Republicans Not Even Campaigning For Independent Voters Anymore-- For Them, It's All About Their Crackpot Base Now

GOP base strategy works with hardcore Republican voters, but not with normal people

This morning when Trump tried bragging about his magnificence, the UN General Assembly burst out in sustained, audible laughter. No, Señor T, you're not in Kansas anymore. (Ironically, even Kansas may not be Kansas anymore.)

Ugly monkey: "In less than two years, my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country."

World Leaders: laughter.

Ugly monkey: "It's so true."

World Leaders: more laughter.

Ugly monkey: "I didn't expect that reaction, but that's okay," smirking as though waiting for someone to feed him a banana-- or hand him a submachine gun.

Republican Party strategists have come to realize that appealing to independent voters this year is a rabbit hole for their candidates and they are now doubling down on getting out their own base and virtually ceding the independents-- as much as a third of the vote in many places-- to the Democrats. Our election coverage here at DWT has centered on independents ability to decide the midterms. GOP strategy is to now run such vile negative advertising as to just discourage independents from voting, not to get them to vote for Republican candidates.

At Axios Monday morning, Caitlin Owens outlined a Republican strategy to save hardcore red districts and basically abandon all swing districts. "With the midterm elections fast approaching and Democrats riding a clear advantage on health care, many Republicans are nevertheless doubling down on largely unpopular ideas like repealing the Affordable Care Act and cutting Medicare," she wrote."This strategy may seem counterintuitive on its face. However, it likely reveals that the party has all but abandoned independent voters this year and instead is focused on turning out its base. Republican leaders have recently become more public about the likelihood of trying again on ACA repeal, whereas a few months ago it was largely a private assumption among the party.

• Vice President Mike Pence told reporters in Wisconsin that if the GOP candidate wins the Senate seat there, the effort will be revived, per The Hill. “We made an effort to fully repeal and replace ObamaCare and we'll continue, with Leah Vukmir in the Senate, we'll continue to go back to that," he said.
• “We need to win this election and then get more seats next year" before trying again, GOP Whip Steve Scalise told the AP.

Is that a good idea in Wisconsin, a state where independents decide elections? It may be a good strategy for Mississippi but there isn't a single poll-- including partisan Republican polls that no one takes seriously-- that shows Vukmir with a pathway to victory. FiveThirtyEight gives her a 1 in 40 chance to beat progressive Democratic incumbent Tammy Baldwin (in a state Trump won-- albeit narrowly and with Kremlin help-- in 2016.

As Owens explained, "ACA repeal only resonates well with one group of voters: registered Republicans. 'It’s all about the base, because as far as I can tell, they’ve lost the independents, there’s no one left to woo,' said conservative economist Doug Holtz-Eakin, a former campaign aide to John McCain. 'The Republicans face a very odd problem…when you ask actually registered voters what they want to do with the future of the ACA, no one wants to repeal and replace it except the Republicans, which the majority do,' said Robert Blendon of Harvard's School of Public Health. 'If you are looking at the aggregate, you can't imagine why you’d even mention it. But if you’re trying to encourage your own voters… then they're trying to say that we would come back and try to do something,' Blendon added."

Worse yet for the GOP's election hopes among normal voters, the Trump Regime is now talking about cuts to Social Security and Medicare again. Owens reminds us that Trumpanzee's top economic advisor, drug addict and crackpot TV personality Larry Kudlow, "recently said that the administration will probably look at entitlement cuts next year." She brought up 3 very vulnerable Republican incumbents-- in districts with huge numbers of independent voters-- who are going along with Kudlow and Trump are likely to lose their seats because of it. John Faso, for example, was keeping his seat in play. It is now starting to trend, ever so slightly, towards Anthony Delgado. Faso is making noises that will make independents (and seniors) see him as a threat to Social Security and Medicare. Fine for the GOP base-- but NY-19 is not some backward rural district in Oklahoma or Alabama. The PVI is supposedly a deceptive R+2 but Obama won it both times he ran and it was only Hillary's lousy campaign and flaws as a candidate that gave Trump his win there (50.8% to 44.0%).

Peter Roskam is another one the need to rein in spending on entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security. That's a bad idea in Chicagoland. IL-06 gave Obama a win over McCain, Romney a win over Obama and Hillary a 7 point win over Trump (50.2% to 43.2%). The PVI is also a deceptive R+2. The Democratic candidate, Sean Casten, isn't especially strong but it's a neck-and-neck race that Roskam's to lose by talking about cutting Social Security and Medicare.

Very similar story in Texas' 7th district (Houston), where the Democrats nominated a weak candidate, Lizzie Fletcher, but where Hillary narrowly edged Trump (48.5% to 47.1%). Incumbent John Culberson is a poor campaigner. Fletcher has outraised him, $2,312,615 to $2,007,183 and he will be committing political suicide if he embraces-- as he appears to be doing-- an all base strategy. Fletcher isn't capable of winning this race; Culberson is very capable of losing it.

Again, Owens explained the risk to Republicans like Culberson: Although the bet is that the GOP base is concerned with deficits, "as soon as the other side switches to 'you're going to cut back Medicare and Social Security,' you're on the wrong side," Blendon said. "The highest turnout rates are among people above 60." Like clockwork, the DNC blasted out an email criticizing Kudlow's comments, saying that he "admitted that Republicans will try to cut vital programs relied upon by millions of working families."

Republican Incumbents Who Voted To Phase Out Medicare Are Desperate To Hide Their Records From The Voters

Trump rubber stamp Bruce Poliquin wants to take away Mainers' healthcare... and pretend it's the Democrats

This morning I was on the phone with Mike Siegel, the Blue America-endorsed candidate in a gerrymandered Texas district (TX-10) that goes from north Austin all the way through Weimar, Brenham, Columbus and Prairie View into Cypress and Tomball in the exurbs northwest of Houston. He had just gotten back his new polling and it was the best yet. He and longtime right-wing incumbent Michael McCaul are running neck-and-neck and a big reason is their approaches to healthcare. McCaul is basically against it and would like to gradually eliminate Medicare altogether. Siegel favors a strong Medicare-for-All agenda. And when he speaks with Democrats, independents and even mainstream Republicans, they're interested. Voters tell pollsters throughout TX-10 that healthcare is their #1 issue-- and that's bad news for McCaul. (You can help Siegel's campaign here.)

It's the same up in Maine's second district, where polling shows a neck-and-neck race between state House majority whip Jared Golden and incumbent Bruce Poliquin, another Wall Street pawn and anti-healthcare Republican. Voters in ME-02, who backed Bernie against Hillary in 2016, are familiar with what Medicare-for-All means and Jared Golden is campaigning on it as one of his top issues. Poliquin, who has voted to take away healthcare from working families at every single opportunity-- even when Republican Senator Susan Collins refused to-- has resorted to lying about his-- and Golden's-- healthcare stands. And he has plenty of corporate cash to spread the lies across the broadcast networks.

