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It is almost impossible to overstate how important a role crony capitalism played in the right-wing critique of Barack Obamas policies. It was the heart of Mitt Romneys charge that Obama was smothering the economy. (Hes been practicing crony capitalism. And if you want to get America going again youve got to stop the spread of crony capitalism.) Elites in Washington should NOT be picking winners & losersthats a recipe for a closed economyfor cronyism, said Paul Ryan. Obamacare represented corporate Americas worst crony-capitalist impulses, charged Marco Rubio.

The denunciations of crony capitalism served two crucial purposes. It dramatized the Republicans belief that the tea-party insurgency had cleansed them of the corruption and failure of the Bush administration, for which they could no longer be held responsible. And it likewise allowed conservatives to deflect the charge that they favored the rich it was Obama who favored the powerful, through his support for policies like green-energy loans and the auto bailout that saved selected industries. Republicans stood for an impartial government that allowed the invisible hand to work its magic.

That idea, so central to the partys self-conception, has fallen by the wayside in the Trump era. Obviously Trump himself has never had any use for free-market dogma, having spent his career as a developer seeking government favors for his business, and then seamlessly transitioning into using his public powers for self-enrichment. But Trumps casual disregard for a once-cherished conservative principle has been widely shared within his party.

West Virginia governor Jim Justice, who just switched his party registration from Democratic (which was tenuous) to Republican, proposes that the federal government spend $4.5 billion a year to support his states coal industry. It is not only that Justice believes coal in general needs to be subsidized in relation to the cheaper, cleaner energy sources that are beating it out. He believes Appalachian coal in particular needs support vis--vis coal from the West. The survivability of the Eastern coalfields is very, very iffy, Justice says. And if you lose the Eastern coalfields, you are putting the country at risk beyond belief.

In Wisconsin, Governor Scott Walker is pushing a $3 billion package of state tax incentives, which could be paid out in straight cash, for Foxconn to build a plant in his state. Under the most generous assumptions, a study concludes, it would take the state 25 years to break even. The unemployment rate in Wisconsin is already 3.2 percent, and as Danielle Paquette points out, Employers there already complain about having trouble finding workers.

The plant would be located in Paul Ryans district, and the House Speaker has played an instrumental role both in wooing Foxconn and pleading with the state legislature to approve the massive cost. Obviously I tell state lawmakers, lets get this done, he says.

Kevin Seifert, an adviser to Ryan explains, In Wisconsin, you are judged on results if you are actually improving peoples lives. Not freedom and capitalism? Results? Improving peoples lives? It is almost impossible to defend the Foxconn deal on that basis anyway, unlike the maligned energy loans in the stimulus or the auto bailout, which produced huge public benefits at little cost. But the mere fact that improving peoples lives is the standard shows that the Obama-era posture of strict free-market purity has been relegated to a historical relic. The conservative movements hair-on-fire posture against Obama, whose socialist radicalism was allegedly snuffing out the last vestige of economic liberty, rested substantially on the strict application of a principle of convenience.

Kim Jong-un might not care about wiping the tiny U.S. territory off the map, but he does want Americans to think he might.

Why a shocking poll tells us a lot about the state of the party.

The president finds a way to undo all the clean-up the White House just did on his fire and fury comments.

Bloomberg says Robert Mueller is working hard to turn the former Trump campaign manager into an asset for the prosecution.

Republicans block early voting opportunities in areas favoring Democrats, while expanding them on their own turf.

Sam Clovis, nominee for the Department of Agricultures chief scientist, has a history of troubling statements.

The U.S. has expelled two Cuban diplomats in retaliation.

It made for a bizarre scene, captured on video by one subway passenger.

A central tenet of Obama-era conservatism dies a quiet, lonely death.

An analysis of approval data shows Trump struggling with college-educated white voters, and even with his blue-collar base, in battleground states.

Billionaire Robert Mercer has already ponied up $300,000 to evict Jeff Flake from the Senate for sullying Donald Trumps good name.

