he's living up to all of the ethical standards, that he is allowing the system of justice to work itself out the way it's supposed to work without any interference, and there are those concerns. So I don't want to go the constitutional route yet on this kind of thing, but certainly there are rule of law and ethics concerns... [T]here are always political consequences. So polling numbers will change if people think that the president can't be trusted. There are those political realities, and you'll have more and more Republicans who are uncomfortable with the way the White House is operating. So, I think over time, that's probably what will have the biggest impact here. Whether it will impact the president's behavior over the next few years, I don't know. But it might have an impact over the next election cycle." Highlights from the interview:

Welch: You have one of the great Twitter feeds out there in Congress, and a week or two ago you tweeted something along the lines of, "Having principles is better than just resorting to 'what-aboutism' all the time." Do you see a lot of what-aboutism happening from your caucus these days when it comes to treating with and reacting to the actions of President Trump?

Amash: Yeah, it's not just from Republicans in Congress, Democrats in Congress do this too, and so does the general public. I think we should be concerned about hypocrisy, where one side is doing something we think is okay, and then the other side does something and we think it's bad. So there are reasonable concerns about hypocrisy, but that doesn't mean that every time President Trump or Republicans do something we should just say, "Well, the Democrats did the same thing." Because there's no accountability in that.

At some point, people have to decide to make the change themselves. They can't always blame the other side and say, "Well the other side did the same thing." That's how you get these third-world despotic systems, where everyone says, "Well, the other side does it, so we just want our strong man to beat up on them when he's in power." And you see that all around the world, Venezuela and other places where people's rights are restricted on the basis of, "Our guy is in power now, we should do the same thing that they did to us."

Welch: Do you feel like the Republican Caucus, in particular, has been ... As someone, you're a critic of congressional inaction, and advocating it's responsibility, do you feel like Congress has been doing well in it's oversight responsibility of the executive branch under President Trump, not so well, just right ... What's your assessment of that so far?

Amash: Not so well. The number of committee hearings has dropped significantly. When you had the Obama Administration in charge, you had a lot of Republicans making sure that we were investigating every little detail, and now, you don't have that as much. And you certainly have many members who are concerned about what's going on, but you don't have it to the same degree. And that's not to say that in any particular situation the president is necessarily doing something wrong, but we always have to stay on top of things as a congress, that's part of our role, to have oversight. And I think it's good for everyone if we oversee the executive branch and find that nothing was wrong in a particular situation, that's better for everyone. It's better for Republicans, it's better for Democrats, it's better for the country.

Welch: Let's talk a little bit about other ways that Congress abdicates it's responsibility. This week, if I'm not mistaken, the authorization for use of military force was in play as part of the Defense Authorization Act, and it kind of vanished overnight. What happened there, what's the status of that?

Amash: Yeah, it was in a Defense Appropriations Bill, and it was seemingly stripped out. So, the idea was to restrict the government from using that old authorization for use of military force on whatever they want today. So, there is a lot of pressure in Congress, on leadership, to do something new. To put a new authorization in place if we want to go after ISIS, if we want to do things in Syria, and Yemen and other places, there should be a new authorization. It doesn't make sense now, so many years later, a decade and a half later, to be using the same authorization as though we are fighting the same war. It's a different group of actors, the people we're fighting today aren't the same people who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks.

So, if we want to continue that fight, let's get a new authorization with the appropriate limitations. And I think that there should always be a time limitation on authorizations. So there should be a requirement that they have to be reauthorized at some point. That doesn't mean you're telling the enemy when the war is gonna end, it just means that Congress has to do it's job and say, "If this battle's continuing, we have to have another authorization."

Welch: Was this as close as we've come since 2001 to actually re-upping and requiring the re-uppage of the authorization of use of military force, and what happened to it? What was the process by which in vanished?

Amash: Yeah, it was the closest we've been. Allegedly, it was allowed on there by the chairman of the committee without the blessing of Republican leadership, without the blessing of the White House. And so, I think whether it was the White House or House leaders, they came in and said, "We're stripping this out. We don't think this is the appropriate venue." And my understanding is, they're putting a different provision in there in the bill so that we can do a watered down version of what was there from Representative Lee.

