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The special electionto replace Tom Price in Georgias 6th Congressional District is not going well for Republicans.

Jon Ossoff, young documentary filmmaker and Democratic rising star, is tied or ahead in recent polls and benefiting from a coordinated field operation. Meanwhile, the GOP is struggling to prop up Karen Handel, a pro-Trump career politicianwho famouslydestroyed a cancer charity, as she ismired in controversy.

Naturally, Republicans have been launching a relentless stream of attack ads against Ossoff to try to sink his campaign. But none of them have gone very well.

During the primary, Paul Ryans super PAC attacked Ossoff for cosplaying Han Solo in college, which backfired so badly it actually increased his fundraising. The NRA ranan ad that falsely claimedOssoff grew up in D.C., which was so dishonest one radio station actually edited it before putting it on the air.

Another ad attacked Ossoff for getting paid byAl-Jazeera for his documentaries. Despite the fact Al-Jazeera is considered one of the best news sources in America, Republicans superimposed the networks name over a picture of Osama bin Laden, clearly hoping Georgians would assume it was a terrorist group because it had an Arabicname.

Now thatOssoff and Handel have advanced to the runoff, the attacks have gotten even more ridiculous.

Last week, the NRCC released an adsaying that electing a Democrat in Georgia is too risky because ISIS is infiltrating America, and is using Syrians to do it. Never mind that there arezero examples of ISIS operatives posing as Syrian refugees. The ad was such a disgusting dog whistle that Khizr Khan, the Gold Star father who challenged Donald Trump at the Democratic National Convention to read the Constitution,blasted it as dangerous and un-American.

On Thursday, however, one GOP super PAC took Ossoff attacks toa new level of absurdity.

The Congressional Leadership Fund putout a new adlinking Ossoff to Kathy Griffin, the stand-up comicwho apologized after posting a tastelessclipof herself clutching Trumps severed head. The ad includes footage of Griffin holding up the gruesome prop, interspersed with clipsof violent liberal extremists smashing windows and setting cars on fire.

The sole connection between Ossoff and Griffin is that she tweeted her support for him.

The idea this would disqualify Ossoff is insane. Trump received supportfrom neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and a right-wing rocker who calledforbeheading President Barack Obama, and Republicans stuck by him. Meanwhile, Handel is enjoying the fundraising support of Greg Gianforte, the Montana congressman-elect who made national news for choke-slamming a reporter.

Ossoff communications director Sacha Haworth issued a scathing statement onthe GOP ad:

Jon Ossoff believes what Kathy Griffin did was despicable and for Karen Handels superPAC to say otherwise is a disgrace. Karen Handel should immediately demand this ad be pulled before any more children have to see these disturbing images on TV.

It is clearer than ever that Republicans know they cannot win the 6th District on issues or substance. Their steady stream of falsehoods and personal attacks against Ossoff telegraph their desperation. It is incumbent on voters to see past the mudslinging and make their choice on the facts.

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Republican attack ads against Jon Ossoff are getting ridiculously desperate - Shareblue Media

It should come as no surprise to anyone, but the administration is waging a more vigorous war against reality and oversight than Karl Rove ever thought of waging. For example, from Tiger Beat On The Potomac, we learn of the latest attempt to keep the president*'s delicate mellow unharshed.

At meetings with top officials for various government departments this spring, Uttam Dhillon, a White House lawyer, told agencies not to cooperate with such requests from Democrats, according to Republican sources inside and outside the administration. It appears to be a formalization of a practice that had already taken hold, as Democrats have complained that their oversight letters requesting information from agencies have gone unanswered since January, and the Trump administration has not yet explained the rationale. The declaration amounts to a new level of partisanship in Washington, where the president and his administration already feels besieged by media reports and attacks from Democrats. The idea, Republicans said, is to choke off the Democratic congressional minorities from gaining new information that could be used to attack the president.