If Trump said it was delayed to prevent voter fraud, 52 percent would support him, a new survey shows.

Fear of a Trumpocalypse is helping too.

Their unsuccessful effort to gut the Affordable Care Act spooked insurers and helped drive up premiums for next year.

Seemingly undeterred by Trumps red line, they offered more details on their potential plan to strike the U.S. territory.

Allies of the Venezuelan president are swiftly cracking down on the opposition.

The Senate Majority Leader suggests Trumps impatience led to Trumpcares defeat. Trump thinks McConnell is just making excuses.

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Republicans Fall Back in Love With Crony Capitalism - New York Magazine

Austin Petersen is trying to pull off a difficult task: doubling the number of libertarian-leaning Republicans in the U.S. Senate.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., was re-elected just last year with 57.3 percent of the vote in a mostly quiet election cycle for Republicans inspired by his father's two GOP presidential campaigns. He is so far the only one to make it into the upper chamber.

"Libertarians have a messaging problem, not an ideas problem," said Petersen, 36. Ambitious and energetic, he is running for Senate in Missouri, a state President Trump carried by nearly 19 points in November, hoping to win the Republican nomination to challenge incumbent Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill.

Maine state Sen. Eric Brakey, 29, is running on a similar platform to become the Republican challenger to Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats. "He's much less of a Bernie Sanders independent and much more of a Hillary Clinton corporatist type who hands out favors to big-government cronies," Brakey said of his would-be opponent.

"Angus King has been around in politics in the state for as long as I've been alive," said Brakey. "There's a big opportunity here in the state of Maine for us to pick up this U.S. Senate seat."

Both Petersen and Brakey plan to run to the right of the Democrats on fiscal issues while expanding the Republican coalition by hitting their opponents on criminal justice reform and corporate welfare.

"Conservatism runs deep in both parties here," said Petersen. "Even the Democrats in Missouri are very strongly traditional on issues like abortion and gun rights." Yet he believes he could do better appealing to African-American voters in places like St. Louis County, where criminal justice issues boiled over in Ferguson, than more conventional Republicans. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., squeaked through to another term by three points last year even as Trump was winning the state handily.

"I see this in my own state senate races," said Brakey. "A constitutionalist, libertarian message can appeal to the very strong conservative base of the Republican Party while also appealing to independents and even socially liberal voters."

Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, is the most established figure who is popular with the libertarian wing of the party who will try his hand at a statewide race next year. Labrador, a Freedom Caucus member, announced in May that he is running for governor. "Idaho needs a proven conservative leader who will stand against the special interests and politicians that have picked the winners and losers in our state Capitol for too long," he said in a statement.

Former Texas Rep. Ron Paul served 12 terms in the House as a Republican, most of them in obscurity, before becoming a national political figure with his 2008 presidential bid. He ran a second time in 2012, nearly doubling his raw primary vote total to more than 2 million and finishing in the top three in both Iowa and New Hampshire.

That was good enough to get other like-minded candidates to run as Republicans on platforms that included opposing the Iraq war, ending the Federal Reserve and making deep cuts to federal spending. Paul's son Rand was first elected to the Senate in the Tea Party wave of 2010. Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., won his House seat that same year. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., joined them in 2012.

Since those quick early victories, the momentum has stalled. The elder Paul retired from Congress. His son was believed to have a legitimate chance of capturing the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, but saw Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and even the populist upstart Trump steal some of his base. The younger Paul dropped out after a disappointing finish in Iowa, a state where his father's supporters briefly captured the party leadership and won him a majority of the unbound delegates four years earlier.

Petersen has picked an easy general election target in McCaskill, who is widely considered to be one of the most vulnerable Democrats up for re-election in 2018. "You could beat her just by calling her Obama's senator or Hillary's senator," said Jeff Roe, a Missouri-based Republican strategist. When one pollster tested several potential GOP candidates against McCaskill, Roe said, "Everyone beat her."