His claims are preposterous and depend on uniformed, easily manipulated voters. As Ian Millhiser pointed out Monday at Think Progress, Poliquin's latest deceitful ad paints a dire, frightening picture of Golden's intentions towards Medicare-- the polar opposite of Golden's campaign platform. Poliquin falsely claims that Golden "will end Medicare as we know it" and accuses him of wanting to impose "over $32 trillion in higher costs." The climax of the ad features an image of a very stern older white lady shaking her head. He's counting on no one looking up his record-- or Golden's.

The implication is that seniors should be very, very afraid. If Golden is elected, things will happen to Medicare! And those things will be bad! For you!

This isn’t a new strategy. The GOP often appeals to older voters by suggesting that Democratic spending on some other demographic group necessarily implies fewer benefits for the Republican Party’s elderly base. In 2012, for example, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney ran an ad accusing President Obama of cutting Medicare to pay for “a massive new government program that’s not for YOU.”

Poliquin’s ad is an especially obnoxious example of this tactic because it deploys one of the most meaningless phrases in American politics-- “end Medicare as we know it.” This is both literally true and intentionally misleading.

Yes, Golden wants to end Medicare as we know it. But that’s because Golden would transform Medicare from a program that only covers some Americans in one that covers all Americans. That’s hardly a reason for seniors to sternly shake their heads at him.

...Poliquin’s claim that Medicare-for-All would lead to “over $32 trillion in higher costs” is also worth unpacking. The source for this claim is a Koch Brothers-funded study that determined  the specific Medicare-for-All plan pushed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) would cause the government to spend $32.6 trillion on health care over a ten-year period.

That sure sounds like a lot! But if the United States does nothing-- that is, if it leaves its current health care system in place-- we will spend even more money than we would under a Medicare-for-All system. In 2016, America’s total health expenditures were $3.3 trillion a year, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, when you include both public and private spending. That means that, even before you account for inflation, the United States will spend $33 trillion over the next decade on health care if it stays its present course. And $33 trillion is, of course, more than $32.6 trillion.

The idea that the United States could save money by adopting a universal, single-payer health plan that guarantees coverage to all Americans may sound counter-intuitive, but it makes sense if you understand the economics of the health industry. Under Medicare-for-All, more people would receive quality care, but that care would cost a lot less.

Currently, Medicare pays significantly less for the same medical procedure than private insurers typically do. The reason for this is that seniors account for about a third of all health care costs in the United States, and Medicare provides health coverage to the vast bulk of these seniors. That gives Medicare tremendous power when it negotiates with health providers to lower costs.

If a particular health provider charges too much, Medicare can threaten to cut off that provider-- and few providers can afford to lose so many older patients.

The entire premise of a single-payer system is that everyone (or, at least, nearly everyone) would be covered by the same government-run program. In this world, the government would have even more power to bargain down prices because hardly any health providers could afford to be cut off from Medicare-for-All patients.

For the moment, Medicare-for-All is also quite popular. A March poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 59 percent of respondents support a universal, single-payer system. In the past, however, the most potent message a politician can bring into a health care debate is often “we should keep the status quo.”

This implicit message benefited Republicans seeking to kill Obamacare in 2009, and it benefited Democrats seeking to preserve Obamacare in 2017. Poliquin’s now hoping it will save him in 2018-- even if he is being completely dishonest.

Poliquin may be one of the most bold-faced liars in Congress, desperate to hold onto his job as he watches Golden overtake him, but Golden-- who you can contribute to here-- but he and McCaul are not the only Republicans trying to hide their antipathy for healthcare and twist their opponents' proposals. Unlike Siegel and Golden, Sean Casten in Chicagoland is not a progressive at all and it not an advocate of Medicare-for-All, just of more Obamacare. But this is the maliciously misleading add his anti-healthcare opponent, Pete Roskam, has been sending out:

Politifact checked it and awarded it a rare "Pants on Fire Rating," which is usually saved for lies that are purposely false. In reality they could give that rating to the campaign of pretty much every GOP incumbent!

It’s no surprise that Roskam, a six-term Republican incumbent fighting to keep his 6th District seat in the Western suburbs, doesn’t see eye-to-eye on health care with Sean Casten, a clean-energy entrepreneur from Downers Grove.

Roskam was a key architect of last year’s congressional tax overhaul that struck the controversial Obamacare penalty for not having health insurance. Casten has made protecting and expanding health care access under Obamacare, formally known as the Affordable Care Act, a top priority of his campaign.

Republicans have been complaining about the effects of Obamacare for years, but Roskam is taking some wild swings with this attack on Casten. There’s a lot here to unpack, so to keep it simple this fact-check focuses on the ad’s unsubstantiated health care claims.

Veronica Vera, a Roskam campaign spokeswoman, said the ad connected the dots between Casten’s support for Obamacare and a federal report-- itself containing a number of caveats-- that found premiums sold to individuals on the federal health care exchange were 105 percent higher in 2017 than premiums for existing individual market plans available in 2013 before the exchange opened.

If it happened in the past it surely then will happen in the future, Vera reasoned, and so to the Roskam campaign that means Casten backs a doubling of premiums.

One obvious problem with that line of thinking is that the Roskam campaign could provide no evidence that Casten had ever said such a thing.

What’s more, experts say a major factor behind recent premium spikes on the individual market was uncertainty over the law’s future given frequent attempts by Roskam and other Republicans, including President Donald Trump, to kill or weaken Obamacare.

Even so, there is evidence in Illinois that the days of Obamacare sticker shock may be over. Illinois’ largest insurer, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, has proposed a slight reduction in its premiums for Obamacare plans next year.

It’s also important to note that most Americans obtain insurance through their employers, not Obamacare. Overall, premium hikes for work-based policies have been modest in recent years.

For those who do rely on Obamacare, just a small share have been exposed to the full brunt of past Obamacare premium increases. Of the 15.2 million Americans who in 2017 purchased Obamacare coverage through the federal health care exchange, 8.2 million qualified for federal subsidies that cushioned them from increases, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a leading authority on health care.

Another 5.4 million Americans also purchased full-price individual insurance through the off-exchange plans that existed prior to Obamacare, according to Kaiser.

"We’re really talking about maybe 2 percent of the population that’s paying full-price premiums for the individual market overall," said Cynthia Cox, a health reform and private insurance expert with the Kaiser Foundation.

"It's important to think about these people because the ACA was intended to make insurance more affordable," she said. "But putting it into perspective, it's a relatively small share of the population."

