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A Republican candidate running in the state of Virginias gubernatorial election has made the bold campaign promise of refusing to remove Confederate monuments, calling them part of our identity here in Virginia, according to Yahoo News.

Corey Stewart, chairman of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors, was not always a major opponent of removing the old Confederate monuments. Last year, Stewart gave a speech at a school ceremony that was celebrating the renaming of the public institution originally named after a former Virginia governor who fought desegregation of the states schools in the 1950s as a state senator, according to Yahoo News.

Are you excited to rename this school? Its been a long, long, long time in coming, thats for sure, Stewart told the audience. But now, Stewart has pivoted in the opposite direction, and has made a promise to preserve the monuments arguing that they playan important historical role.

If you can take down a statue of somebody who fought for the Confederacy because you would argue that the Confederacy stood for the preservation of slavery, then you can easily say we should take down any statue and any monument to any slaveholder, Stewart said. And that in Virginia, and that in America, means our founders: Jefferson, Madison and Washington. And when you take down the founders, you take down the founding documents. . . Over my dead body, when I am governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, are we going to remove a single statue to any Virginian.

When Stewart was asked by Yahoo News to compare his recent statements to the ones he issued at the school ceremony last year, the gubernatorial candidate justified both ends of his rhetoric. Mills Godwin was a racist Democrat quite distinct from the Founding Fathers or Gen. [Robert E.] Lee so to decide to name a school after someone else is a far cry from the leftists destroying historical monuments and the erasing of all dissenting opinion, Stewart said over email to Yahoo.

But it seems that his rhetoric will alter and is contingent upon who he must pander to. He has given more relaxed responses during interviews with reporters, where he justifies keeping the statue as historical relics. Those monuments were erected for a reason so that people remember, and that was during a time when many civil war veterans were still alive, and their families. And they wanted to send a signal to future generations that there was a huge sacrifice here, and its something we should never repeat. And I think once you forget, you do repeat, and that concerns me, he said, according to Yahoo News.

However as he spoke to a small crowd of voters he delivered yet another stark contrast. If we allow them to destroy our history, to try to rewrite history, to sanitize history, we are losing part of our identity here in Virginia, he said, failing to mention his previous points about how the monuments could serve as warnings.

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Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate calls Confederate statues our identity - Salon

Republican lawmakers face a big decision: Should they continue to ride with President Trump in hope that his poll numbers improve or abandon him to save themselves in the 2018 elections?

Trump's presidency is off to a rocky start. His job approval rating is flailing below 40 percent in the latest RealClearPolitics national polling average. The White House looks chaotic. The Republican legislative agenda is mired in Congress. The Russia investigation has started heating up with the appointment of a special counsel and ominous headlines every day.

Congressional Republicans publicly criticized Trump's handling of the firing of FBI Director James Comey and are growing impatient with the outrage du jour, though most GOP politicos still request anonymity to discuss the president candidly. "[Y]ou have this White House that is lurching from crisis to crisis, image of disarray," said a Republican pollster. "They can't get their hands around the basic day-to-day agenda."

Next year, all 435 House members and a third of senators are up for re-election. The Senate map favors the Republicans, but the GOP controls just 52 of 100 seats. Its position in the House could be more precarious. Republicans have a 24-seat majority, which includes 23 members representing districts Hillary Clinton won in 2016. Some of them are already starting to panic.

"Members' actions will depend on their states or districts," said Tim Miller, former spokesman for Jeb Bush's presidential campaign and an anti-Trump super PAC. "While Trump's approval rating is declining nationally, it is still very strong in most of the states where the Senate will be contested (West Virginia, Indiana, North Dakota, Missouri, etc.). In certain urban/suburban House districts Miami, Denver, Northern Virginia-type places candidates didn't pay a price for opposing him in 2016, and I expect they will [successfully oppose him] again."

"I think we are a long way away from a more expansive distancing given Trump's strength with Republicans, seniors, rural/exurban voters," Miller added.

