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The first congressional recess of the new Congress is playing out exactly how a group of dejected former Democratic Hill staffers had hoped in the wake of President Trump's victory.

Liberal activists across the country have apparently read a 26-page "how to" manual created by a new non-profit called "Indivisible" and are flocking to Republican lawmakers' town hall meetings, ribbon-cutting ceremonies and district offices to support the Affordable Care Act and protest Trump.

"Indivisible: A practical guide for resisting the Trump agenda" was written by former Democratic staffers that outlines how progressives can use the most successful tactics employed by the Tea Party to their advantage.

Just as the guide's main authors envisioned, the Tea Party town hall shoe is now on the other foot.

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Some Republicans welcome the feedback while others are avoiding open-ended forums, opting for small group meetings, conference calls and closed events.

Videos of rowdy meetings dot social media sites, with members requiring police presence to control crowds and hecklers peppering Republicans with questions and jeers.

Residents of Charleston scoffed when Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., repeated Trump's claim that Mexico will pay for the wall he wants to build along the U.S.-Mexico border. Virginians broke into choruses of "Thanks Obama!" when Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va., said the economy is doing well.

A women's group called Ultraviolet, gathered scores of supporters outside of House Speaker Paul Ryan's Janesville, Wis., office Wednesday to deliver nearly 86,000 post cards urging him not to repeal Obamacare. They came with guitars, cake and a singing telegram, signs reading "Impeach Trump" and "Hands off our health care" but Ryan was in Texas touring the southern border.

For members who refuse to hold open meetings or have canceled town halls, locals are posting "missing" signs and declaring them "AWOL."

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"I think one of the most pivotal moments in modern American history was his immediate withdrawal from TPP."

02/23/17 2:37 PM

Trump and some Republicans are dismissing the demonstrations as paid affairs but "Indivisible" says neither its founders nor its members accept salaries or payment from any political group or organization.

"We simply are providing constituents with the information and tools to make their voices heard," spokeswoman Sarah Dohl told the Washington Examiner.

"As of today, we have a group registered in every congressional district in the country. The website has been visited over 13 million times. We're floored by the momentum building and the number of people showing up and speaking out for the first time to hold their members of Congress accountable. These constituents are effectively changing the narrative from coast to coast, and everywhere in between, and we're more confident than ever that, together, we will win," Dohl said.

Trump took to his favorite medium to refute the authenticity of the protests.

"The so-called angry crowds in home districts of some Republicans are actually, in numerous cases, planned out by liberal activists. Sad!" he tweeted Tuesday evening.

Also from the Washington Examiner

"Hold us accountable to what we promised, and delivering what we promised," Bannon said.

02/23/17 2:28 PM

"Indivisible" denies "targeting" any specific member but Republican offices with close ties to Trump think they are being singled-out.

Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., who was the first lawmaker to endorse Trump has never held a town hall he prefers meeting constituents in smaller groups his spokesman explained but voters inspired by "Indivisible" are hounding him to hold one, his office said.

Under the banner "reclaim recess," former Labor Secretary Robert Reich takes to a white board to draw how Democrats can make Republicans feel the pressure.

"No town hall, no problem," "Indivisible" explains.

"Something strange has been happening in the last month or so: Members of Congress from all over the country are going missing," the group wrote on its website. "They're still turning up for votes on Capitol Hill, and they're still meeting with lobbyists and friendly audiences back homebut their public event schedules are mysteriously blank. Odd."

Lawmakers "do not want to look weak or unpopular and they know that Trump's agenda is very, very unpopular," it reads. Some "have clearly made the calculation that they can lay low, avoid their constituents, and hope the current storm blows over. It's your job to change that calculus."

Their strategy is apparently paying off in terms of making some members of Congress look silly.

"Heller now says he'll do a town hall if 'no applauding and no booing.' Seriously? He's a U.S. senator!" well-known Nevada pundit Jon Ralston tweeted Wednesday about Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev.

Continued here:
Liberals copy Tea Party tactics to protest Trump at town halls - Washington Examiner

Chuck Grassley just cant escape death panels.

Back in 2009, the Iowa senator suggested that the Affordable Care Act might create something akin to a death panel, where the government decides which patients survive. In remarks at a town hall, he seemed to endorse the idea that the health care law had a program meant to ration end-of-life medical care. (It didnt.)

This week, eight years later, Grassley had another town hall, and death panels came up again. But this time, the term meant something very different because Obamacare supporters, not critics, were the ones saying it.