Roskam’s other health care attack on Casten is also convoluted.

The logic works this way: Obamacare shoppers had fewer options when picking plans for 2018, so that must mean that if Obamacare were expanded as Casten wants the options would narrow even further.

"Expanding the ACA would mean limiting health care options for everyone affected," Vera wrote.

That argument is riddled with holes. Obamacare plans didn’t exist prior to 2014, so any number of options offered on the exchange are a plus, even if pared back. A key reason for the reductions was uncertainty over the law’s future following the election of Trump, who demanded it be scrapped.

And Obamacare also mandates minimum levels of coverage that did not exist prior to implementation of the health care law, which vastly expanded access to coverage for millions of Americans who previously had none, including those who didn’t qualify based on their health.

"Before the ACA, if you had a pre-existing condition, there could be any number of plans to choose from, but you couldn’t get any of them," said Cox, the insurance expert with the Kaiser Foundation.

Our ruling

Roskam alleges that Casten supports "doubling premiums" and "cutting current health care plans" for Illinois families.

Casten doesn’t support doubling premiums or reducing options-- and Roskam’s campaign could point to nothing that said he did.

The crux of Roskam’s argument centers on Casten’s support for expanding Obamacare options. Premiums on the federal exchange have spiked in past years, but Illinois’ largest insurer now says it expects them to go down slightly for 2019.

What’s more, most Americans get insurance through employers, not Obamacare. But among those who do, most have been insulated from the full force of premium increases by federal subsidies.

Health care policy has more wrinkles than a Shar Pei dog, and the complexity makes it easy for partisans to demagogue. Roskam’s claims are a clear example.

They’re not just wrong, they’re absurd. We rate them Pants on Fire!

A Pleasant Surprise In Illinois' 6th Congressional District

Tony Sterbenc is a regular guy, a progressive in a Republican suburban Chicagoland district (IL-06). He grew up in a union-heavy working-class neighborhood, and told me he took Poli Sci simply because he cared about it, then settled into a white-collar corporate career and has just kept watching all his life. He wrote a guest post for us about how he sees the crowded IL-06 primary shaping up. In the last few years the district, which includes red-leaning parts of Cook, DuPage, McHenry, Kane and Lake counties, has started trending bluer and the Republican incumbent, Pete Roskam, is considered endangered. Obama won the district with 51% in 2008 but lost it in 2012 with 45%. In 2016 the district swung back towards the Democrats and Hillary beat Trump 50.2% to 43.2%. The PVI was R+4 then; now it's just R+2. Amanda Howland was the Democratic candidate then and with no support at all from the DCCC she was defeated by Roskam 208,555 (59.2%) to 143,591 (40.8%). She spent $98,179 to Roskam's $3,331,980. This year there are 7 Democrats competing for the Democratic nomination, including Howland, who by the end of December had already raised more than she raised by the end of the 2016 cycle. But 4 more establishment Democrats have raised even more than she has. And Roskam has already banked $2,475,565 this year.

Tony and his wife went to a forum that all 7 of the Democrats participated in and wrote the following form DWT readers. Tomorrow is primary day in Texas. The next state is Illinois-- March 20. He told me he considers Roskam "despicable."

IL-06

Impression: Went in wondering whether to vote for Howland or Cheney, and prepared to hate EMILY's List-endorsed Kelly Mazeski (who's been bombarding us with nearly daily postcards bragging she had breast cancer, seemingly the only thing she has a position on). Here's what we actually saw of the seven candidates on display. They sorted themselves out neatly into two serious contenders, four pretenders and a revelation.

The contenders:

Amanda Howland:
Legitimately pretty good. Calls herself "unapologetically progressive" and supports single payer. I could live with her, certainly over Roskam (remember, you can't spell "Roskam" without "skam"). A college trustee with a background in teaching, school administration and legal mediation. She was the nominee last time against Roskam and got 40.8% of the vote, actually better than other recent challengers, which she's claiming makes her a credible opponent. She does seem credible, just not terribly exciting or dynamic.

Carole Cheney:
No relation I know of, certainly not spiritually. Most of her resume is as a staffer to Rep. Bill Foster, a New Dem. Revealed last week at a local forum that Roskam not only is avoiding town halls and reporter's questions, his staffers are refusing to answer the phone OR record constitutents' calls, which may actually be illegal. She sounds like a system lifer who retains a conscience, which is a good thing. Takes pride in knowing the minutae of issues and of Roskam's record so she can answer him, and shows some real passion while doing so. Unfortunately, her byword on every issue is "incremental" (perhaps why the corporatist Chicago Tribune endorsed her), including a wuss-out on single payer because she thinks it'd be hard to pass. Overall, a technocrat who seems too timid for these times. As Michael Corleone says in dismissal of his aide before the Vegas massacre: "Tom, you're not a wartime consigliare."

Kelly Majeski:
Every bit as repellent as I expected. Embarrassingly endorsed by the pro-Democratic, union-owned Chicago Sun-Times as well as EMILY's List, and some have depressingly cast her as the favorite. Openly opposes single payer. Could be seen nakedly cribbing her answers to forum questions from other candidates at the dais. Talked about the importance of defeating Roskam and Trump and getting a Democratic House majority as the end goal, pointedly never saying why, in the great DCCC tradition Howie's articulated so often. A wealthy dilettante who's visibly dead inside.

Sean Casten:
Businessman turned Mr. Smith candidate. Good, smart guy who's a smart technocrat. Ideologically, would have made a good, respectable liberal Republican in the era before money wrenched our nation's politics to the right.

Becky Anderson Wilkins:
A well-intentioned and energetic Naperville council member. Like Casten, she's under the fatal Obama misimpression that the fascists will play nice.

Jennifer Zordani:
A regulatory lawyer who should remain one. Obviously intelligent, but wholly lacking an overarching vision for government, unable to think on her feet and visibly miscast as a candidate, to the point where she was naive enough to tell an all-Democratic crowd that Dodd-Frank should be weakened in places to ease paperwork burdens on small businesses-- unfortunately toxic to say in a campaign context, even if true.

Ryan Huffman:

The mammoth surprise of the evening, and the reason I wrote this. Huffman, 31 and unsung, describes himself as a data analyst, policy expert, and former White House intern (Obama) with a Northwestern journalism degree and a U. of Chicago master's in public policy. All those smarts were on display in a performance that never put a foot wrong. Even his opponents basically admitted out loud that he stole the whole debate (one said outright, correctly, "You're smarter than I am") with a series of brilliant, bold answers that sliced right through all the usual mealy-mouth "pragmatic" bullsh!t and went straight for the Bernie positions on campaign financing, single payer, Wall Street and the need for Democrats to declare without shame that big government can be a force for good. He reduced the whole rest of the field to a bunch of visionless incrementalists by comparison. He was so obviously superior intellectually that the others were comfortable praising him, disturbingly secure that his superior ideas didn't give him any chance to, y'know, win.