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And, as is typical of this crowd, the restrictions are not only egregiously self-serving, but also extremely petty:

One month ago, Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-N.Y.) and other Democrats sent a letter to the Office of Personnel Management asking for cybersecurity information after it was revealed that millions of people had their identities compromised. The letter asked questions about how cybersecurity officials were hired, and in Rice's view, it "was not a political letter at all." "The answer we got back is, 'We only speak to the chair people of committees.' We said, 'That's absurd, what are you talking about?'" Rice said in an interview. "I was dumbfounded at their response. I had never gotten anything like that The administration has installed loyalists at every agency to keep tabs on what information people can get."

And then there's Mick Mulvaney, the Tea Party goon from South Carolina who's in charge of the Office of Management and Budget despite the fact that he knows nothing about management and less about the budget. Having put together a budget with a $2 trillion math error in it, Mulvaney has moved on to attacking the Congressional Budget Office, which took a look at the new healthcare law and subsequently moved en masse to Norway. (Not really.) In response, Mulvaney has decided that maybe it's time for the CBO to goor that's what he told The Washington Examiner, anyway.

Mulvaney, speaking in his office in the Old Executive Office Building, described the CBO's scoring of the House Republican healthcare bill as "absurd," arguing that it was a perfect example of why Congress should stop being so deferential to the group. "At some point, you've got to ask yourself, has the day of the CBO come and gone?" Mulvaney said. "How much power do we give to the CBO under the 1974 Budget Act? We're hearing now that the person in charge of the Affordable Health Care Act methodology is an alum of the Hillarycare program in the 1990s who was brought in by Democrats to score the ACA." He continued, "We always talk about it as the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Given the authority that that has, is it really feasible to think of that as a nonpartisan organization?"

But what about the budget as a whole, with all that pesky math? Mulvaney's answer is astonishing.

"When crafting the budget, we assumed for purposes of the budget that whatever we did would be paid for with the offsets by way of the exemptions, the loopholes, the deductions, so forth. We just made an assumption."

Oh.

"I wouldn't take what's in the budget as indicative of what our proposals are."

Not only is the director of the Office of Management and Budget bad at math, the director of the Office of Management and Budget plainly has no idea what a budget actually is. This strikes me as something of a flaw in the administration's plan to devise a national budget that doesn't balance itself by selling Montana to Russian mining interests.

For years now, starting with its adoption of voodoo economicsThanks, Poppy!in the late 1970s, the Republican Party has staked its political future on magic asterisks, scientific illiteracy, and on camouflaging plutocracy in overalls and a CAT hat. This is how it produced a Mick Mulvaney in the first place.

Republicans Believe God Will Take Care of Climate

But what's going on now is different. It's become plain that nobody of political influence in the Republican Party wants to do anything that upsets the delusions of the unqualified dolt in the Oval Office. (Remember in his big speech on Thursday, when he talked about how his tax plan was sailing through Congress? There is no tax plan. Anybody want to tell him that?) And, so far, the response to this, across the board, has been supine complicity in whatever fiction the White House is selling on a particular day. Our republic truly has gone bananas. This is the height of the art form that is American conservative governance.

It's also the way autocracies work. But I repeat myself.

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The Whole Republican Party Is Shoring Up Trump's Delusions - Esquire.com

Six months after President Trump breached long-standing political boundaries to win the White House, the nations major political parties still muddle in his wake.

On the sun-swept lawn of the Hotel del Coronado two weeks ago, national Republican leaders sipped cocktails and listened to San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, one of the partys brightest lights in the most populous state, praise a brand of moderate Republicanism that looks nothing like the versions coming out of Washington either the populism of the president or the more orthodox conservatism of congressional leaders.

A week later, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez talked in a Sacramento interview of the remarkably constructive debate under way in his party, characterizing its divisions as largely in the past. Within hours, he and other party leaders were booed as they welcomed delegates to a state convention that would be filled with persistent internal warfare on healthcare and other issues.

No political party is immune to disagreement; indeed the path to power often relies on combustible ideological diversity. But Democrats and Republicans alike seem particularly adrift and quarrelsome these days.