...Welch: What else have you seen from Attorney General Sessions that has set off your alarm bells?

Amash: Everything. Whether it's indefinite detention ... There's a whole host of things out there. The drug war, his belief that we should continue to prosecute people for minor drug offenses ... But at the same time, those are things that Congress has a duty to change. So if we don't like the way the law is being enforced, if we think that Jeff Sessions should spend his time on more important matters, then we have a responsibility to change the law. So, let's change the law. Let's change the law on civil asset forfeiture. Let's change the law on sentencing. Let's change the law on indefinite detention. Let's change all of these laws, and then there's no excuse for the attorney general to do the wrong thing.

Welch: EXIM Bank. Listen, we've been talking about criminal justice reform for three or four years, and a lot of surveillance, post-Snowden revelation reform, and all these kinds of things. EXIM Bank was euthanized for like a week and half at some point, and it seems to be rising up. Talk to me, specifically, about what you're trying to do with murdering that crony capitalist thing in it's sleep on more time, but why can't Republicans do even Republican things right?

Amash: I've been asking myself that question for a long time. But the Export Import Bank is a no-brainer. It's a corporate welfare bank. We should do away with it. I've had legislation over the past couple terms to get rid of the Export Import Bank, to phase it out, so it's actually a pretty modest piece of legislation. It gives them a little bit of time to phase things out. But the Export Import Bank should go away. We shouldn't be financing other countries to purchase stuff from big corporations in the United States. That's just a transfer of wealth from everyday Americans to these big companies. And they'll say to you that, "Oh, it doesn't cost anything," but taxpayers are on the hook. So if you used normal accounting principles, you'd see that taxpayers are on the hook for the liability here, and we have a major problem that has to be addressed.

So, let's get rid of it, and in many ways, it's a symbol of other types of corporate welfare at the federal level, and at the state level. So let's get rid of it, because I think it's a pretty easy target. It's a target that's right in front of us, and they don't have the number of board members necessary right now to operate, it hasn't been operating really the way it's traditionally operated for the last two years because of the lack of board members, and the world hasn't fallen apart. Boeing still exists, all these other companies are still doing just fine. So we can do away with it, and help out regular Americans.

They'll tell you, as well, that small businesses benefit from this, but actually, it's a very small percentage of businesses that benefit from this. So we're talking about a fraction of a percent, and all of these people are essentially paying taxes, whether it's small businesses or individuals, are paying taxes to help support something like the Export Import Bank, but very few get any benefits from it.

Welch: Starting with Ron Paul's run for presidency, which I think helped at least partially inspire you, and the Tea Party Movement of 2009 and 2010, there was this creation out of the ether of a Liberty Movement, and it felt like there was some momentum going in this direction on the EXIM Bank and other things that we've talked about elsewhere. And now, we have a president and a movement around him that's pretty nationalist, pretty populist, which is not necessarily in a very libertarian direction, although there are big exceptions on regulation. And then on the left, it's just going straight Bernie Sanders here on economic policy, which is very hostile to a lot of issues of economic freedom. What happened to the Liberty Movement, or are we thinking too much in terms of high profile national politics?

Amash: Well, there's always been a strain of nationalism within parts of the Liberty Movement. There was, in some sense, an alliance between libertarians and some people who had more nationalistic views, whether it's on economics or other issues against the establishment. So they had allied themselves against the establishment. And now that you have President Trump, who's very clearly in one of the camps there, many people who were part of the Liberty Movement, but were more on the nationalistic side, now don't want anything to do with the libertarian part of that movement. I think that's caused some friction, and maybe it's time for people in the Liberty Movement to rethink some of those alliances, think about some of the principles that we hold. We believe in free markets, we believe in people being allowed to trade and live with whoever they like, and we don't need the sort of nationalistic side of it undermining those principles, because they're in conflict.

And if you look back on people like von Mises, or Hayek, or others, they spoke very negatively about this nationalist strain. They didn't like the idea of nationalism in a country. They thought it was a very bad idea, and dangerous to liberty.

