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Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst and other Senate Republican leaders, Washington, D.C., Nov. 14, 2018.(Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais, AP)

What do women want? The political answer to Freud's famous question, judging by the midterm Republican wipeout, can be summed up in a word: Democrats.

The good news for Republicans is they now have women leading their national party and their Senate campaign committee, and Rep. Liz Cheney will soon bethe No. 3 Republican in the House.

The good news for Democrats is there'sno sign the GOP plans to make any substantive changes that could turn this "year of the Democratic woman" into some future year forwomen of both parties.

"We are doing great work for women, Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, the new chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said recently on CNN. We need to do a better job at communicating why we are the choice for women and encouraging women to run for elected office.

These were the right words after a midterm election that produced a record gender gapand dramatically shrank the ranks of Republican women in Congress.But Ernst then went on to say that of course, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is better for our families. We see more of them keeping that income in their own pockets.We see a lot of deregulation and companies that are able to expand and provide opportunities for women.

If she and other Republicans stick to this script and these policies, not to mention to this president, its hard to envision female votersfinding much to like. On almost every issue of the day, most women have different views and priorities than conservatives and Donald Trump.

Unpackingthat one CNN appearance by Ernst is instructive. First of all, exit polls last month show that mostRepublicans don't consider it important for women to run for office.Two-thirds of Democrats said it was important, compared with only one-third of Republicans.

In perhaps a self-fulfilling prophesy, Republicans elected very few women. Next year they'll drop from 23 women in the House to 13. Mississippi Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith managed to keep her seat in last week'srunoff despite a campaign riddled with racial gaffes, but that still leaves the GOP with just seven women senators less than halfthe Democrats'17.

Ernst'sfocus on tax cuts, deregulation and private-sector opportunities does not seem helpful. The benefits of the tax-cut law, the GOP's major accomplishment, did not trickle down to many voters. In October, for instance, nearly two-thirds in a Gallup poll said they had not seen an increase in take-home pay, and half said the cuts had not helped them financially.

As for businesses expanding and providing opportunities for women, one study found that the nation's 1,000 largest public companiesreduced employment after the tax cuts passed. The corporate gains from the law have largely benefited shareholders through rising buybacks and dividends, The New York Times reported. They're expected to beup 28 percent this year over 2017, compared with 0.5 percent growth in wages over 2017.

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A Quinnipiac Poll in July illustratedthe gulf between women and the GOP.Only 7 percent of women named taxes as their top election issue. But 14 percent chose gun policy, 24 percent chose health care and, perhaps because the poll was taken at the time family separations were in the news, 29 percent chose immigration. Most women disagree with Trump, the GOP or both on those issues.

There's no ignoring the Trump drag, of course.In thatsame poll, 43 percent of women said their vote would be meant to express opposition to Trump (only 22 percent said it would be a show of support).Women do not like his behavior, his character or his policies.

In July, two-thirds of women disapproved of Trump's immigration policies.OnElection Day, 55 percent of women said Trumps immigration policies were too tough. As for trade, half of women judged Trumps policies bad for their personal financesand even more, 56 percent, said they are bad for the economy.

Then there's Trump's treatment of women who accuse men of sexual misconduct. After the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation battle centered on Christine Blasey Ford's testimony that he had sexually assaulted her inhigh school, Trump defended his Supreme Court nomineeand said it was a scary time for men. But in a poll later that month, only 36 percent of women said the #MeToo movement had gone too far.

This type of behavior won't be in the spotlight, one hopes, when Trump is no longer president. Likewise, his views on immigration and trade depart from traditional Republican positionsand could fade with time. But what about thepolicies Republicanshave been pushing for decades, many of them since Ronald Reagan was commander in chief?

After the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy, a frequent swing vote on cultural issues and author of the decision legalizing gay marriage, only a quarter of women (but 68 percent of Republicans) said they wanted a more conservative Supreme Court. Seven in 10 women support stricter gun laws(more than twice the share of GOP). More than half (54 percent)worry about global warming and think human activity causes it (most Republicans say it's exaggerated).Six in 10 women say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while six in 10 Republicans say the opposite.Andin a poll last month, health care was the issue that mattered most to 28 percent of women but only 14 percent of Republicans.