I came away feeling all my speeches to my teen son would be hollow hyprocrisy if I didn't vote for Huffman. Then I looked up the respective candidates' campaign finances. The guy, who's sworn off dark money, hasn't received any kind of money at all. He'd reported literally tens or hundreds in total funds, and admitted to $100,000 in college debt to get his obviously well-used public policy MA from the U. of Chicago. Only some love from the likes of you can give this district even a shred of awareness of the superior option available to them (whom I'd never even heard of before, itself a symptom of this broken system).

Anyone Think Putin-Gate And Comey's Firing Might Be An Issue In The 2018 Midterms?

Yesterday, conservatives Barbara Comstock (R-VA), Erik Paulsen (R-MN) and Carlos Curbelo (R-FL) backed Justin Amash's and Walter Jones' demands for an independent investigation into Putin-Gate. Amash and Jones are in red Trump districts and acted out of principle and patriotism. You can decide for yourself what Comstock-- whose district went for Hillary 52.2-42.2%-- and Curbelo-- whose district went for Hillary by an even great margin: 56.7-40.6%-- and Paulsen-- whose district went for Clinton 50.8-41.4%-- had as motivations. I suspect that the dam is going to break very soon in terms of congressional Republicans-- particularly House Republicans in swing districts Hillary won-- getting behind the very popular idea of an independent investigation that neither Trump nor Regime lackeys like McConnell, Ryan nor Sessions can control. But I sincerely doubt that inveterate Trump loyalists such as Darrell Issa, John Culberson or Pete Roskam-- despite each being in a district Hillary won with a nice hefty margin-- will ever break with Trump.

Issa's Orange and San Diego county district voted against Trump 50.7% to 43.2% and gave Issa the political scare of his life, reelecting him by a tiny handful of votes against newcomer Dog Applegate. This year Applegate is back to finish the job he started in 2016. There was a similar result in the suburban district west of Chicago (IL-06) where Hillary bested Trump 50.2% to 43.2%, a district, by the way, that Romney had won against Obama by over 8 points. The DCCC, as usual, had refused to challenge Roskam in 2016. This year progressive Democrat Geoff Petzel isn't waiting around for the DCCC. He's running a strong grassroots campaign against Roskam-- and Trump.

Yesterday, Geoff told us he was "shocked by the Comey firing" and he explained why:

The firing of FBI Director James Comey may represent the worst action of the Trump Administration. Yes, worse than the refugee ban, the destruction of healthcare and rollback of our environmental laws. The Comey firing represents the worst of Trump's actions because it shows a blatant disregard for the rule of law and threatens the very essence of our fragile democracy. Regardless of my personal thoughts about James Comey, it was highly inappropriate for an American President to fire the man leading an investigation into his campaign and associates. In fact, what Donald Trump did puts him at the same level as a third world dictator.

I learned of the firing as I prepared to enter a campaign rally in my district and had the opportunity to discuss it with my audience. For the first time in the campaign I think I am viewing the 2018 election differently. There has never been a doubt in my mind that the 2018 election is important-- the most important election of my generation. It may determine the fate of healthcare for millions and impact American lives for generations. But, tonight for the first time, I realized that when I am elected with a new Democratic House in 2018, I may be faced with the grim task of participating in the impeachment of President Trump. And that thought went from unlikely to very possible this evening.

In my mind, the decision to fire the FBI Director was an admission of guilt. I believe the White House is scrambling to cover up a mess. The mess will include staffers and campaign participants at least, and the President himself may be implicated in the most serious scenario. Either way, a huge cover up is going on. As we have seen, Donald Trump isn’t the smartest guy in the room. I assume he is in a panic over the investigation, is firing Comey to cover up the mess and couldn’t clearly see the political implications of his decision because he is so blinded by the investigation and what it may reveal. And it’s not just the fact that Comey was fired-- he was fired while he was away from the office and told he would not allowed back into his office to retrieve his personal belongings. Is it possible they didn’t want him to access files or evidence of the Trump corruption?

I am fortunate enough to have been in court with the Justice Department-- although I was suing the government and they were attempting to protect the government's mismanagement and corruption. I have always believed that the career people like Sally Yates and thousands of others are dedicated public servants who do their job honorably and with little recognition. These people share a concern for doing the right and just thing and upholding the laws of this nation. When our nation's leader fires Sally Yates several days after she informs White House Counsel about possible corruption and then fires the head of the FBI, it shows a disregard for the rule of law, a disrespect for the people of our nation and puts our democracy at risk.

I have an immense respect for our institutions and our democracy including the Office of the President. The possible and increasingly likely corruption and collusion with Russian officials must break through politics. With our Democracy at risk of a very real constitutional crisis we must demand an independent prosecutor and hold President Trump accountable for his campaigns ties to Russia. This is bigger than Trump, bigger than party-- this is about America and her legitimacy as a nation. As we look to 2018 it is critical we elect serious candidates who respect our laws and institutions and will put country ahead of all others.

Mark Salter, an Iowa Republican, is best known as a long-time top McCain aide

I want to add just one more point. The once prohibitively red seat in the suburbs north of Atlanta (GA-06) has it's runoff election between Democrat Jon Ossoff and Republican Karen Handel on June 20th. Despite a GOP registration advantage and immense sums of money being laundered into the district from right-wing billionaires via Paul Ryan's shady SuperPAC, polling shows the race as a dead-heat. After Ossoff tweeted Tuesday night that "there should be bipartisan support for a special prosecutor to investigate Russian interference," Handel decided to show what an utter rubber stamp she would be in Congress, applauding Trump’s decision to fire Comey, saying in a statement yesterday that his ouster was "probably overdue."

Her support for the president’s stunning move to fire Comey came a day after her opponent in the 6th District runoff, Democrat Jon Ossoff, called for a special prosecutor to “investigate Russian interference” in last year’s vote.

...Handel, a former Georgia secretary of state, sought to sidestep Trump’s controversies throughout her campaign for the seat. But since her No. 2 finish in the April 18 vote, she has more aggressively embraced the president, who has assailed Ossoff in tweets and hosted a fundraiser for her.

Democrats hope Comey’s firing will spark more support for a probe of Trump’s ties to Russia and give them an advantage in Georgia’s special election, considered a must-win for Republicans. The race for the suburban district, for decades held by the GOP, has become the nation’s premier 2017 political contest.