But you can't make it to the general without winning the primary first, which will be no easy feat. Republican insiders consider Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley, who opened an exploratory committee earlier this month, the overwhelming favorite. The national party and conservative outside groups are prepared to devote considerable resources to supporting Hawley.

If anyone is able to put a roadblock in the way of Hawley's nomination, Republicans familiar with the race expect it will be Missouri Treasurer Eric Schmitt, who garnered national interest himself. Petersen may not even have the libertarian wing all to himself as state Rep. Paul Curtman, a 2012 Ron Paul endorser, launched an exploratory committee in July.

Petersen sought the Libertarian Party presidential nomination last year, although he won praise for his strong stand against abortion from conservatives seeking an alternative to Trump. The eventual nominee, Gary Johnson, and his running mate, William Weld, both former Republican governors, supported abortion rights.

King is at present heavily favored for re-election in Maine. There has been persistent speculation about whether Gov. Paul LePage will enter the race on the Republican side.

"The Rand Pauls of the world, when they come along, great," said Cliff Maloney, president of Young Americans for Liberty. "But we need to start building a bench at the local level."

The focus on national races has obscured some libertarian Republican successes in local contests, Maloney said, such as the mayor's offices in Aberdeen, Md., and Ocean Springs, Mississippi. "There's a big difference in perception between running as local schmuck versus local mayor," he added. "It's really about having credibility."

"Everyone starts as a guy in the community," said Brakey. "But it's a lot easier to run for mayor, or run for state senator and try to prove yourself before you run for Congress. People take you a lot more seriously."

The libertarian message for government may apply to politics too. "It's better," he said, "to start small."

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Libertarian Republicans seek Rand Paul reinforcements - Washington Examiner

Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress have earned the ire of most Americans, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS, with nearly seven in 10 (68%) judging the Republican Congress a failure so far after last month's repeal and replace plan died in the Senate.

Approval of the current Republican leaders in Congress has dropped from 39% in January to just 24% now. Seven in 10 say they disapprove of Republican leaders in the legislature. More broadly, only about a quarter of all Americans (24%) judge the Republican Congress a success so far. President Trump gets the approval of 38% of Americans in the CNN poll.

Republicans themselves are evenly split 44% to 44% on whether the GOP-led Congress has been a success or failure so far. Even three quarters of people who approve of Trump say they disapprove of Congress (76%) and a plurality (48%) says the GOP-led legislature has been a failure.

Still, only one in three Americans (34%) say they approve of Democratic leaders in Congress, while six in 10 (59%) disapprove.

Views among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents of their party's congressional leadership has plummeted over the last eight months, falling from 75% approval in January to just 39% now. Democrats' and Democratic-leaning independents' views of their party's leadership remains basically unchanged at 50% today.

And three quarters of Americans say they disapprove of how Congress is handling its job; only 20% of Americans approve, matching this year's low in January. That figure holds across party lines, with only about one in five on each side saying they approve of Congress's work so far. Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are more positive about their leaders in Congress (50% approve) than are Republicans and GOP-leaning independents about their leaders (39% approve).

Congress left for its August recess without passing any sweeping, comprehensive legislation, failing in its attempt to pass something on health care and leaving tax reform on the docket. A vote on the debt ceiling looms this fall.

A plurality of Americans (38%) say disagreement among Republicans in Congress is the main reason for the lack of major legislation so far this term, while a quarter each blame a lack of leadership from President Trump (26%) and opposition from Democrats (25%).

Among Republicans only, a slim majority (51%) cast the blame on Democrats for the lack of new legislation vs. a third (32%) who say disagreement from Republicans is to blame. Only 8% point the blame at President Trump.

Moving forward, a majority of all Americans (56%) says Republicans should work with Democrats to make changes to current health care policy. The rest are divided: One in five say the GOP should both stop trying to repeal Obamacare completely (21%) and the same share say Republicans should keep trying to repeal it anyway (21%). Republicans themselves are split on this question: 45% say GOP leaders should continue trying to repeal Obamacare on their own, 42% that they should work with Democrats to make changes.