These are disconnects that will not go away with Trump. They will not be fixed by having a few women in high party positions. They will not be fixed if, as defeated Utah Rep. Mia Love put it,Republicans "actually let people know that we care. They will be fixed if and when Republicans recognize that better communicatingwithout better ideas is no change at all.

Jill Lawrence is the commentary editor of USA TODAY and author of"The Art of the Political Deal: How Congress Beat the Odds and Broke Through Gridlock."Follow her on Twitter:@JillDLawrence

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Nine members of the far-right Proud Boys group and three protesters are facing riot and assault charges after a street brawl between them Friday night in New York.

The fight wasnt a random clash, though: The Proud Boys were in Manhattan thanks to an invite from the Metropolitan Republican Club.

In a speech at the club, which was vandalized before the event, Proud Boys leader Gavin McInnes waved a sword at anti-fascist protesters and celebrated the assassination of a socialist Japanese politician. McInnes, a Vice co-founder who left the company in 2008, dressed up as the Japanese assassin who killed the politician, complete with glasses that made his eyes into a racist caricature of a Japanese persons eyes.

It was a bizarre event to host at the GOPs Manhattan clubhouse, but the Metropolitan Republican Club defended McInnes and the Proud Boys after the fight. In a statement released Sunday, the club said McInnes speech was certainly not inciting violence.

The Republican clubs role hosting the event highlights how the Proud Boys have managed to insinuate themselves with mainstream Republicans, even as they increasingly make the news for their violence. But the New York Republicans arent alonethe Proud Boys have already managed to make their way into other mainstream GOP campaign events and conservative media.

Representatives Mario Diaz-Balart and Devin Nunes have posed for pictures with Proud Boys on the campaign trail. Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson posed in a Fox green room with two Proud Boys and Republican operative Roger Stone earlier this year.

The skinheads, for example, would become functional equivalents of Hitlers SA and Mussolinis squadristi only if they aroused support instead of revulsion.

Historian Robert Paxton

Stone has himself taken steps to be initiated into the Proud Boys and made headlines in March, when he used the Proud Boys as a security force at the Dorchester Conference, a Republican event in Oregon. By then, the Proud Boys were already notorious in Oregon for a series of bloody Portland brawls. But Dorchester board member and former Oregon legislator Patrick Sheehan defended the Proud Boys attendance, telling Willamette Week that Stone was worried about getting killed He gets death threats constantly.

Stone told The Daily Beast that the Proud Boys were a volunteer force.

Stone said via email he never hired the Proud Boys, only that individual members have volunteered to provide security because of the large number of death threats I have received and they many potentially violent and physical attacks on me in public spaces when I travel.

Stone said the Proud Boys also acted as his security force at the Mother of All Rallies, a right-wing event in D.C. this year. He said hed been in touch with individual Proud Boys for more than a year, and that he tried talking some out of attending the first Unite the Right rally. I urged a number of individual proudboys [sic] I know NOT to go to Charlottesville because of the stated views of some of the online organizers, he said.

Fascist skinhead groups have wreaked havoc in the U.S. for decades, but scholars of fascism have noted that those groups pose limited political threatsunless a mainstream political party embraces them.

The skinheads, for example, would become functional equivalents of Hitlers SA and Mussolinis squadristi only if they aroused support instead of revulsion, historian Robert Paxton writes in his 2004 book The Anatomy of Fascism. If important elements of the conservative elite begin to cultivate or even tolerate them as weapons against some internal enemy, such as immigrants, we are approaching Stage Two of what he identifies as fascist insurgency.

The Proud Boys, which have a paramilitary wing, have already proved willing to act as strongmen for Stone, and GOP stalwarts like the Metropolitan Republican Club have already proved willing to host the group.

The Proud Boys didnt start out with such a focus on political violence. While members of the group have always been beaten in while shouting the names of cereal brandsan initiation McInnes claims show they can keep their heads in a fightthe rules initially imposed by McInnes focused more on the Proud Boys reactionary drinking club lifestyle than baiting antifa at rallies.