Other Georgia Democrats quickly pounced on Comey’s firing. Rep. Hank Johnson, Ossoff’s mentor and former boss, said the timing suggests “an effort to cover up wrongdoing.” Fulton County Commission chair John Eaves, a candidate for Atlanta mayor, said it “reeks of tyranny, not democracy” and labeled it Watergate 2.0.

And Democratic Party of Georgia head DuBose Porter invoked Trump’s firing of Sally Yates, a former Georgia prosecutor who was briefly the acting U.S. Attorney General, in condemning Trump’s decision and echoing the calls for a special prosecutor.

“Our national security is at stake and these demands must be met immediately,” he said. “We cannot trust Donald Trump to investigate himself. We just cannot trust Donald Trump.”

Handel was among the first prominent Georgia Republicans to comment on Comey’s firing. Most of the state’s GOP establishment had no public comment on the development in the hours after it was announced.

...The decision led to widespread bipartisan criticism in Washington. Several GOP lawmakers, including Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, said they support an independent inquiry into Russia’s ties to Trump’s campaign. And Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, suggested Trump fired Comey as part of a cover-up.

IMPORTANT: Why Blue America Supports Geoff Petzel In His Illinois Race To Win A Seat Held By Peter Roskam

The first thing people tell you when you decide to run for office is that you need a 30 second statement on why you are running. I am running for Congress in the IL 6th District because, just like many people in my District, I am pissed off. I am angry, concerned and disappointed that Donald Trump is our President, that a right-wing extremist is my Congressman, and that the Democratic Party has abandoned the values that once made the party great. I am running for Congress because I believe we need to fight the establishment politics, big money and special interests that have taken our democracy away from the people. I am running because I am part of the Bernie Revolution and the anti-Trump Resistance. I am running because I want to make people’s lives better.

Last week, Illinois held local elections and we made some amazing progress. In townships in DuPage County, long considered deep red territory, progressives won seats on the College of DuPage Board, Lisle Township and in Naperville Township. In the Village of Algonquin 3 of 4 incumbents were thrown out of office and replaced by Progressives and in Elgin Township the entire Republican Board and Supervisor were replaced with a Progressive slate of candidates-- the first time Democrats have had control of the Township since JFK was President!

These local elections are important-- every one of these races occurred in the 6th Congressional District where my opponent, Peter Roskam, won by 18 points against his Blue Dog opponent last fall. These local victories were not just Democratic victories-- these were progressive candidates who won seats in historically Republican held territory.

Many local Democrats seem surprised by the victories. I’m not. Maybe it’s because I have always believed that we can win if we just show people what we stand for. After all, 15 years ago I was appointed as one of the first precinct committeemen when the local Democratic organization was formed in Dundee Township-- and by creating an active grassroots organization we elected a Democratic judge for the first time in 50 years and a state representative who later became a state senator. These victories point to something important-- that progressives can win in the 6th District and that momentum is on our side, but we shouldn’t be surprised.

The 6th District race is interesting-- I am currently running against 5 other primary candidates and I am the only true and tested progressive in the bunch. Of course, that means I will be ignored by the DCCC. The DCCC has targeted our race and they have already run ads against my right-wing opponent. The DCCC has targeted our race because even though Peter Roskam won big, Hillary Clinton defeated Trump by 8 points. They have also recruited their own candidate to run in the primary. She looks like she is straight out of central casting-- a woman and former Marine who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and then worked in the Pentagon. There is one major problem-- she doesn’t live in the congressional district and never has. She lives an hour outside the District-- and has her entire life. In order to run for office, you don’t need to live in the congressional district you want to represent, you just need to live in the State.

I was asked recently if the hand-picking of a candidate by the DCCC would make me reconsider running in this crowded field. The answer is absolutely not. In fact now I have two battles to win-- beating Peter Roskam and his anti-choice, anti-environment, Pro-Trump agenda will be incredibly gratifying, but beating the establishment DCCC non-sense that has driven the Democratic Party away from its values is an ideological fight that motivates me just as much. Ultimately it allows voters a chance to determine what they value more-- a progressive and independent candidate or an establishment candidate. From the local election results last week, it looks to me like the progressive and independent candidates have the upper hand.

I know I’m drawing some big lines in the sand when I go after the DCCC and their establishment pick and I know that political consultants may suggest I should play nice with the DCCC. I ask, WHY? They have taken sides already, and I’m not on their side of the line. I’m okay being on the opposite side of the DCCC in our primary. I was raised in a strong Democratic family. My grandfather worked a union job for 42 years. He always talked politics and he always assumed I was a Democrat-- in his mind there was no way his grandson could be anything else. Being a Democrat was as sure of a thing in his mind as turkey at Thanksgiving and church on Sunday-- there was no other option. But the Democratic Party of my grandfather, the party that I grew up with, rarely exists in our national politics these days. The Democratic Party who cared for the worker, the environment, civil rights, and justice and proudly believed that big government, when done correctly and unapologetically can lift society to new heights just doesn’t exist outside the grassroots level. The DCCC doesn’t represent the Democratic Party of my grandfather and they don’t represent me.

With the DCCC picking a candidate who doesn’t even live in the district, they are living up to what many voters believe about our political parties-- that they care only about preserving the status quo and keeping the big money donors happy. Maybe I’m a little too idealistic to be in Congress, but I don’t think I’m too idealistic for the voters in our district-- Democrats and Republicans alike who are fed up with the rigged system that has been forced upon us.

I know what I see every day-- I see a national resistance movement that is demanding accountability and demanding action. And I think people like the DCCC have missed what that movement really is. The resistance movement isn’t just a bunch of pissed off Democrats. The resistance movement is made up of millions of Americans who are poised and ready to challenge Democrats and Republicans when they don’t properly represent the America my grandfather believed in-- one where playing by the rules and working hard allowed him to move his family up the economic ladder and guaranty that his children had more opportunity and a better life than he did. Those are the things I want people in my district and across America to believe in again. And I think the voters are dialed in enough to know that when the DCCC hand picks a candidate who doesn’t know anything about our district that no real change will come by electing a party hack carpetbagger.

There is no doubt that beating Peter Roskam and defeating the Trump agenda are important. But the long term future of our Party and the nation rests in electing progressives who can restore the Democratic Party of my grandfather to a party that represents the average person who works hard, wants a fair shake and expects a government who is working for them. Personally, I think the power brokers in Washington need to be taught a lesson. They must be defeated and we must elect Progressives like me who will buck the establishment and fight for the people. We need to re-establish the foundation and fabric of America that Abraham Lincoln so eloquently spoke of in his Gettysburg address when he said "government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

With the DCCC trying to corrupt our decision making process, our primary fight just got a little harder, but it also just became more important that we win. It is critical that we begin to restore our democracy and usher in new ideas and personalities. We need candidates who will push the limits of ingenuity, ignore establishment politics and fight to makes people’s lives better every day they hold elected office.