Only 14% of Americans now say it's very likely that Trump and the Republicans will be able to pass repeal and replace legislation, down from 18% in July before the failure of the most recent effort to repeal and replace the law. Just 28% of Republicans and 27% of Trump approvers say it's very likely. A majority (56%) say it's not likely that Republicans will be successful in passing their own health care bill, the first time that figure has topped 50% in CNN polling.

Still, just a third (33%) say Obamacare should be repealed completely, regardless of whether it is replaced. Among those who oppose repeal, more say the law needs minor changes than a major overhaul, while just 6% of all Americans say it should be left as is.

When asked about the 2010 health care law, a slim majority of Americans (51%) say they oppose the legislation vs. 42% of Americans who favor the bill. That's a return to the level of support seen in May 2015. But when the question was posed as to whether they support "Obamacare" -- the colloquial term for the Affordable Care Act -- support for the law is higher. Half favor the law vs. 46% who oppose it.

Nearly six in 10 say they favor a national health insurance program, even if it means higher taxes (58%). That's down slightly from ten years ago, before the passage of the ACA, when 64% supported the idea. Still, eight in 10 Democrats (81%) say they support the idea.

A quarter of Americans, a plurality, (24%) say health care is the most important issue facing the country today. One in seven (15%) focus on the economy, 11% say immigration, 8% say foreign policy and 8% name Donald Trump. Less than 5% name each of several other issues, like the environment, civil rights, government spending, education and other issues.

Six in 10 women back Democrats for Congress in 2018, while men back Republicans by a slim 5-point margin. Independents favor Democrats by 9 points, 46% to 37%. Democrats have been optimistic that Trump's unpopularity might spark a wave election in 2018, but the electoral map is unfriendly so far and Republicans have held seats in tight special elections.

Democrats lead a generic Congressional ballot among all Americans by 11 points, 51% to 40%. Still, midterm electorates typically lean more Republican than all Americans. Democrats lead registered voters by a similar 51% to 42%.

CNN's Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.

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CNN Poll: Nearly seven in 10 judge Congress a failure so far - CNN

President Trump alternately cajoles and berates Congress as he struggles to find legislative wins in key issues he campaigned on. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

They more or less kept it behind closed doors for a couple of weeks, but Republicans are no longer holding back their frustration that they couldn't repeal Obamacare. The blame game has started, and it's open warfare. Here's President Trump, blaming the Senate majority leader, on Twitter, in front of his 35 million followers:

Let's back up. After Republicans' attempt to undo some of Obamacare fell one vote short in July, Trump got out in front by not-so-subtly threatening Republicans with the label total quitters and hammering them at every public opportunity.

Get them to have the guts to vote to repeal and replace Obamacare, Trump told a West Virginia crowd on Thursday.

The normally reserved Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) kept his head down. But on Monday, while speaking to constituents in Kentucky, he basically said it's not fair to blame Congress. It's the president's excessive expectations that are out of whack.

Our new president, of course, has not been in this line of work before. And I think he had excessive expectations about how quickly things happen in the democratic process. So part of the reason I think people feel were underperforming is because too many artificial deadlines unrelated to the reality of the complexity of legislating may not have been fully understood.

In other words: Don't judge if you don't know what's going on, Mr. President.

By Wednesday morning, McConnell's marks had infiltrated the White House. Trump aide Dan Scavino fired back that McConnell was just making excuses for his poor leadership.

Trump allies in the media piled on. They are phony baloney, said Fox Business host Lou Dobbs on Tuesday night. Ditch Mitch. Same from Fox News host Sean Hannity.

Then, a couple hours later, the president himself joined in the McConnell bashing.

As that was catching fire, another parallel blame game was forming. On Tuesday,Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.),suggested on talk radio that Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) brain cancer diagnosis may have influenced how the senator voted. McCain, along with Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) voted against the bill in a late-night series of votes. He later said he didn't appreciate how Republicans rushed through the legislation.