But as clashes between pro-Trump protesters and left-wing antifa grabbed headlines in the summer of 2017, McInnes sought to play up violence as a part of the Proud Boy ethos. He invited notorious right-wing rally fighter Kyle Based Stickman Chapman to start a paramilitary wing of the Proud Boys, a now-defunct group called the Fraternal Order of Alt Knights.

McInnes also made a new achievement for Proud Boys: the fourth degree, designated for Proud Boys who had endured a major struggle for the cause. McInnes eventually had to issue a clarification that 4th degrees could only be given for actions taken in self-defense, writing he was worried that the new level was leading Proud Boys into senseless violence.

Despite the clarification, Proud Boy rhetoric also grew more belligerent, adopting mottoes like Fuck around and find out and Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Both lines are references to punching out antifa members in self-defense. But Proud Boys have also embraced references and clothing with references to helicopter rides, an allusion to Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochets regime executing opponents by throwing them out of helicopters to fall to their deaths.

Several Proud Boys have since carved out their own social-media fame with viral-ready clashes against antifa protesters, becoming right-wing celebrities in their own right and booking appearances on far-right outlets like Infowars.

That attention has drawn even more would-be fighters to Proud Boy events, according to Keegan Hankes, a senior researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Centers Intelligence Project. At this point, the violence surrounding the Proud Boy has become the groups life blood, according to Hankes.

Their DNA has totally mutated in the last year-and-a-half, and I think a lot of it has been because of the repeated recurrences of violence, Hankes said.

The frequent clashes between Proud Boys and left-wing protesters apparently havent damaged the Proud Boy brand enough to keep the group from gaining new members. While other groups further to the Proud Boys right have fractured, the Proud Boys appear to be growing, with members from United Kingdom and Australia posting beat-in videos on YouTube.

Gavin, smartly, is holding by his fingernails to legitimacy, Hankes said. He knows that the second they cross over into being recognized as extreme as they are in reality, its all decline from there.

Part of that ploy for legitimacy is disavowing the most extreme white-supremacist events, like Unite the Right. The event was organized by former Proud Boy Jason Kessler, and attended by other Proud Boys. Kessler even promoted the event in a friendly appearance on McInnes show.

McInnes disavowed the event shortly beforehand, and warned Proud Boys against attending in their uniforms. Just dont fucking wear your Fred Perry, or decide to belt: Proud of Your Boy, he said, in reference to the Fred Perry polo shirts the group wears, and the show tune its members have adopted.

But violence has erupted outside other, more conventionally Republican events, including a February 2017 event hosted by New York Universitys College Republicans club. Police arrested 11 people in brawls outside the NYU building. Among them was Proud Boy Salvatore Cipolla, who attacked a journalist who was covering the event. Cipolla attended Unite the Right later that year. During an on-camera interview at Unite the Right, Cipolla identified as a Proud Boy and showed off a Proud Boy tattoo.

Days after the event, he said that he was no longer affiliated with Mcinnes group. Just so everyone is clear I am no longer a proud boy, he tweeted. Although the reasons for his departure were unclear, he had violated McInnes rule against identifying as a Proud Boy at Unite the Right.

Jason Lee Van Dyke, a Proud Boy who also acts as the groups lawyer said the group has found welcome with a populist, pro-Trump wing of the Republican Party.

I think some Republicans appreciate the Proud Boys because they understand what we actually stand for: love of country, small government, freedom, and fun, he said. Van Dyke was suspended from his college over a firearms offense after which campus police found an anti-Semitic race-war book in his dorm. (After the publication of this article, Van Dyke told The Daily Beast the book was for a political theory class.) He was recently arrested for allegedly filing a false police report about the theft of his guns.

Republicans like President Trump campaigned on those values. However, the big government/neoconservative wing of the Republican Party has different values, and therefore, a different perspective.

The rift between Trumpist and traditional conservatives recently engulfed the Metropolitan Republican Club, where McInnes spoke on Friday. In early 2017, the New York Post reported that the clubs never Trump leadership was attempting to purge the clubs pro-Trump, far-right elements.