Grassleys quote at the 2009 town hall became infamous, echoing through the following months and years of health care debate. And I don't have any problem with things like living wills, but they ought to be done within the family, Grassley said then. We should not have a government program that determines you're going to pull the plug on Grandma.

The death panel myth had incredible staying power. PolitiFact ended up naming it the lie of the year in 2009. The group cited Grassley as a prominent Republican [who] didnt reject the death panels claim. Six years later, in 2015, some people still believed it: A Vox poll that year found 26 percent of Republicans and 12 percent of Democrats believed the ACA created a government panel that helps make decisions about patients end-of-life care.

But just as Obama eventually embraced the once-derisive term Obamacare, liberals are trying to take back the radioactive death panels phrase in the second round of health reform debate. At a town hall meeting Tuesday in Iowa, Grassley faced accusations that Obamacare repeal would be akin to a death panel, as it could end health coverage for millions of Americans.

Over 20 million will lose coverage, and with all due respect, sir, youre the man that talked about the death panels, an Iowa farmer who relies on the health law argued at the event. We're going to create one great big death panel in this country that people cant afford to get insurance.

Grassley helped the death panel myth take off. He was a legislator who told his constituents they were right to worry about the government pulling the plug on Grandma. But eight years later, hes facing a quite different argument from his constituents: that ending the Affordable Care would pull the plug on them if they lose coverage.

Why has the death panel myth had such staying power? It arguably taps into fears of rationing, the idea that some people wont get the medical care they need because the government doesnt want to spend the money. This is not a uniquely American problem. Other countries, including Canada and Britain, run into the same issue. But the fear from Grassleys constituents in 2009 and 2017 is essentially coming from the same place: a worry that those who need access to medical care may find themselves denied.

It saved my life': Talk of Obamacare repeal worries addicts: In Kentucky, which has been ravaged worse than almost any other state by fentanyl, heroin and other drugs, Tyler Witten went into rehab at Medicaid's expense after the state expanded the program under a provision of the act. Until then, he had been addicted to painkillers for more than a decade. "It saved my life," he said. Adam Beam and Carla K. Johnson, Associated Press

McConnell-linked group to hardliners: It's repeal AND replace: The group's polling and ads are hitting at a critical time, with Freedom Caucus members and other hardliners saying they're mostly interested in repealing the law and then working out a replacement later. Outside conservative groups also worry that the longer Republicans try to agree on a replacement, the longer the repeal effort will take, giving Democrats and progressive groups time to mobilize against it. Jonathan Swan, Axios

ObamaCare fix hinges on Medicaid clash in Senate: Sen. John Thune (R-SD) calls it the single thorniest issue of the entire debate. You dont want to punish or penalize states that didnt expand [Medicaid], but the states that did expand are going to say, We dont want to get punished for expanding, either. To me, thats probably the thorniest and most difficult issue to resolve, said Thune, the chair of the Senate Republican Conference. Alexander Bolton, the Hill

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Today in Obamacare: liberals are taking back the term "death panels" - Vox

It is absolutely comical to watch various elements of liberalism scream, pout, march and spew vulgarities since that paragon of virtue, Hillary Clinton, lost the election and messed up their playhouse.

It is astounding that a vulgar-mouthed woman who calls herself Madonna seems to be the spokesperson for todays liberal woman.

It is sad to see that our public universities have become liberal indoctrination centers as opposed to education centers.

Please witness the current trend for rude mobs to shout down any speaker with whom they disagree.

This culminated in violence recently on the University of California, Berkeley campus with ninja-clad rioters throwing fire bombs at police. Shades of the Ku Klux Klan!

Want to know whats wrong with our country?

Its called humanisim, where many are so progressive that they think they are wiser than God.

Dont believe it? Just look at the menu of sexual ideas and practices many worship, which God clearly states are sin.

Galatians 6:7 states: Be not deceived; God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

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Liberals pout, weep and stage protests - Greensboro News & Record

I promised myself that Id spend less of 2017 dissecting the provocations of assorted jerks and frauds.I held out for a while. But as Milo Yiannopouloss reign as the latest conservative enfant terrible crumbled this weekend over video of him suggesting that very young teenagers can consent to sex with adults, with organizers of the Conservative Political Action Conference rescinding a speaking invitation that they had extended to him and a conservative imprint of Simon & Schuster canceling his $250,000 book contract, it seemed worthwhile to note one particular element of his confidence game.

Yiannopouloss rise coincided with a new wave of protest on college campuses and was directly facilitated by conservative college students who booked him in an attempt to raise even more ire from their liberal peers. At the same time that conservatives were criticizing liberal college students as vulnerable snowflakes making unreasonable requests of their administrations, conservative college students and groups were enabling the rise of an intellectual fraud at the cost of their own funds and credibility.