Part of the reason is the magnetic power of Trump, who has attracted Republicans and repelled Democrats with such force that the parties often seem to be defined solely in relation to him, for or against. That has left both parties images blurry rather than sharp.

Steve Schmidt, a Republican strategist who ran Arizona Sen. John McCains 2008 presidential campaign, sees both parties as having left their anchorages without new destinations in sight.

The political parties have become divorced from their ideological roots; we saw that in the last election, he said. The Republican Party has become unmoored from the intellectual foundation of conservatism. Democrats are divorced from the realities of working people in their party, badly out of step.

Both, he said are held in contempt, as they should be.

Indeed, a poll published in April by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found Americans viewing both parties in a more negative light than three months earlier.

Only 40% of Americans had a favorable view of Republicans, down from 47% in January. Forty-five percent of Americans had a positive view of Democrats, down from 51% in January.

For Republicans, the path to full control of Washington led to the partys divisions.

Republicans seized the Senate and House by electing candidates driven by differing emphases: tea party ardor, pro-business tax-cutting fervor or culturally conservative social views. (What was once a Republican orthodoxy, rigorous opposition to deficit spending, has mostly been lost).

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) has pressed tax cuts that primarily benefit wealthy Americans and cuts to programs for the less well-off, including support for the poor or sick, and reforms to Social Security.

Trump came into office advocating the opposite: protecting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and spending on infrastructure. That view was embraced by his target audiences, voters in the industrial Midwest and Northeast who had previously sided with Democrats.

Trump since has leaned in the direction of congressional Republicans on healthcare and the budget, to the point that his budget has been criticized by some centrist Republicans as too draconian.

Trumps supporters, of course, see his singular ideology as the way the party should go.

It would be hard to say that Donald Trump isnt the Republican Party, said Ron Ferrance, GOP county chairman in Luzerne County in northeast Pennsylvania, which voted for President Obama in 2012 and flipped to Trump last November.

Trumps version of Republicanism is so popular in that economically stressed county that voters still have Trump signs in their yards, Ferrance said. Some of the appeal centers on Trumps deviation from the partys traditional stances on issues such as trade and immigration.

The main thing that people want in our area is to put America first and to feel safe, he said. Hes going to deliver that. Thats going to give him the buoyancy in 2020.

Across the country in California, however, Mayor Faulconer argued for a Republican Party that sticks to jobs and sets aside hotter issues. He suggested although he was not indiscreet enough to say so outright that it was the only path forward in areas where Republicans are not already dominant.

In an interview, Faulconer touted his citys close business ties with nearby Tijuana hardly the build the wall message emanating from the president.

Asked about the discrepancy, Faulconer said that the areas Latino community helps define us.

Good quality jobs for both sides of the border, he said. That works for us.

Democrats have no clearly defined leader or universally accepted direction aside from opposition to Trump.

Democrats essentially remain in the box where Hillary Clinton spent the general election: able to unify Trump opponents, but unable to craft a message for those not motivated by distaste for him.

The Democrats are closer to where the electorate is headed, but have shown a tin ear and an inability to understand the groups that formed the backbone of the Democratic Party for decades, said veteran Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart.

The deepest Democratic schisms involve whether to focus on liberal social issues or the economic struggles of blue-collar and middle-class Americans. During the presidential campaign, many voters saw the party as more intent on social issues, an image disputed by Democrats but pushed by Republicans.

The Democratic Party, especially the presidential campaign, lost its core economic message last year; Trump sort of outmaneuvered us among Democrats and independents, said Ohio Democratic Party Chairman David Pepper, who has spent the last few months in what he calls kitchen conversations with voters.

Supporting the civil rights of Democratic voter groups is admirable, he said, but we cant let them bait us into getting away from our core message and I think that does happen.

Party leaders in interviews expressed concern that the lesson may not have been learned.

Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., and an unsuccessful candidate this year to head the Democratic National Committee, pointed to the issue of trade. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) energized a wide swath of Democrats by blaming trade deals for gutting jobs in the Midwest. That does not reflect reality, the mayor said, even if the idea has been embraced by many Democrats.