Again, I'm not going to speak for John McCain. You know, he has a brain tumor right now, that vote occurred at 1:30 in the morning some of that might have factored in, Johnson told Chicago's Morning Answer. The host, caught off guard, asked Johnson directly if he thought the tumor affected McCain's judgment, and Johnson backed off some: I don't know exactly what we really thought and again I don't want speak for any senator. I really thought John was going to vote yes to send that to conference at 10:30 at night. By about 1, 1:30, he voted no. So you have talk to John in terms of what was on his mind.

Damage, done, though. McCain's office fired back in a statement:

It is bizarre and deeply unfortunate that Senator Johnson would question the judgment of a colleague and friend. Senator McCain has been very open and clear about the reasons for his vote.

What's going on here?

For one, it's pretty clear Republicans blame themselves for failing to repeal Obamacare, not, as some of them say publicly, Democrats.

Two: There's a split in the party about who was least helpful in trying to corral 50 ideologically diverse Republican senators to support an unpopular piece of legislation.

From the beginning, Senate GOP aides privately said that Trump wasn't helping much. He gave them little to no direction on what kind of legislation he wanted and absolutely no comfort that he'd have their backs once they passed something. Trump celebrated House Republicans' controversial health-care bill with them in the Rose Garden, then called it mean.

But from the White House's perspective, Republicans in Congress had seven long years to come up with a plan to repeal Obamacare. When Barack Obama was in the Oval Office, Congress managed to pass a repeal bill. How could they finally have total control of Washington and not send one to Trump's desk?

Obamacare repeal, for now, is probably shelved. But a war over who is to blame for that can only drag down Republicans as they try to tackle the next major thing on their to-do list, tax reform.

Tax reform posesas many challenges for Republicansas health care, if not more.

Timing isone big one.Their initial planto get it done this fall is extremely optimistic. When Congress returns in September, it also has to lift the debt ceiling and pass a budget all things it has been unable to do in the past without Democratic help. And the closer it gets to the 2018 midterm elections, the less likely some vulnerable Republicans are to take tough votes for the sake of the party.

Even if they dodge a debt ceiling fight and shutdown, as The Washington Post's Damian Paletta and Kelsey Snell report, Republicans haven't yet figured out how they want to reform the tax code. The Trump White House has released a one-page handout, and that's about it.

Senate Republican leaders also say they're likely to follow the same procedural trickas they did tryingto pass health care toavoid a Democratic filibuster, which means they'll need at least 50 of 52 Republican votes. That alone will be a major challenge, because tax reform covers just as wide of an ideological spectrum as health care. (Should the tax cuts last a year? Adecade? Forever? Is it okay if they raise the deficit? And on and on.)

In other words, Republicans have a lot of problems facing them this fall. And fighting over who's to blame for not repealing Obamacare will only exacerbate them. But Republicans are doing it anyway, and they're doing it publicly.

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Republicans are airing their dirty laundry on Obamacare - Washington Post

President Trump and many of his top aides have expressed skepticism about climate change, while others say human activity is to blame for global warming. So what's the administration's real position? (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

For at least the past decade, Republican Party leaders' position on climate change has evolved inverse to scientific evidence.

As scientists have spent the past decade firming up their conclusion that climate change is a real threat, Republican politicians have solidified their doubt about it. In fact, the party's past three presidential nominees have all backed off their prior assertions that climate change is a threat caused by humans.

Not only that, but each successive nominee has started out less convinced of the realities of human-driven climate change than the last. In 2008, Republicans nominated someone who ran an ad featuring a smoke stack and promising smart solutions to climate change. In 2012, climate change wasn't mentioned in the presidential debates. Now, the nation has a president who refuses to clarify if he still thinks climate change is a hoax put on by the Chinese and who may not accept a new report from his own scientists that says climate change is happening now.