Self-described troll and conservative writer Milo Yiannopoulos resigned from Breitbart News on Feb. 21, but his far-right speeches and provocative comments aren't going anywhere. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

Utopianism can be a form of naivete. Given the sheer variety of students who gather on most college campuses,it would take an impractical if not Orwellian effort for administrators and faculty to anticipate their students every need. And given the inevitable contradictions between those needs and desires, it would be impossibleto accommodate every single one of them.Hoping for a world free of economicprecariousness, myriad forms of discrimination and the unkindnesses of youthmay be impractical, given present political conditions and university politics. The solutions that the left and liberal college students propose may even be downright undesirable. But as forms of callowness go, wanting to improve the world is hardly the worst.

Contrast the wide-eyed earnestness of progressive college students, for which theyve earned so much criticism, with the gullibility of their conservative peers,whose weakness for Yiannopouloss shtick was whatinspired the American Conservative Union to say yes when Yiannopoulos asked to speak at CPAC.

In keeping with the broader themes of our political moment, Yiannopoulos is less a conservative than a fellow traveler who vexes liberals for profit.

Yiannopouloss embrace of the Gamergate backlash against the diversity movement in video games helped make him a media figure in the United States, but it seemed like a canny calculation rather than a genuine commitment. His outrageous statements about everything from Jewish control of the media to the Black Lives Matter movement to transgender people have long seemed less the product of a genuine worldview than a search for buttons to press, accompanying the jabs with naughty snickers. To regard him as genuinely politically conservative requires ignorance of conservative principles. To see his act as outrageous rather than derivative requires an unfamiliarity with subjects including art and gay history.

And yet, conservative college students were willing to keep booking Yiannopoulos, since demonstrating that we are not these special snowflakes who need safe spaces, as the organizer of one such event at Yale put it, apparently counts as high principle.

The University of California at Berkeley canceled a talk by inflammatory Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos and put the campus on lockdown after intense protests broke out on Feb. 1. (Video: The Washington Post / Photo: AP)

The tour stops themselves may not have been particularlyprofitable for Yiannopoulos. The production was deliberately over-the-top in a fashionintended to make a splash inan upcoming documentary. And Yiannopoulos on at least one occasion personally picked up the security fee a college was charging to maintain order at his appearance.

The real currency of Yiannopouloss tour wasnt speaking fees. It was ginning upthe proteststhat would make for flashy documentary footage and stoking the controversy that has made someone like Ann Coulter a right-wing publishing mainstay. If the entire case for your importance is that you make a certain class of people angry, then you have to keep making those people angry, upping the rhetorical ante all the way, to preserve the sense that you are dangerous and thus capable of moving books and movie tickets. Conservative college students proved more than willing to provide Yiannopoulos with the forums to do that, in some cases paying for extra security at the events in question. Yiannopouloss college tour wasnt merely about ginning up the incidents he needed to survive as a going concern; it was a rather nifty way to get other people to pick up at least some of the tab.

So the next time conservatives feel tempted to decry the callowness of campus liberals, they might take a pause to consider why so many college conservatives allowed themselves to be taken in by a dubious huckster with little to offer the long-term development of right-leaning ideas and institutions on college campuses. Its a statement of conservative pride in the movements supposed clear thinkingto paraphrase Irving Kristol and suggest that liberals, once mugged by reality, will come to their senses. Anyone who went into business, however temporarily, with Milo Yiannopoulos should come to terms with the fact that theyve just beenswindled, period.

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If college liberals are so naive, why did the campus right fall for Yiannopoulos? - Washington Post

Ad will collapse in seconds CLOSE February 21, 2017 02/21/2017 1:40 p.m. By Ed Kilgore

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Do you wonder why Donald Trump thinks hes wildly popular beyond the nefarious precincts of those enemies of the people, the liberal news media? The president himself offered a succinct talking point on that subject near the beginning of his very non-succinct February 16 press conference.

True to form, Trump cherry-picked the most favorable polling data available, and ignored the rest. But he could not do that short of just, well, making stuff up, which is always an option for him if it were not for an unusually wide range of findings in the polling universe about public attitudes toward the 45th presidents job performance so far.