Another Republican with Capitol Hill ties said, "If you're talking about the scandal of the week, it's a fend-for-yourself situation. But as long as you're focused on the agenda, people want to stick together at this point."

Republican political organizations, such as the National Republican Congressional Committee, are nowhere close to ditching Trump to save the congressional majorities. "First off, the Trump administration has been very helpful to the NRCC," a committee insider told the Washington Examiner. "President Trump keynoted the annual March Dinner and helped raise $30 million for the committee. Vice President Pence has been all over the country for Republican candidates."

"We tell our candidates to make sure they listen to their constituents and fit their districts, but we're stressing that they need to cut out whatever cable news is obsessing over that hour and focus on what the American people truly care about, which is jobs and the economy," the insider said.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., has also been active in raising money and spending it in special elections. The NRCC has raised at least $10 million for four straight months as of May, and Ryan's super PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund, has worked in recent competitive races.

"[I]t's far too early to make predictions about 2018," said a second national Republican operative. "The stage is just not set yet. Of course, we all acknowledge there are clear challenges staring straight at us right now."

Two things bolster the Republican optimists' case. First, Trump was pronounced dead many times during the campaign, not infrequently by the Republican Party's governing class and political consultants, yet his predicted demise never materialized. Second, Democrats have yet to win any of the special congressional elections that have taken place under Trump, with Republicans winning one in Montana with a candidate who had lost the gubernatorial race last year and was cited for misdemeanor assault against a reporter the night before voters went to the polls.

"You can watch how closely you hug him, but I wouldn't run away from him," said Ford O'Connell, a Republican strategist. "Trump may not be everyone's cup of tea, but he is the cup of tea."

Both House races that have already been decided came in places Trump won handily last year, and the Republicans' margins of victory were narrower than normal. The biggest test lies ahead in the June 20 runoff in Georgia's 6th Congressional District, where Democrat Jon Ossoff is squaring off against Republican Karen Handel.

Ossoff ran nearly 30 points ahead of Handel in the first round of voting in April, coming within 2 points of avoiding a runoff entirely. More importantly, Trump carried the district by only 1.5 points last year, while former Republican Rep. Tom Price, now secretary of Health and Human Services, was winning by 23 the same margin as Mitt Romney over former President Barack Obama there in 2012.

A Democratic pickup in Georgia could illustrate the fraying of the coalition of rural voters and affluent, suburban voters that delivers victory to Republicans, with Trump perhaps alienating the latter. "The Mitt Romney Republicans are getting weak-kneed," O'Connell said. It would certainly help the Democrats' fundraising and 2018 candidate recruitment.

Another national Republican operative, however, said, "These Montana and Georgia races are meaningless because it's a unique set of circumstances. In Virginia, we have a good candidate who is well funded." The operative noted that this candidate, Ed Gillespie, is trailing both Democratic candidates by double digits.

A divide is emerging between Republicans from safe seats and those from competitive districts. Red state conservatives generally support Trump because their constituents do. "GOP primary voters are very much in Trump's corner even to the point of wondering why Hill GOPers are not backing him up already," said a Republican consultant.

Republicans from swing states or blue districts are readiest to bolt. "Several already broke on healthcare, and I imagine many would over his budget, which isn't really real anyhow," said a consultant advising centrist Republican campaigns. "The big issue will be as the Russia stuff unfolds and what that looks like and how they react.

"Members that could determine the majority have no use for Trump. He's sitting in the 30s in their districts. They've been trying to manage him, but they're fed up. He didn't win their districts, lost them badly. ... Coming off this, doing a crisis a minute with Trump, they have no reason to stick with Trump, and they won't."

The Republican pollster noted, "When it's about Trump, whatever that day-to-day is, and not about issues Americans are concerned about, that's not a good day for the White House, and it's not a good day for the party and it's not a good day for the country."

Republican donors are split. "There are two types," said a GOP bundler, "a group that thinks rightly or wrongly that there is still something to be had from this administration a job, ambassadorship, something in it for them and those that fear the end of the modern Republican Party. Not a middle ground."