Welch: On your Twitter feed, you have pinned a George Washington quote warning about parties and factions. I've seen, over the last month, you've had events with a couple of high-profile Democrats and libertarians ones to be sure, Jared Polis and Beto O'Rourke ... What are you doing? Are you going rogue? What are you doing here?

Amash: I think the parties are a problem. That became more clear to me when I entered Congress, and now I've been in Congress for a few years. I can see that a lot of the inability to move forward on more libertarian ideas is because we have this two-party system that really controls all of the levers. And you have Republican leadership that basically decides on all of the outcomes in advance, and doesn't allow issues to be debated on the floor. And I believe that a lot of these libertarian views would be successful in a floor vote if they were allowed to be debated, but we don't have that opportunity under this leadership team, and you're not going to get that opportunity under Democratic leadership.

So it's not that the parties are problematic because bipartisanship is a cure-all and is the greatest thing in the world, there's a lot of bad things that happen through bipartisanship. In fact, many of the worst pieces of legislation passed with overwhelming bipartisan majorities. So it's not a call for bipartisanship, it's a call for non-partisanship. I think that we need to move away from this idea that you just have two parties who are at war with each other, and one party is good and the other party is evil, because that leads to all sorts of bad outcomes. You get 'End justifies the means' thinking in just about everything, and liberty doesn't really have an opportunity to flourish in that sort of environment.

Welch: So, what do you do? I mean, you can nonpartisan your own brain, but you're still a Republican, and the system is still like this. What can you do, to further that kind of goal or ethos?

Amash: Well, I'll keep speaking about it, for one thing. I speak to young people all the time and try to encourage them not to be beholden to these two parties. They don't have to be Republican or Democrat, they can be something else. Right now, I would say that the largest group out there are Independent people, people who aren't aligned with one of the two parties. So, we need to make sure that the next generation is thinking about this, and hopefully, over time, these two parties start to fall apart. They're getting smaller each year, which is why, I think, the partisan rhetoric is getting elevated, because they're actually smaller and smaller each year, and they're becoming more extreme.

Welch: Just to make sure you know what you just said, you're a Republican advocating for the Republican Party to fall apart.

Amash: Well, I think, over time, that's what has to happen. I think both parties, not just the Republican Party, I think the Democratic Party as well. I don't think that in the modern era that you need this sort of institutionalized party system to run for office. Back when you didn't have internet, it made more sense. People didn't even know who they were voting for, they didn't meet the people, they couldn't hear about the particular individual's views, so they had to depend on the party systems to tell them who to vote for. And in this day and age, you don't need that. I can go straight to Twitter or Facebook or elsewhere, and tell people exactly what I stand for. And young people, I think, understand that better than our generation and older generations. So, I think there's an opportunity to really have a paradigm shift here, but it might not happen in the near future. It might be the next generation that has to do that.

The DCCC would never back a candidate like him, but MI-03 Democrats are lining up behind a Medicare-For-All progressive named Jeff Thomas as their candidate against Amash this cycle. In making his announcement last month, he pointed out to the media that "(Amash) voted in support of the American Health Care Act, a bill pushed by Donald Trump that would take health coverage away from millions," Thomas said in the release. "He has shown indifference to protecting the Great Lakes, and failed to join the bipartisan effort to aid the people of Flint. The people of this district deserve a representative who will respond to our needs and concerns, not just follow a rigid ideology wherever it leads."

In 2016 Trump beat Hillary in the district-- 51.6% to 42.2%-- while Amash beat his Democratic opponent 59.5% to 37.5%. There are 5 counties in MI-03 and Bernie won all of them in the primary. But the vast majority of the votes in the district come from Kent County. Bernie beat Hillary there 43,375 (62.5%) to 25,899 (37.3%) but Bernie also significantly outpolled Trumpanzee (35,285) that day. The only other county with a significant number of voters is Calhoun County and that was also Bernie country. He beat Hillary 5,810 (51.5%) to 5,230 (46.4%) and beat Trump (5,800) as well, albeit narrowly. Bernie won MI-03 but the DCCC isn't interested in backing a Berniecrat against Amash-- which is why they are a loser party and will always be a loser party as long as Pelosi and Hoyer are calling the shots at the DCCC.