As Nate Silver notes, Trumps recent approval ratings vary from a high of 55 percent (with 45 percent disapproval) in the aforementioned Rasmussen poll to a low of 39 percent (with 56 percent disapproval) in a survey from Pew Research. The differences are most likely the result of a combination of sampling and survey techniques. Trump consistently does better with narrower samples. Rasmussen claims to be measuring likely voters, even though we are more than a year and a half away from the next national election. Pew is sampling all adults, a significantly larger universe than those who will ultimately vote in that next election. Rasmussen is also famously a robo-pollster, which means hes only reaching the half of the electorate that has land lines. Pew utilizes a traditional live-interview methodology, which is generally thought to be more accurate, but that some theorize can be misleading with respect to highly controversial politicians like Trump. (This is the shy Trump voter theory.)

While polls like Rasmussens have a poor reputation and polls like Pews are considered closer to the gold standard (FiveThirtyEights pollster ratings give Raz a C+ and Pew a B+), we are in a period of great uncertainty about polling quality. And as it happens, the final 2016 national poll from Rasmussen pretty much nailed Clintons popular-vote margin over Trump, while the final Pew poll (conducted two weeks out, to be fair) showed Clinton up by six points.

So with all this confusion, is Trump justified in just citing whichever polling results he wants? No, not really. Most observers who are interested in approximating the truth go with polling averages. At the moment, RealClearPolitics average of recent polls places Trumps job approval ratio at 45/51. Its also important to pay attention to trends. As it happens, since Trump bragged about his Rasmussen numbers, his approval ratio in that tracking poll has deteriorated from 55/45 to 50/50, the worst ratio of his brief administration.

It is an entirely different question how much these numbers matter as a predictor of the next election. While the party of the president almost always loses House seats and more often than not loses Senate and gubernatorial seats in midterms, and less popular presidents usually lose more than popular presidents, variations in the landscape can make it very tricky to lay odds. The Senate landscape in 2018 is insanely pro-Republican. GOP control of the upper chamber could very well survive even a Democratic electoral tsunami. Since all House seats are up in 2018, GOP control there is significantly more vulnerable, but thanks to gerrymandering and superior efficiency in the distribution of voters, Democrats will have an uphill battle to win the net 24 seats necessary for a flip in control and with it the ability to thwart the Trump/GOP agenda. Nate Cohn appears to think its too much of a reach even if Trumps approval ratings stay roughly where they are today.

In 2006 and 2010, Mr. Bush and Mr. Obama had approval ratings near or above 40 percent on Election Day. So if you had to make a rough guess, you would probably say that Mr. Trumps approval rating would probably need to be even lower for House control to become a true tossup.

So while it is hard to deny that Trump is amazingly unpopular for a new president, unless his approval ratings trend farther down the way even those of popular presidents typically do, his party may not suffer the kind of humiliation Democrats experienced in 2010. For all the shock Trump has consistently inspired with his behavior as president, theres not much objective reason for Republican politicians to panic and begin abandoning him based on his current public standing. But in this as in so many other respects, we are talking about an unprecedented chief executive, so the collapse some in the media and the Democratic Party perceive as already underway could yet arrive.

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The protesters, the new frisson, and the extremely clean floors.

While scores of GOP lawmakers are avoiding their constituents, a handful attended packed public events back home.

They were released just as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly headed south.

The American tourism industry is still reeling from Trumps travel ban.

Challenging Trumps travel ban.

Trump has an opportunity to lay out a detailed policy agenda on February 28 to a joint session of Congress which needs the guidance. But will he?

Maybe the plan is to deport millions, or frighten the undocumented into self-deporting. Either way, a big shift in immigration policy is underway.

Authorities are awaiting lab results while North Korea accuses Malaysia of mangling the autopsy.

Are Trumps historically low approval ratings high enough for Republicans to avoid a 2018 disaster? Probably so, but theres not much room for error.

The president is poised to pay for his tax cuts by baselessly assuming 3 percent economic growth and eliminating public broadcasting.

Assessing the not-so-great dictator one month into his tenure.

Finally abandoning a habit of attacking reporters who asked him about anti-Semitic incidents, Trump simply addressed the subject appropriately.

No one suffered life-threatening injuries.

Patriots shun the White House. Sports stars turn ESPN into MSNBC. And brands smell the commercial potential in political rage.

It took the TSA two hours to report the accidental security breach to Port Authority police.

Ivanka Trump and the White House issued statements, but the president has not discussed the incidents specifically.

The company is moving fast following harassment allegations from a former employee.

The silly-sign makers were out in full force on Monday.

He was previously in charge of designing the Army of the future.

The right-wing provocateur came under fire for a video in which he defends relationships between younger boys and older men.

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Trump Is Unpopular, But Not As Unpopular As Liberals Think - New York Magazine