Weve got a lot of wins on the board from globalization, he said of his city. Weve got auto workers making Mercedes cars that are sold to China. Globalization doesnt have to be a disaster for working people.

But what could be disasters, he said, are seemingly unimportant economic developments touted by the partys more elite factions, such as ride-sharing and driverless vehicles. The first threatens demand for cars, the second threatens demand for drivers, a significant employment option for blue-collar workers.

Nobody in the political space is wrestling with it, he said.

Perez, the national Democratic chairman, has spent months traveling the country to buck up Democrats with a relentless focus on what he sees as Trumps failings. Yet he sees his own partys failings as well.

Just fighting against Donald Trump isnt enough, and Ive heard that clearly from voters, he said. Ive heard from voters that they dont know what the Democratic Party stands for and thats why were out there.

What it stands for, he says, is economic opportunity, good jobs for everyone, ladders of opportunity for everyone healthcare a right for all, not a privilege for the few.

When we get out there and fight for those values, thats how we succeed.

But divisions persist over those very issues. In the weeks leading to special House elections this spring, party activists feuded over whether candidates were supportive enough of abortion rights or populist enough in their economic leanings. At town halls, veteran Democrats such as California Sen. Dianne Feinstein were excoriated by more liberal Democrats for not supporting universal healthcare. (She favors repairing Obamacare.)

At a Los Angeles town hall meeting featuring California Sen. Kamala Harris, Kristin Morley, a real estate agent from Valley Village, said she feared that clashes among Democrats would doom the party in coming elections by dissuading some from showing up to vote.

In some activist groups to which she belongs, even the popular Harris has been sharply criticized for warning against ideological litmus tests, she said, adding: I am terrified by the fact that there is such division in the Democratic Party.

cathleen.decker@latimes.com

Twitter: @cathleendecker

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The latest from Washington

Updates on California politics

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In President Trump's wake, divisions mark both Democratic and Republican parties - Los Angeles Times

The Assemblys higher education committee passed an amended version of a Republican-backed campus speech bill Tuesday that requires University of Wisconsin System institutions to punish students who take part in disruptive protests.

Changes to the legislation spelled out more specifically the types of disruptions that could lead to discipline for UW students and employees. They also toughened penalties for those who run afoul of the new rules by requiring universities to expel any student who violates the policy three times.

First Amendment advocates had warned that the bills original language was unconstitutionally vague and raised concerns that its mandatory punishments would treat all disruptions with the same severity as the at-times violent demonstrations that have prompted Republican lawmakers across the country to introduce similar legislation.

The amendments and the bill itself passed the Assembly Committee on Colleges and Universities on party-line votes.

Much like a lengthy public hearing on the bill weeks earlier, the sometimes heated debate during Tuesdays meeting often touched on pitched partisan battles over higher education nationally.

Republican members argued that their ideas are under fire on college campuses from left-leaning students and faculty, saying the legislation was needed to preserve open debate at UW institutions and protect the free speech rights of controversial speakers.

Rep. Joan Ballweg, R-Markesan, said the bill would ensure there is no idea or issue that will be shouted down in a public forum.

Democrats painted the legislation as an unnecessary overreach by Republican lawmakers who want to shut down protests they disagree with.

There is no problem that youre trying to solve here, other than an agenda issue for your party, said Rep. Terese Berceau, D-Madison.

The amended bill directs the UW Board of Regents to create a disciplinary process that sanctions students who engage in violent or other disorderly conduct that materially and substantially disrupts the free expression of others. The legislation previously barred a wider range of disruptive speech that Kremer acknowledged was too vague.

It also states that System institutions must strive to remain neutral on public policy controversies.

Another amendment requires universities to launch an investigation and hold discipline hearings if they get two or more complaints alleging someone violated the policy.

Democrats cautioned that the requirement could open the door to students filing complaints against people they disagree with creating, according to Rep. Dana Wachs, D-Eau Claire, a constant kerfuffle on our campuses about what somebody said.

Lawmakers in several states often, but not always, Republicans have introduced similar legislation in an effort to crack down on protests that they say use a hecklers veto to shut down talks by controversial speakers.