That older, anti-Trump faction appears to have lostat the Metropolitan Republican Club and elsewhere in the U.S., as more extreme-right elements take hold of the GOP.

The Metropolitan Republican Club recently hosted open Islamophobe Pamela Geller. A State of the Union watch party at the club in January descended into alt-right chaos, the Observer reported.

But the Proud Boys supporters in the GOP say theres nothing untoward about the groupat least not more so than mainstream Republicans.

For the record, I reject the charge that the group are white supremacists or bigots, Stone said. I would not associate with such people.

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A party official said lawmakers had chipped in $1.2 million for the House campaign committee after the appeal.

Among top Democrats, optimism has soared since Labor Day. Mr. Trump has handed them fodder via his Twitter provocations, and reports of deep internal divisions in his administration have added to a sense of a chaotic presidency hijacking the news cycle.

Party leaders have closely tracked their leads in several public polls: During a meeting of congressional Democratic leaders on Wednesday evening, a top aide to Ms. Pelosi walked the group through a list of five recent polls that found voters nationally favoring Democratic congressional candidates over Republicans by double-digit margins.

Officials with the main House Democratic super PAC, the House Majority PAC, said their polling in August showed 17 incumbent Republicans trailing and six tied nearly enough to recapture the majority without even factoring in the open seats the G.O.P. is defending. Strikingly, when the group this month surveyed some of the same districts where Republicans had unleashed a barrage of negative ads, it found that Democratic candidates had slipped only a little and that the races remained within the polling margin of error.

In the Senate, a mood of highly guarded hopefulness has spread among Democrats, who see a path to a majority that runs through a mix of right-leaning and solidly conservative states. By this point in the cycle, some in the party had feared that several incumbents would be headed to certain defeat, and once-inviting takeover opportunities would have slipped off the map, including in Tennessee and Texas. But both of those states remain competitive and a group of rust belt Senate Democrats, like Sherrod Brown of Ohio, seem secure.

Despite the difficulty of the maps geography, if theres a big wave I think our odds are very, very good, Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, said in an interview, adding that when youre feeling the wave in September it rarely changes much by November.

And the main reason Democrats are sensing a wave is obvious to party veterans.

He wont allow himself to get credit for the economy, said James Carville, the Democratic strategist, referring to President Trump. Mr. Carville, who fashioned Bill Clintons Its the economy, stupid mantra in 1992, continued: Hes made himself bigger than the economy. Every conversation starts and ends with Trump.

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This was expected to be an easier year for Senate Republicans.

Democrats were supposed to be playing defense as Senate candidates ran in conservative states that President Trump handily won two years ago.

But for Republican leaders seeking to maintain control of the Senate, some races are becoming a little too close for comfort.

A prime example is Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a former presidential candidate who is now fighting to hold on to his seat.

Weve got a fight on our hands, Cruz said. The extreme left, theyre angry, theyre energized and they are filled with hatred."

Money has poured in to Texas to benefit his challenger, U.S. Rep. Beto ORourke, D-El Paso, who is attracting large crowds at rallies.

"It's about the future of this country, the big things we want to do, going from the least insured state in the country to the one that leads on universal healthcare," ORourke told supporters at a recent campaign stop.

A national Republican source said while ORourke is getting attention, he likely wont win.

Betos fundraising is obviously nothing to downplay, but its still Texas, the source said. I think the more his record is litigated and folks learn more about his anti-gun, open borders record the gap grows.

In addition to Texas, Real Clear Politics lists eight other Senate races as tossupsArizona, Indiana, Montana, Missouri, Florida, Tennessee, Nevada and North Dakota.

FULL MIDTERM COVERAGE AND RACE RATINGS

Some involve red state incumbent Democrats such as Joe Donnelly in Indiana, Claire McCaskill in Missouri, and Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota.

But if Texas and Tennessee, traditional Republican strongholds, are in the mix then there is a possibility that Democrats could have a path to reclaim the Senate.

Part of Donnellys pitch is hes not entirely anti-President Trump.

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Hoosiers want a senator who works for them. Now, I'll work with any president, but I don't work for any president, Donnelly told Fox News. I work for the people of Indiana.

