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Democrats See Opening in Tax Overhaul Fight: Trump's Own Deductions New York Times A tax code overhaul gives Democrats the chance to again bring up Mr. Trump's refusal to release his tax returns and to press for details of how his business deals are financed. That focus could also affect which tax code items, such as interest ... and more »

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Democrats See Opening in Tax Overhaul Fight: Trump's Own Deductions - New York Times

Special congressional elections are notoriously quirky and often hazardous to ruling parties. So with Donald Trump struggling in Washington, its hardly surprising that Republicans are nervous about four contests this spring, especially one this month in Atlantas suburbs.

The poster child for what could happen occurred in Mississippi in 1981, six months after Ronald Reagan became president, when the GOP sought to capitalize on his popularity to hold a vacated Republican seat.

Television ads posed the choice as between Reagan and Democratic House Speaker Thomas (Tip) ONeill, an outspoken liberal hardly popular in conservative Mississippi. But the district elected a Democrat, foretelling the partys successes in the 1982 mid-terms.

Such intimations of broader trends sometimes prove misleading eight months after a closely watched 2010 Democratic victory in Pennsylvania, Republicans regained the House. But with Trump far less popular than Reagan, Democrats are looking hopefully at the April 18 election to succeed Tom Price in Georgias 6th District, the first of the four seats vacated by Trump choices for top administration positions.

On the surface, the GOP should have little reason for concern, but changing demographics and Trumps unpopularity give Democrats a chance in Atlantas northern suburbs.

The Georgia district is similar to others with educated, upscale populations where 2016 Democrat Hillary Clinton either won or narrowly lost while voters re-elected GOP House members. Trumps 2016 plurality was far less than Mitt Romneys 23-point margin four years earlier.

So Democrats are pouring in funds, more than $3 million so far, while the GOP belatedly mounts a counter-attack. Early voting has been more Democratic than the district as a whole, suggesting the kind of enthusiasm gap that often determines such low turnout contests.

And though special-election polling is notoriously unreliable, a recent Opinion Savvy poll for Fox News also buoyed Democrats. It showed Jon Ossoff, a filmmaker and former congressional aide around whom Democrats have united, leading the 18-candidate field at 40 percent, within reach of the 50 percent that would avoid a June 20 runoff.

Avoiding a runoff is almost certainly Ossoffs best chance. Three Republicans had at least 10 percent, and the 11 Republicans totaled more than 50 percent. Ossoff led narrowly in a projected runoff with Republican Karen Handel, but one in six voters were undecided, most presumably backers of other GOP hopefuls.

An Ossoff victory would send shock waves through the GOP, but a Republican victory would merely confirm the GOP leanings of the district once represented by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

The Democrats second-best chance is in Montana. Their candidate in the May 25 election, country musician and Bernie Sanders supporter Rob Quist, is running a populist campaign against Republican Greg Gianforte, a software entrepreneur who lost the 2016 governors race. Though generally Republican presidentially, Montana is a politically independent state that currently has a Democratic governor and one Democratic senator.

The other two districts look safely Republican.

One is Kansas 4th District, centered in Wichita. The Republican candidate, state Treasurer Ron Estes, is favored over Democrat James Thompson and Libertarian Chris Rockhold, in Tuesday's race to succeed Mike Pompeo, now director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Both Pompeo and Trump won the district with slightly more than 60 percent.

The other is South Carolinas 5th District, north of Columbia, where party primaries are May 2 and a general election June 20. Mick Mulvaney, now the director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Trump won last November with 59 and 57 percent respectively.

There is a fifth special election, to fill the solidly Democratic Los Angeles-area seat vacated when Xavier Becerra became state attorney general. The Democratic nominee selected Tuesday will be heavily favored in the May 23 general election. Becerra carried the district with 77 percent, and Clinton with 83 percent.

Lately, Republicans have cast the Atlanta race as a choice between the agendas of conservative GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan and liberal House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi.

But that might be a dubious strategy, considering a far more popular Ronald Reagan couldnt carry a Mississippi district for the GOP.

Carl P. Leubsdorf is a columnist for The Dallas Morning News.

carl.p.leubsdorf@gmail.com

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Carl P. Leubsdorf: Democrats have shot in special elections - The Columbus Dispatch

Now that the judicial filibuster in the U.S. Senate has been nuked, its time to look at the political fallout going forward. And for Democrats, the news is all bad. Here are three reasons why Democrats just made a dumb mistake by filibustering Neil Gorsuch.