Yet there are those who doubt whether Republicans can meaningfully distance themselves from Trump even if they want to. "There's no way in this instance to gain your distance and say you've been against him every step of way on policy," said the consultant, who noted Trump's continued popularity in many heavily Republican districts.

Trump upstages nearly every other Republican in the country, and it is difficult for any politician to differentiate themselves from a president of their own party. Many of the centrist and even slightly conservative Democrats who voted against former President Bill Clinton on taxes or gun control lost their 1994 re-election bids anyway. The same is true of similar Democratic lawmakers who voted against Obamacare, only to lose their seats in 2010 and 2014 after the law passed.

If there is a wave election in favor of Democrats, centrist Republicans who need significant Democratic crossover votes will probably be washed out of their seats. Connecticut Rep. Chris Shays was the only New England Republican to survive the 2006 midterm elections; the longtime centrist finally fell just two years later with Obama on top of the Democrats' ticket.

The only way to survive, some Republicans say, is to band together and, in the words of one GOP strategist, "start getting shit done." Regardless of how they feel about the president, many in this camp maintain that the party must show it can govern. And most Republicans on Capitol Hill are willing to stick with the president as long as the focus is their common agenda.

"These aren't lifetime appointments," O'Connell said. "If you can't get it done now, with a Republican House, Senate and White House, when are you ever going to be able to get it done?" He says Republicans suffer from "paralysis by analysis" but will pay a bigger price if they do nothing.

"The single greatest thing any member can do to get re-elected is produce results to run on," said a Republican operative. "All of the separation in world is not going to make a difference if you accomplish nothing."

"We clearly need some wins to put points on the board," said a GOP insider, a sports metaphor that came up in many conversations with Republicans. "The key to fixing Trump's image with independents is points have to be on scoreboard," said a Republican consultant. "A tax cut and Obamacare repeal, a perceived strong economy, a better relationship with the world, more muscular with China and ISIS that's how you fix independents."

"Think through what happened in 2010. Barack Obama decided the economy was fine because he did the stimulus and went off and did healthcare," said the pollster. "And voters said, you're on the wrong topic. That's the real challenge here for Republicans. How do we make this on a daily consistent basis about wages, jobs, the economy?"

Where this consensus breaks down is on whether the leadership needs to come primarily from Congress or the White House. Many Republicans envisioned GOP majorities putting conservative bills on Trump's desk to be signed. Yet from healthcare to tax reform to the debt ceiling, congressional Republicans haven't been able to come together to send legislation Trump's way.

Not everyone thinks it is so simple. "[Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell can through force of will get [Supreme Court Justice Neil] Gorsuch done," said a Republican source. "It is going to require the administration to do healthcare or taxes."

"No way Dems would have gotten Obamacare had Obama not been on a stadium tour," the source continued. Trump had a rally planned in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, at the beginning of June, but the event was postponed.

Bad as the headlines often look, many Republicans still have high hopes for what they can accomplish with unified control of the federal government. They are aware this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and they still want to seize it by partially repealing and replacing Obamacare, overhauling a tax code that hasn't been reformed in over 30 years and rebuilding the military.

Republicans also know that while the midterm elections are still far away, the time available to implement this ambitious legislative agenda is dwindling. Much will have to be done inside the reconciliation window, a budgetary procedure that will allow them to avoid Democratic filibusters in the Senate. The closer it gets to 2018, the harder it will be to make even their own members take hard votes.

The happy scene of Republicans smiling with Trump on the White House lawn after the partial Obamacare repeal passed the House is a reminder that all it takes is one victory to restore party unity. But there are days when that Republican celebration feels as if it happened a very long time ago.

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Republican lawmakers wonder when it's time to ditch Trump - Washington Examiner

Missouri GOP Sen. Roy Blunt said Sunday that he wants fired FBI Director James Comey to testify later this week before Congress on the Russia investigations to bring this to a conclusion."