Ro Khanna And Beto O'Rourke Move To Remove PACs From The Temple Of Democracy

According to CleanSlateNow.org, there are only six members of the House who don't take PAC money-- 4 Democrats and 2 Republicans:

• Ro Khanna (D-CA)
• Beto O'Rourke (D-TX)
• Jared Polis (D-CO)
• Phil Roe (R-TN)
• Francis Rooney (R-FL)
• John Sarbanes (D-MD)

The six most corrupt members of the House-- at least in terms of taking the PAC-bribes-- are all notorious corporate whores who have poisoned the political system and should be driven from office-- 5 Republicans and a disgusting excuse for a Democrat:

• Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)- $3,249,247.09
• Kevin Brady (R-TX)- $3,068,027.73
• Pat Tiberi (R-OH)- $2,822,165.00
• Bill Shuster (R-PA)- $2,495,129.55
• John Shimkus (R-IL)- $2,484,809.71
• Steny Hoyer (R-MD)- $2,471,618.21

Ro Khanna, a dedicated progressive who represents the very PAC-friendly the Silicon Valley, started the No PAC Caucus in Congress. So far just Beto O'Rourke, the El Paso congressman challenging Ted Cruz's mega-PAC 2018 reelection bid, and independently wealthy Jared Polis from Boulder have joined the caucus. I've always asserted that the reason ethics laws for members of Congress-- including everything regarding how candidates raise money-- will always be inherently corrupt because they are written specifically for one class of people: members of Congress. They write their own laws to cover their own asses and legalize their own criminal behavior.

Tuesday, though, two members, Ro Khanna and Beto O'Rourke, have come forward will a new bill-- The No PAC Act-- to prohibit members of Congress from taking PAC contributions. It's a truly revolutionary proposal and it transcends partisanship. The bill that seeks to amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 by prohibiting members of Congress and those running for Congress from accepting contributions from a PAC, other than that of the candidate’s own PAC. It would also prohibit the establishment of leadership PACs.



The villain of the video above is Chicagoland knee-jerk Republican Peter Roskam who's taken $1,564,543.89 from PACs (more than half his campaign haul). Roskam's opponent in this race is Blue America-backed Geoff Petzel who backs what Khanna and O'Rourke are trying to accomplish-- and more: "I support the concept of the No PAC Act," he told us, "but this bill doesn't do enough to stop the influence of big money in our politics. I am a strong supporter of campaign finance reform and believe that no one, including corporations, should be able to contribute more than $200 to a campaign and all funds should run through a candidates committee. The No PAC Act does take an important stand against leadership PACs. Leadership PACs should absolutely be banned. They have no transparency and allow our elected officials to use them for personal gain. We need more transparency and less corporate influence in our politics. Reasonable people can agree that a $200 donation to a political campaign shouldn't influence someones vote, but when people like Peter Roskam use leadership PAC money for ski trips and hundreds of thousands in travel, I think most people will agree that some influence is certainly possible. Peter Roskam's use of leadership PAC money is yet another example of his questionable judgement when using outside money. In the past he was investigated for ethics violations over a trip he took with his family. The trip to Taiwan that cost $25,000 was paid for by a foreign government. His wild spending of leadership PAC money should also raise serious ethics concerns. And to make matters worse, Congressman Roskam voted to dismantle the House Ethics Committee... we need more oversight regarding these questionable uses of funds, not less. Being a Congressman should be about serving the people, not living a celebrity lifestyle."

In the 2016 cycle, PACs contributed more than $474 million to congressional candidates according to the FEC, which accounted for 35% of campaign funds for House Democrats, 39% for House Republicans, 15% for Senate Democrats, and 27% for Senate Republicans.

Khanna told the media that the bill "is an important step in stopping the influence of wealthy special interests in our political system. By limiting who can give to congressional candidates, voters can have a stronger voice in who represents them in Congress." O'Rourke agreed: "We need to get special interest money out of politics. This bill is an important step to do just that," he said.

We asked some of the progressive candidates who are running for congressional seats now. David Gill, who's up against Republican incumbent Rodney Davis-- who has gobbled up $1,806,068.14, an astonishing 69% of his total contributions-- was the first to respond. "As a candidate who supports meaningful campaign finance reform and who only accepts contributions from individuals, I'm fully supportive of the bill introduced by Representatives Khanna and O'Rourke. It will be much easier to finally achieve the single-payer health care system so desperately needed here in America when we eliminate the big money put into our political system by Big Pharma and the insurance industry."

Tom Guild is running against another big PAC-abuser, Republican Steve Russell in Oklahoma City. Russell gets about half his campaign funds from PAC-- $409,554.12 so far. Guild told us he fully supports the bill proposed by Khanna and O'Rourke. "I have never accepted a PAC contribution and have no plans to do so.  Especially in light of Citizens United, we have a great need for campaign finance reform to remove the stench of big corporate money in congressional campaigns. Dependence on big corporate and Wall Street money undermines the one person, one vote principle undergirding our political system. Accepting PAC money is a serious and debilitating problem that crosses party lines. It virtually ensures that only billionaires who can self-finance their campaigns or those who 'play the game' and sell their souls to the devil can successfully mount a congressional campaign. The No PAC Act is a very good step in the right direction. People often say that members of Congress can’t be bought, but can be rented for long periods of time. We need to put a stop to that unfortunate reality. I’m all in on this one! I know voters in CD5-OK are fed up with the corrosive influence of all the PAC money sloshing around the political system and if they vote to send me to Washington in 2018, I'll sign on as a co-sponsor of this bill on their behalf as soon as I get there."

Did The Far Right Render Ryan's Health Care Repeal Dead On Arrival?

A brand new Monmouth poll, found that 51% of Americans said they would prefer to keep the Affordable Care Act and work to improve it, with another 7% saying they want to keep the ACA entirely intact. That's 58%, while only 39% want to see the ACA repealed, either with a replacement (31%) or repealed entirely without a replacement, the Freedom Caucus' preferred outcome (8%). Just as that poll was being released yesterday, Mike Lee (R-UT) was at odds with the House Republican leadership's talking points, pointing out that Ryan's bill "is exactly the type of backroom dealing and rushed process that we criticized Democrats for." And House Freedom Caucus crackpot Mo Brooks (AL), for example, said that Ryan's Obamacare replacement "is a huge step in favor of socialized medicine" and that he'll vote against it and will only back total repeal. But not every member of Congress hates the Ryan ACA repeal plan. Utah's most odious and pathetic Establishment lapdog, Jason Chaffetz, was out regurgitating the GOP leadership's mostly deceitful, focus-group-tested talking points on early morning TV Tuesday:

• we campaigned on this
• death spiral
• premiums are going up, I think 25%
• Arizona, 100%
• deductibles up/choice down
• almost one third of the counties in this country have only one choice
• access, access, access...
• we've got to save health care for the American people

As you can see on the soon-to-be-classic segment above, when confronted with the facts from the Kaiser Foundation-- "with Medicaid reductions and smaller tax credits, this bill would clearly result in fewer people insured than under the ACA. The House GOP proposal seeks to reduce what the federal govern,went spends on health"-- Chaffetz extolled choices like this: "rather than getting that new iPhone that they just love, that they want to go spend hundreds of dollars on, maybe they should invest it in their own healthcare. They've got to make those decisions themselves." No, really; he said that. I swear. Watch for yourself; it's a short video.