The argument for years as to why Republicans needed stealth Supreme Court candidates like David Souter, Anthony Kennedy, and John Roberts (who have all gone on to be disappointments to varying degrees) was the filibuster.

Since it only requires a simple majority now, the GOP can freely confirm real heirs to Antonin Scalia. Where this could be a real benefit is throughout the federal circuit and district courts, which need an overhaul after decades of stockpiling progressives.

Theres literally no tradeoff here for Democrats, because we all know Republicans werent gonna have the stones to partisan filibuster in the future anyway. The GOP is the party that actually nominates for president the people who support and vote for the Democrats most progressive judicial nominees after all (see John McCain).

So this isnt a case of what goes around comes around that benefits Democrats in the future; this is being too smart by half, and negotiating against yourself. In other words, this is a case of Democrats tactically acting like Republicans for once. They needlessly cornered the GOP into a position that forced them to actually draw a line in the sand, which isnt exactly the GOPs thing. (They aint called the surrender caucus for nothing.)

By doing so, Democrats helped set a precedent that will only benefit Republicans from here. For they gave Republicans leverage they never wouldve asserted on their own, while at the same time Democrats gave away leverage theyve had all along.

Even if you think the Stand with Rand and Make DC Listen filibusters by Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, respectively, were publicity stunts doomed to fail, at the very least both of those events inspired the GOP grassroots and elevated the national profiles of two of the partys emerging stars.

Unfortunately for Democrats, the Gorsuch filibuster didnt even do that. For example, the lackluster attempt by Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., at filibustering this week didnt generate nearly the attention Paul and Cruzs did, even from a more-than-sympathetic media.

At the very least, if youre going to contrive political theater, have someone who excites your base and could be your future standard-bearer as the face of it. Instead, Democrats came out of a fake fight without any real stars to rally behind. A missed opportunity, especially with the country already seeming to start to tire of President Trump.

In short, the Democrats Gorsuch filibuster accomplished more for Republicans than it did for Democrats, because it accomplished nothing for the latter. If this is what the resistance looks like, its going to have to try a lot harder.

Steve Deace is broadcast nationally each weeknight on CRTV. He is the author of the book A Nefarious Plot.

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3 reasons Democrats just made a dumb mistake - Conservative Review

Jonah Goldberg 9:38 a.m. ET April 8, 2017

Hillary Clinton at Georgetown University on March 31, 2017.(Photo: Susan Walsh, AP)

As fate would have it, Hillary Clinton spoke at the Hillary Rodham Clinton Awards for Advancing Women in Peace and Security, where she emphasized the importance of peace, of women and of women in peace. When women participate in peacekeeping peacemaking we are all safer and more secure and boasted of evidence-based research that backs up this claim.

And shes right. Including women in the peacemaking process is often a valuable way of securing peace in war torn countries.

But she also got in what was seen as a partisan shot at the Trump administration. At one point she began a sentence by saying, Studies show and then interrupted herself: here I go again talking about research, evidenceand facts."

The crowd laughed, cheered and loudly applauded for a while, proving that theres nothing like working out your best material with a friendly audience. Clinton laughed at her supposedly very funny joke, too.

She also said, "Before anybody jumps toany conclusions, I will state clearly: Women are not inherently more peaceful than men. That is a stereotype. That belongs in the alternative reality."

Again, if you dont get the joke, the reference to alternative reality is apparently a jab at Kellyanne Conway, who once said something silly about alternative facts.

But heres what I think is funny. Clintons wrong. Shes the one peddling an alternative reality.

Don't panic about 'alternative facts': Column

The right can't defend Trump's behavior: Jonah Goldberg

Yeah, theres a stereotype that women are inherently more peaceful than men but, as a generalization (which is what stereotypes are) its true.

This is an evidence-based conclusion backed by a great many studies.

In 2015, according to the FBI, 7,549 men were arrested for murder and non-negligent manslaughter. Only 984 women were. Men were four times more likely to be arrested for violent crimes and ten times more likely to be arrested for illegal possession of a weapon.