They cite as examples the high-profile demonstrations that led college officials to cancel talks at the University of California-Berkeley; in Wisconsin, lawmakers have criticized a protest that disrupted a lecture by conservative commentator Ben Shapiro for several minutes at UW-Madison.

Language in the Wisconsin bill mirrors model legislation proposed by the Arizona-based Goldwater Institute.

A Senate version of the bill has been referred to that chambers Committee on Universities and Technical Colleges.

UW System administrators have not taken a position on the bill, though they asked lawmakers at the public hearing to dial back its mandatory punishments for students who violate the policy.

The UW-Madison faculty advocacy group PROFS has registered against it, saying in a statement Tuesday that UW institutions should be given the autonomy to address their own speech issues.

Rep. Jesse Kremer, R-Kewaskum, who co-authored the legislation along with Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, and the chairpersons of the Assembly and Senate higher education committees, said existing UW policies have not been sufficient in protecting free speech.

Its not working weve seen that, Kremer said.

Excerpt from:
Republican bill to penalize disruptive speech on campus moves forward in Legislature - Madison.com

Right now, congressional Republicans are in about the best possible position on health care: They showed that they can pass something (anything!) in the House, and now no one is paying any attention to it any more.

Its unlikely, though, that the Senate will end up doing nothing with the American Health Care Act, the Republican bill that passed the House earlier this month. Meaning that the party will again have to grapple with a complicated, deeply unpopular bill that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office figures will mean 23 million fewer people with health insurance in 10 years time.

New survey data from the Kaiser Family Foundation, though, serves as a reminder that pushing forward with the legislation could be politically problematic well past this year.

Only Republicans have a broadly favorable view of the legislation, with two-thirds of them holding that position. Democrats and independents, on net, view the AHCA more unfavorably than favorably. Only about 3-in-10 overall view it positively.

By contrast, nearly 50 percent of respondents held a positive view of the Affordable Care Act (better known as Obamacare) the legislation that the AHCA would replace. Three-in-10 hold strongly favorable views of Obamacare; 4-in-10 hold strongly negative views of the AHCA.

And thats why the AHCAs unpopularity is so problematic.

Obamacare is about as popular now as it has been at any point since its inception in 2010. Generally, opinions have been pretty consistently split, with about half the country viewing it negatively and half positively. The percent viewing it favorably now, though, is seven points higher than those viewing it unfavorably, one of the widest margins in the foundations polling.

Those views are not universally held, though. By party, theres a distinct split.

If that graph looks familiar to you, its because it strongly mirrors approval ratings for the man behind the name Obamacare, Barack Obama.

Theres a different scale there; Democrats like Obama more than Obamacare. But the pattern is the same: A broad partisan gulf, with favorable views rising among Democrats and independents over the last few years of Obamas time in office.

So far, were seeing a similar split in partisan views of Donald Trump. Republicans view him very positively and Democrats very negatively, without much movement up or down among either group.

So if the AHCA were passed and partisan views of it held in the way that views of Obamacare did? Congressional Republicans would be passing legislation that starts out less popular than Obamacare and which will likely be mired in the same partisan trenches over the length of its existence. Sure, theyll say, people will come to like the improved health-care plan that is much better than Obamacare. To which theres an easy response: As more people got coverage under Obamacare, views of the program didnt move much. It was only when the risk to Obamacare from Republican control of Washington emerged that the program became popular on net but even now, its only barely above water.

There is one key difference. A number of polls over the course of the last eight years determined that the Affordable Care Act was more popular than Obamacare indicating that views of the legislation were a function of partisan views of Obama himself. Perhaps views of the AHCA will be separated from views of Trump. After all, three-quarters of respondents in the foundations poll figured that none or only some of Trumps campaign pledges made it into the AHCA itself. His ownership of it is less obvious.

Oh, and theres another key difference: It has to pass. With poll numbers like these, that should certainly not be considered a certainty.

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A new reminder of the possible political disaster looming for Republicans on health care - Washington Post