Cadavers don’t need health insurance

Vulnerable Chicagoland GOP Rep. Peter Roskam was laying low-- and continuing to avoid his constituents, while Democratic opponent and health care advocate Geoff Petzel was talking with voters about health care-- while the Chicago Tribune thundered that the Ryan repeal plan is even worse than anyone expected, not exactly what Roskam wanted to hear yesterday. Michael Hiltzik's verdict: "it’s a nastier, more consumer-unfriendly proposal than even close followers could have expected." He summed up exactly what Chaffetz and others like him have been out on the stump doing:

The House GOP, in a written statement, cloaked this plan with a bodyguard of outright deceit. “What we’re proposing will deliver the control and choice individuals and families need to access healthcare that’s right for them,” the statement said. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-WI) said the measure would “drive down costs, encourage competition and give every American access to quality, affordable health insurance.” Curiously, the GOP statement says the plan embodies “President Trump's proposed healthcare reforms,” although the president has never advanced a coherent set of proposals.

The truth is that the GOP measure would destroy the ability of millions of Americans to access any healthcare worth the name. The Congressional Budget Office reportedly warned the Republicans that their proposals would lead to lost coverage for millions and higher costs for millions more, but the GOP is pushing ahead anyway.

...The proposal defunds Planned Parenthood. No federal funding can be made, either directly or indirectly, by Medicaid to a healthcare organization that “provides for abortions,” other than those done in cases of rape or incest or to save the life of the mother. That’s Planned Parenthood. It’s proper to note that Planned Parenthood doesn’t use federal funds to pay for abortions, as that’s already against the law. This measure shuts down funding for the organization just because it uses other funds to cover those procedures.

The bill effectively shuts down private health insurance coverage for abortion. According to a House Ways and Means Committee digest, the measure forbids spending federal tax subsidies on health plans that include coverage of abortion, even if the customer doesn’t get an abortion. This would dramatically shrink working Americans’ access to insurance-covered abortions, or would lead to insurers dropping abortion coverage from their plans, or both. Customers could buy separate policies to cover abortions, but couldn’t use the federal subsidy to help pay for them. Insurers likely would charge hugely discouraging premiums for such policies, as the market for them would be tiny.

The individual and employer mandates are eliminated. They’re not repealed exactly, but the penalties are repealed, which amounts to the same thing. Without a requirement that individuals carry health insurance, the insurance markets are almost certain to collapse. The repeal is retroactive back to the beginning of 2016, but the real problem is in the market starting this year. Individuals would be able to drop their coverage immediately, which will wreak havoc with the market starting right now. Aetna’s chairman and chief executive, Mark Bertolini, said recently that the individual market was entering a “death spiral” in which healthier customers dropped coverage, leaving sicker customers who know they need insurance facing an ever-increasing rates. This provision will do much to guarantee that will happen.

Essential health benefit rules are repealed. As of Dec. 31, 2019, ACA rules that required qualified health plans to provide hospitalization, maternity care, mental health services and other benefits would be sunsetted at the federal level. States would have the authority to set them instead. The impact on private, non-Medicaid plans would therefore vary by state. If a state removes maternity benefits, for example, that’s likely to make maternity coverage, among other services, immensely expensive, if available at all.

Income-based premium subsidies would be replaced by age-based subsidies, which will hurt working-class families in many states. Under the ACA, subsidies to help individual buyers afford premiums and (for poorer households) deductibles and co-pays were based on household income. The GOP measure will base them on the buyer’s age, instead, with older buyers receiving more help than younger. The GOP plan limits subsidies to $4,000 per individual; under the ACA, which also keys subsidies to the cost of benchmark insurance plans in the buyer’s home market, the subsidies theoretically could be several times higher. No family could receive more than $14,000 in subsidies, and no more than five family members could be eligible for subsidies.

As we reported last week, this scheme would reduce subsidies to many of the people who need them the most, while awarding them to recipients who don’t need them. “People who are lower income, older or live in high-premium areas would be particularly disadvantaged,” the Kaiser Family Foundation observed after examining an earlier draft. The new draft retains those features. Some modest means-testing of the subsidies-- an idea tossed around within the GOP caucus last week to quell complaints that the change would make the rich richer-- appears to be incorporated into the fiscal provisions of the proposal.

The Medicaid expansion is killed. As of Dec. 31, 2019, the Medicaid expansion is repealed. Traditional Medicaid will be block-granted, a system almost certain to result in less federal funding for the joint state-federal program than it would have received, over time. The neediest and sickest Americans will increasingly be on their own, as states get less federal help to provide them with medical services.

All of Obamacare’s taxes are repealed, another boon for the rich. Everything from the tax on tanning salons and medical devices to the surcharge on high-income taxpayers will be gone. As we explained earlier, this amounts to an enormous tax cut for the wealthy-- at least $346 billion over 10 years, every cent going to taxpayers earning more than $200,000 ($250,000 for couples). The proposal would sharply raise the limits on contributions to tax-advantaged Health Savings Accounts-- another gimme for the rich.

The tax repeal, the Brookings Institution has reported, will make it impossible to pay for any Obamacare “replacement”-- which still isn’t on the horizon. It also will exacerbate the fiscal problems of Medicare, by hastening the exhaustion of the program’s trust fund by four years, to 2025.

Not only would the Ryan plan give huge tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans and to drug, insurance and medical-device companies-- and even give a special tax break for health insurance CEOs-- it hikes premiums by 30% for people with pre-existing conditions if for any reason-- such as losing a job-- they don’t have coverage for 63 days. That's what Hiltzik must have had in mind when he wrote it's "a nastier [and] consumer-unfriendly." So... no, Democrats are not getting behind this monstrous and destructive mishmash. But neither are many Republicans. The Democrats only need 3 Senate Republicans to kill it and there are already 6 who have said they don't like it-- for various reasons-- enough to vote for it. On top of that, House anti-healthcare extremists on the far right fringe, are going crazy and denouncing it like mad. The week, the Conservative Review was fuming that the Ryan plan was based on an "entire premise of GOP lobbyist-driven negotiations over Obamacare are about as divorced from the reality of free markets as our thoughts are from the thoughts of God," concluding that House Republicans "continue to accept the entire premise of the RINO-care framework, and are merely negotiating the fine print. They are insufferable." 