Blunt is a member of Senate Intelligence committee that on Thursdayis holding the hearing on the matter that is expected to include questions about whether President Trump pressured Comey in the FBIs ongoing Russia investigation.

Two administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, have said Trump is leaning against invoking executive privilege to try to block Comey from testifying about their private conversations.

Comey reportedly is expected to testify that Trump, in one of the conversations, asked the director to back off investigating ex-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, fired for not disclosing talks with a Russian ambassador.

"Sooner than later, let's find out what happened and bring this to a conclusion, Blunt told Fox News Sunday. At some point, we'll hear the president's side. But I frankly think we need to hear Mr. Comey's side and find out what other questions we need to ask."

Blunt supported Trumps 2016 presidential campaign, amid his own difficult re-election bid in swing-state Missouri. And he helped lead Trumps inaugural events on Capitol Hill.

Republicans, at the start of the investigations into whether Russia meddled in the White House race, then into whether Trumps campaign was involved, largely seemed reluctant to expand efforts, opposing Attorney General Jeff Sessions recusing himself and the appointment of a special prosecutor.

However, roughly four months later the FBI and two congressional probes have slowed Trump and congressional Republicans legislative agenda and sparked calls for a conclusion.

Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence committee, said Sunday that investigators have yet to see a smoking gun.

But theres a lot of smoke, he told CNNs State of the Union.

He also said Trump would likely be on shaky legal ground if he tried to keep Comey from testifying, particularly because Trump fired him and allegedly called him a nutjob in front of Russian guests.

Warner also said the idea that a president would ask the FBI to back off an investigationin which he could be a target is unthinkable.

Trump could invoke executive privilege by arguing that discussions with Comey pertained to national security and that he had an expectation of privacy in getting candid advice from top aides.

But legal experts say the president likely undermined those arguments because he publicly discussed the conversations in tweets and interviews.

Maine Sen. Susan Collins, another Republican on the committee, told CBS Face the Nation that she had several questions for Comey, including whether he indeed told Trump that he was not the subject of an investigation, as the president has said.

"Does Mr. Comey agree that that is what was said? Why would he tell the president that?" Collins asked.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Comey testimony will bring probe to conclusion, Republican senator says - Fox News

Financial Times

Republican defectors boost En Marche party's chance at French poll Financial Times No Moreau has voted for the centre-right Republicans party all his life. The 46-year-old small business owner from the small medieval town of Verneuil Sur Avre in Normandy believes in lower taxes and a more flexible labour market. But in France's ...

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Republican defectors boost En Marche party's chance at French poll - Financial Times

Outside San Diego, a 14-year incumbent climbed atop the roof of his district congressional office to photograph protesters opposed to his support for a Republican health-care bill.

Just up the highway in Orange County, a 28-year incumbent mused about his belief in a conspiracy about a Democratic National Committee staffer slain in Washington last year.

And across the continent, in northern New Jersey, an eight-year incumbent faced a hostile crowd at a town hall, winning loud applause only when he denounced President Trump.

These are strange times for some longtime House Republicans. After years, sometimes decades, coasting to reelection in traditional GOP strongholds, these lawmakers find themselves under fire from angry constituents swept up in organized efforts to oppose Trump. And in some cases, they are already seeing Democratic opponents line up against them for an election 17 months away.

Collectively, Democrats are much more focused on dozens of seats held by relatively new Republicans who have never run into the head winds of midterm elections with their partys president facing deep unpopularity.

(Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

But Democrats have also turned a powerful spotlight on a collection of veteran GOP lawmakers whose districts have changed underneath them, even while these districts continued, all the way to 2016, to reelect their representatives by wide margins.

Theres Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), who told The Washington Post over the weekend that he hoped the conspiracy theory concerning the slaying of a DNC staffer might be true. First elected in 1988, Rohrabacher won reelection by almost 17percentage points last fall, even as Trump lost the district to Hillary Clinton.