Here are key climate change moments in the conservative world since Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth came out a decade ago, as told by Republican presidential nominees and the research.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) could be considered the most pro-climate-change-action Republican to ever win the nomination. When he launched his campaign for president, McCain was a leader in the Republican Party on climate change.

He ran an ad that actually tried to out-climate-change the Democrats. It featured smokestacks, congested highways and a not-so-subtle setting sun, with news clips declaring: McCain climate views clash with GOP, scrolling across.

I believe climate change is real, he said on his campaign website. I think it's devastating. I think we have to act and I agree with most experts that we may at some point reach a tipping point where we cannot save our climate.

But as the campaign went on, McCain slowly and subtly backed away from his act-or-else position. Ultimately, he picked an open climate change skeptic, Sarah Palin, as his running mate.

After he lost the election and was back in the Senate, McCain's evolution as a climate change skeptic was complete. He started calling cap-and-trade something he hadsupported since at least 2003 a cap and tax.

Key climate change moments: Al Gore and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.

The 2007 report declares warming of the climate system is unequivocal.

If McCain's position after the presidential race was confusing, GOP nominee Mitt Romney's position was hard to track during the presidential race. He fudged or switched his position on the degree to which humans contribute to climate change several times, and he never offered any specific policy proposals.

Let's start from before he got the nomination. He wrote in his 2010 book, No Apology, that he believes humans are playing a role in climate change, but he wasn't sure to what degree.

I believe based on what I read that the world is getting warmer, he told the New Hampshire Union-Leader in 2011.

Like McCain, as the campaign went on, Romney's skepticism toward climate change grew: We dont know whats causing climate change on this planet. And the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course for us, he said at one point.

Finally, Romney used Barack Obama's support for climate change action as an attack against the president: President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family, he said in his nominating speech.

After the election Romney appeared to switch his positions this time, back to his original assertion that climate change is a problem.

I'm one of those Republicans who thinks we are getting warmer and that we contribute to that, he told the Associated Press in 2015.

Key climate change moments: A prominent climate-change skeptic scholar, Richard Muller, writes in the New York Times that, after research (funded by the Koch Brothers, climate change skeptics), he has decided climate change is real, and humans are the main cause.

And a Brookings Institution study finds that public opinion about whether climate change is real is rebounding, after dropping from a high of 78 percent in 2008 to a low of 52 percent in 2010. In the spring of 2012, 65 percent of Americans believe there is solid evidence that human activity is warming the planet.

When Donald Trump won the nomination for president, he was on record denouncing climate change as a hoax (before he ran for president, but he refuses to this day to clarify or elaborate).

He fit right into the GOP primary. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) denied the planet is warming, and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said he doesn't think humans are causing dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it.

And, as The Washington Post's Philip Bump documents extensively, Trump took just about every position possible on climate change when he got into the race. But the overriding theme was skepticism.

I am not a great believer in man-made climate change. Im not a great believer, he told The Post as he was on his way to the nomination.

The New York Times reports that Trump's advisers saw an applause line and a political opening with blue-collar coal and mine workers in the Rust Belt by questioning climate change.

This time, the Republican presidential candidate won. And this time, the politician didn't veer from his position. In fact, you could argue that since Trump has become president, he's increased his skepticism by pulling out of the Paris climate change accord that all but two countries are a part of and putting in place climate change skeptics into Cabinet positions, like Rick Perry at the Energy Department and Scott Pruitt at Environmental Protection Agency.

Key climate change moments: Reporters get hold of a government climate change report in August that says it is extremely likely that half of the rise of temperatures over the past 40 years are thanks to humans. In other words: man-made climate change is very real, and it's happening now: There are no alternative explanations, and no natural cycles are found in the observational record that can explain the observed changes in climate.

Also, a 2015 Gallup poll found that only the most conservative Republicans think climate change won't affect them in their lifetime.

The Trump administration is reviewing the Climate Science Special Report, and it's not clear if it will accept the findings.

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Republicans' inverse evolution on climate change, as told by 3 presidential candidates - Washington Post