Its not just in America. Disproportionate male aggression is a human universal, appearing all over the world and across thousands of years. In almost every society men are the ones who are overwhelmingly involved in wars, in all kinds of intergroup aggressions and intragroup homicide, writes Dorian Fortuna at Psychology Today.Men mobilize themselves in armies of violent fans, incriminalgangs, in bands of thugs, etc. These observations are as old as the world and have allowed us to create a clear distinction between male and female sexes regarding their predisposition to violence.

Throughout history, reports The Economist magazine men have killed men roughly 97 times more often than women have killed women.

The male inclination for violence has a lot to do with testosterone, which is most plentiful in young men who, in their natural habitat, fought other males to impress women (you can head down to Fort Lauderdale during Spring Break to document this phenomenon yourself).

Steven Pinker writes in The Better Angels of Our Nature, his sweeping history of violence, that to the extent that the problem of violence is a problem of young, unmarried, lawless men competing for dominance, whether directly or on behalf of a leader, then violence really is a problem of there being too much testosterone in the world.

POLICING THE USA:Alook atrace, justice, media

We're scaring off future Einsteins: USD president

Interestingly, one of the things that is most likely to make men less violent is getting married, proving thatClinton is right when she says that women have a pacifying effect. What public policies should flow from all this is a topic for another day.

Whats annoying aboutClintons cheap partisan preening isnt simply that shes wrong (and I suspect she knows it). Its that she is perpetuating an infuriating tendency of liberals today to claim science is always on their side.

Theres a decidedly undemocratic flavor to this kind of argument. Patrick Moynihan famously said that everyone is entitled to their own opinions but not to their own facts. Liberals want to turn that on its head and claim that their opinions are facts and anyone who disagrees isnt merely voicing a bad opinion but it somehow living in alternative reality or denying science. Its the secular version of claiming that God is on your side.

Clinton is peddling stale, corporate feminismas settled science in part because shes pandering to a friendly audience, but also because shes too lazy to shed her own alternate reality.

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Democrats aren't the party of science: Jonah Goldberg - USA TODAY

Vice President Mike Pence is recording a robocall for the Republican nominee in Tuesday's special House election in Kansas, a clear sign of concern that the Democrats could flip this solid GOP seat.

Sources told the Washington Examiner on Friday that Pence would record a call urging Republicans in Kansas' Wichita-area 4th district to get out and vote for state Treasurer Ron Estes, who is locked in a tight battle with Democrat James Thompson.

The White House political office, led by political director Bill Stepien, has joined what has become a party-wide effort to save a seat that President Trump won by nearly 30 points in November. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

"Ron's run a horrible campaign. Hasn't raised much money, his ads are abysmal no energy," a Kansas Republican operative said, on condition of anonymity in order to speak candidly. "It's a low turnout special and weird things happen."

Most political insiders have been focused on an upcoming special House election in Georgia, where Democrat Jon Ossoff is polling well against a crowded field of Republicans running in the Atlanta-area 6th district. Except, that's a seat where Trump only defeated Hillary Clinton in November by 1 point.

As in the Georgia race, Democratic energy and enthusiasm are way up in Kansas' 4th district, and Republicans are worried enough that they have started pouring resources into the race in the last week.

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas will be in the district Monday to campaign for Estes, BuzzFeed reported Friday. On Thursday, Politico reported that the National Republican Congressional Committee was going on television with an advertising buy.

"We're happy to help out in this small way and show our support for Ron Estes. We look forward to Ron coming to Congress and standing up for Kansas values," NRCC spokesman Matt Gorman said.

Kansas 4th district was previously held by Mike Pompeo, who was confirmed as Trump's CIA director in January.

Also from the Washington Examiner

President Obama's former deputy national security adviser indicated Saturday that he isn't very happy with President Trump's decision to hit a Syrian air base with missiles.

Trump's missile strike, which was retaliation for Syria's use of chemical weapons, drew instant comparisons to Obama, who warned the U.S. would act if Syria used chemical weapons.

Obama did nothing after Syria crossed that "red line" of Obama's, and many said Trump was the one to finally enforce Obama's ultimatum years later.

But in an early Saturday morning tweet, Rhodes suggested that Trump's strike was only aimed at boosting his press coverage, and seemed to warn reporters against helping him achieve this.

04/08/17 4:04 PM

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Pence joins effort to save 'safe' GOP seat from the Democrats - Washington Examiner