And theres Rep. Leonard Lance (R-N.J.), who despite winning all five of his congressional races by more than eight percentage points is running as one of the most outspoken anti-Trump Republicans on Capitol Hill. Thats in large part because his district, in the states wealthy, well-educated suburbs, swung from favoring Mitt Romney by more than six percentage points in 2012 to backing Clinton over Trump last year.

[His district voted for Clinton, but this Republican congressman isnt worried]

History would seem to favor these entrenched Republicans as familiar figures in their districts. But history has also shown that when the House majority changes hands, a large chunk of the losses tends to come from these members of the old guard. In some cases, they lose touch with their districts over time. Just as often, they have never run modern campaigns and their political operations have grown too rusty to contend with a shifting political landscape.

The most famous of all was the stunning defeat of Rep. Thomas Foley (D-Wash.) in 1994, the first sitting House speaker to lose reelection, during a wave election in which Republicans won 54 seats and reclaimed the majority for the first time in 40 years. That year also brought down the sitting chairmen of the Ways and Means Committee and the Judiciary Committee.

Twelve years later, as Democrats swept back into the majority, their victories included the defeat of a 30-year incumbent from Iowa, Republican Jim Leach, and a 26-year veteran from South Florida, E.Clay Shaw Jr., who two years earlier had won with 63percent of the vote. And in 2010, en route to a 63-seat gain and the majority, Republicans claimed the political scalps of the Democratic chairmen of the Armed Services, Budget and Transportation committees among the veterans swallowed up by that wave.

Veterans of those prior waves wish that their incumbents had gotten as early a scare from the opposition party as Republicans are feeling this cycle. The GOP has fought like mad just to hold seats in deeply red districts in two special elections, with two more on the horizon. That sort of warning sign did not come until well into 1994, 2006 and 2010.

Republicans think these elections, plus protests at town halls, will get their longtime incumbents prepping for next years potential climate. Weve been pretty aggressive with making sure theyre ready, said Matt Gorman, communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

There are 40 House Republicans sitting in districts where Trump received less than 50percent of the vote; 23 of those districts actually favored Clinton. Of those 40 lawmakers, 14 will have served at least a decade by the time of the November 2018 midterms.

Out of the 14 GOP veterans in vulnerable districts, only Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has faced a tough campaign in the past five elections, having fought to win a bitter contest last year by less than one percentage point.

None of them have faced credible, well-funded challenges in the last decade, wrote David Wasserman, editor for House races at the independent Cook Political Report. And ironically, this could make them more vulnerable in a wave scenario than less senior but more recently battle-tested GOP colleagues.

Clinton even weighed in on the opportunity this week at the annual Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif.

Lets look at the House, she said. We have to flip 24 seats, okay? I won 23 districts that have a Republican Congress member. Seven of them are in California, Darrell Issa being one. If we can flip those, if we can then go deeper into where I did well, where we can get good candidates, I think flipping the House is certainly realistic. Its a goal that we can set for ourselves.

Democrats point to two recent moves by senior Republicans to suggest that shaky political instincts are at work within the GOP. On Tuesday, Issa, the former high-profile chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, had a brief encounter with hundreds of protesters outside his office, leading him to retreat indoors and then up to his roof to take pictures.

Issa told the local news media that he had wanted to address the group but was rebuffed. Still, the incident became something of a laugh line on the local TV news broadcasts.

Earlier this spring, Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.), the new chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee, sent a fundraising letter to a local banker that included a handwritten note letting him know that one of the ringleaders of liberal activists worked for him. That prompted accusations that the 26-year incumbent, who regularly coasts to reelection, was threatening a constituent.

GOP strategists brushed off Issas rooftop move as a goofy incident that will not resonate with voters. They think Frelinghuysens family lineage, dating to the Continental Congress, will insulate him from any Trump fallout.

Republicans do have time to shore themselves up but that also means these veteran lawmakers have time to make more mistakes.

The biggest advantage for these Republicans is that the election is still 18 months away and there is still time to batten down the hatches, Wasserman wrote. But sometimes, errors cascade.

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A Republican weak spot in 2018: Longtime lawmakers in shifting districts - Washington Post