Democrats are expressing hope the Senate majority is in play energized by the numbers in Texas, Tennessee, and other places.

But they acknowledge their incumbent senators must perform in what are expected to be hard-fought races.

North Dakota, Missouri and Florida three very close, very tough fights in very tough states for three members of the Senate, two of whom at least won during Obama's last election, where they had the benefit of him being at the top of the ticket, Democratic strategist Mary Anne Marsh told Fox News.

Marsh said Democrats even have a chance in states that are Republican strongholds.

For the first time, not only do you have Democrats defending red states, there are some Dems who could win some red states like Tennessee, like Texas and don't forget Mississippi. [Former Rep.]Mike Espy has a really good chance of winning [in Mississippi], Marsh said.

Sources close to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledge a tough election environment. But they suggest a GOP win in North Dakota is quite possible, and they dont believe they will lose the majority in the Senate.

Mike Emanuel currently serves as chief congressional correspondent for FOX News Channel (FNC). He joined FNC in 1997 as a Los Angeles-based correspondent.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With congressional elections looming, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives on Monday proposed more deficit-expanding tax cuts, an effort seen by some tax experts as unlikely to become law and geared chiefly toward winning votes.

FILE PHOTO: People walk by the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, U.S., February 8, 2018. REUTERS/ Leah Millis

Even if the initiative fails to pass, it could put Democrats in the position of opposing the new tax-cut plan on the House floor, which Republicans could seek to use to their advantage in the Nov. 6 elections where control of Congress will be at stake.

Under the measure, federal individual income tax cuts approved on a temporary basis by the Republican-controlled Congress and President Donald Trump in December would become permanent.

It would also eliminate the maximum age for some retirement account contributions and let new businesses write off more start-up costs.

House tax committee Chairman Kevin Brady, main author of the Tax Reform 2.0 package, plans to put it to a committee-level vote on Thursday, with a full House vote expected by Oct 1.

Trump and his Republicans are touting Decembers tax cuts as a boost to the economy, an important feature of their campaign push to defend their majorities in the House and U.S. Senate against a challenge from Democrats.

Democrats say those cuts mainly helped the wealthy and corporations.

In a statement on Monday, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said: With version 2.0 of the GOP tax scam for the rich, Republicans want to add even more to the deficit, and even more to the bank accounts of the wealthiest 1 percent.

The cuts passed in December are projected to add an estimated $1.5 trillion over a decade to the federal deficit, the difference between Washingtons spending and the taxes it collects.

The new round being proposed by Republicans would add a further $576 billion to the deficit, even taking possibly higher economic growth into account, said the Tax Foundation, a pro-business think tank in Washington.

Regardless of the merits of the House GOP plan, we view it as a political move ahead of the midterm elections that has no chance of passing Congress in the short term, the investment firm Keefe, Bruyette & Woods said in a Monday note to clients.

Adding another several hundred billion dollars to the deficit is something that I think some Republicans are going to really think hard about, said John Gimigliano, who heads federal tax legislative and regulatory services at the audit, tax and advisory firm KPMG LLP.

Passage is not automatic, he added.

Even so, Republican lawmakers and strategists hope a new tax debate will amplify the partys upbeat economic message. They tout a report by the Tax Foundation that forecast the creation of 1.5 million jobs and wage increases if the temporary individual tax cuts are made permanent.

Anytime were talking about tax cuts and the growing economy, were winning, said Matt Gorman, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, the partys main campaign support for House Republican candidates.

Still, some Republicans from Democratic-leaning states worry that constituents already dislike Decembers cap on the federal deduction for state and local tax payments, known as SALT.

A dozen House Republicans opposed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act last December. All but one were from high-tax Democratic states such as New York, New Jersey and California. The new package would make the capped SALT deduction permanent.

Under Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress, the federal deficit has begun growing rapidly again and is expected to blow through $1 trillion in 2019.

If that happens, it would be the first time since 2012 the U.S. economy would have to support such a large deficit, highlighting a basic shift for the Republican Party, which once prided itself on fiscal conservatism.

Reporting by David Morgan and Amanda Becker; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Peter Cooney

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