Their analysis may be all wrong from top to bottom, but for right-wingers who buy into it, there's no way to back Ryan's bill. They've deluded themselves into thinking Señor Trumpanzee will ride to the rescue. "Trump needs to give a landmark speech laying out a vision of free market health care. As a populist with the persona of 'America’s entrepreneur,' he is the perfect messenger to rail against the Big Government/Big Pharma cartel working to stifle innovation and competition in the hopes of preserving the troughs for more subsidies. Trump needs to ask the American people and Congress if they want a health care system that looks more like Walmart and Uber or one that looks like the Post Office, the DMV, and a mini bar in your hotel room. Trump must call all the CEOs of health insurance companies into his office and tell them loudly and clearly: “we will not regulate you, but we will not subsidize you either. The era of government-run health care is over. Go out and compete for business.” He should also promise them that once full repeal is signed, he will promote cross-state line insurance, equal taxation for the individual market, and repeal of even pre-Obamacare interventions and regulations. This will ensure a healthy and robust individual market that is worth competing in." WOW! Talk about delusional The completely out-of-his-depth Trumpanzee-in-chief already tweeted that he loves the bill.

Heritage Action, which is never reluctant to crack a whip over the heads of Republicans headed in even a slightly a mainstreamish direction, was fuming by Tuesday morning. Their perspective is that the bill "not only accepts the flawed progressive premises of Obamacare but expands upon them... bad politics and, more importantly, bad policy... [Republicans] should fully repeal the failed law and deliver on promises that create a free market health care system."

By late Tuesday, even the Trumpanzee Daily News Breitbart website was denouncing Ryan's replacement proposal in no uncertain terms. "The Obamacare 2.0 bill," wrote one of the staff neo-Nazis, "pushed by some Republicans strips out even Obamacare’s weak protections preventing illegal aliens from signing up for health care meant for citizens." She then made a paranoid wing-nut case about how Ryan has put together a bill that will flood America with Hispanics obtaining counterfeit drivers licenses or something like that.

Justin Amash (R-MI), on the other hand tweeted within minutes of Ryan declassifying the plan that it's "Obamacare 2.0." Tuesday morning Rachael Bade laid out congressional wing-nut opposition for Politico readers, starting with extremist kook and Freedom Caucus chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) saying that the Ryan plan is "Obamacare by a different form." His members "dismissed the bill as creating a new 'entitlement program' by offering health care tax credits to low-income Americans." The all-powerful House Republican Study Committee memo sent to chiefs of staff echoed those comments and blasted the bill’s continuation of the Medicaid expansion for three years.

Freedom Caucus member Dave Brat (R-Va.) piled on, telling Politico he’d vote against it in its current form because “the bill maintains many of the federal features including a new entitlement program as well as most of the insurance regulations.”

"Now [they] are saying we're going to do repeal and replace but the bill does nothing of the sort,” he said. “[Speaker] Paul Ryan has always said the entire rationale for this bill is to bend the cost curve down, and so far I have seen no evidence that this bill will bring the cost curve down.”

...“This is a Republican welfare entitlement,” the RSC memo reads. “Writing checks to individuals to purchase insurance is, in principle, Obamacare. It does allow more choices for individuals, and is more patient-centered, but is fundamentally grounded on the idea that the federal government should fund insurance purchases.”

It is unclear if conservatives who still don’t like the bill would be willing to vote against it, potentially blocking the repeal effort from passage. While Brat said he’d vote against it, few others have taken a position yet. House Republican leaders expect some conservatives and moderates to oppose the measure on the floor. But they can only afford to lose 21 votes.

RSC chairman Mark Walker in a statement thanked leadership for their work on it and said “I applaud the movement and believe it is the right direction.”

“We are carefully reviewing this legislation looking in three main areas of shared conservative concern: protection of the unborn, elimination of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion and ensuring the tax credits are fiscally responsible,” the North Carolina Republican said.

The RSC's steering committee will meet Tuesday to discuss next steps forward.

Freedom Caucus members, meanwhile, talked amongst themselves about the bill. While many believed the final version was more to their liking than older drafts, one source wasn’t sure if conservatives could get on board with GOP’s plan to offer advanceable, refundable tax credits. Such credits are a key pillar of the Ryan plan and one of the most controversial issues for conservatives. They worry the plan will create an entitlement and have been pushing for a tax deduction instead.

The attraction-- and temptation-- for many nervous Republicans, of course, is that it reduces taxes on the very rich, the people who have financed their careers. As Richard Rubin explained for Wall Street Journal readers Tuesday, "Households at the top of the U.S. income ladder would see taxes on their wages and investments drop under the House Republicans’ new health-care proposal, a repeal of a 3.8% tax on investment income and a 0.9% tax of wages for only the highest earning Americans.

The other day the American Hospital Association rejected Ryan's replacement bill (TrumpCare) and this morning the much more politically powerful American Medical Association did the same. From the AMA:

The American Health Care Act (AHCA), released by Congress this week, is intended to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA). But as introduced, it does not align with the health reform objectives that the AMA set forth in January to protect patients. While the ACA is imperfect, the current version of the AHCA is not legislation we can support.

The replacement bill, as written, would reverse the coverage gains achieved under the ACA, causing many Americans to lose the health care coverage they have come to depend upon.

...It is unclear the exact impact this bill will have on the number of insured Americans, and review by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is still pending. The ratings and analytics firm S&P Global Ratings has already estimated that as many as 10 million Americans could lose coverage if this bill becomes law, saying that between 2 million and 4 million people could lose the insurance they purchased in the individual health exchanges under the ACA, and between 4 million and 6 million could lose their coverage under Medicaid.

That just won’t do.

We all know that our health system is highly complex, but our core commitment to the patients most in need should be straightforward. As the AMA has previously stated, members of Congress must to keep top of mind the potentially life-altering impact their policy decisions will have.

We physicians often see patients at their most vulnerable, from the first time they set eyes on a newborn child to the last time they squeeze a dying loved one’s hand. We don’t want to see any of our patients, now insured, exposed to the financial and medical uncertainties that would come with losing that coverage.

We're going to continue this discussion in the next post, when you'll meet a Democratic candidate running for Congress from Houston, a doctor-- cancer specialist Jason Westin-- who is challenging entrenched, but now vulnerable, Republican troglodyte John Culberson.