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Republican senators have had to decide whether public appearances would be fruitful or the crowds hostile. Many lawmakers seem to have given up on town hall-style meetings and parades. Others are still braving them, knowing they may get an earful on the health care bills.

Never before, in the 15 times that Ive marched in this parade, have I had people so focused on a single issue, Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who rejected the latest version of the bill, said in an interview shortly after walking the parade route in Eastport, Me. I think its because health care is so personal.

On Tuesday, Ms. Collins and the few other Republican senators who ventured out most of them opponents of the current bill, and most in rather remote locales were largely rewarded with encouragement to keep fighting.

This may be promising for other senators who are not planning to stay in all week. Ms. Capito has public events set for the coming days. The delay in voting on the Senate bill, which Ms. Capito strongly rebuffed, has taken some of the heat off, though activists in West Virginia said signs had been readied for Tuesdays parades just in case.

Other Republicans will soon be out and about, and some already have been. Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana was met with chants of Vote no! in a Baton Rouge church on Friday as he discussed the states recovery from the 2016 floods. Senator Jerry Moran of Kansas will hold three town hall-style meetings this week in the western part of the state, and Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa has scheduled nine as part of his annual tour of the states 99 counties. Senator Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania is holding a televised meeting on Wednesday, albeit with an invitation-only audience.

While the receptions they receive may vary, judging by those in the streets on Tuesday, the primary subject will not.

Health care! Health care! Health care! Hilary Georgia, a part-time resident of Eastport, cried as Ms. Collins passed the spectators in camp chairs unfolded before neat wooden houses.

Eastport, which is recognized as the easternmost city in the United States, draws a large and festive crowd on Independence Day, even though it is remote. So is Wrangell, Alaska, where Senator Lisa Murkowski, another key Republican in the health care debate, took part in a parade on Tuesday as well.

There was no escaping politics, however. The reception for Ms. Collins was one of gratitude and fulsome thanks for her disapproval of the Senate bill, mixed with some anxiety over whether she would stick to her position.

Im still concerned because I know it keeps getting revised, said Kristin McKinlay, 44, an independent voter who is worried that a new bill could leave her without health insurance and stopped Ms. Collins to introduce herself because she had called the senators office so many times. I hope we have her commitment.

At a late-morning parade in Ely, a small city in northern Nevada surrounded for miles by only sagebrush and juniper trees, Senator Dean Heller, who has come out against the bill, rode down Aultman Street on a horse.

Get in line behind Trump! one man shouted, while an older man offered, Thanks for protecting Medicare! Generally, however, things remained subdued in Ely perhaps in part because, as several people along the parade route said, residents were just surprised to see Mr. Heller there.

This was still more activity than anything done by Mr. Gardner of Colorado, who has not held a town hall-style meeting this year. Coloradans have noticed. In February, hundreds gathered for a mock town hall-style meeting in Denver, where they addressed questions to a cardboard cutout of the senator. Last week, wheelchair-bound constituents occupied his office for 60 hours in protest of cuts proposed in the health bill, before being dragged out by the police.

Mr. Gardners Fourth of July was devoid of public events, though on July 3, he could be seen on his front lawn in his hometown, Yuma, playing with squirt guns and smoke bombs with his children.

This was as combative as his holiday was likely to get. Even though one in four residents of Yuma County receives Medicaid assistance, and many would probably lose their health care coverage under the Senate bill, those who disagree around Yuma tend to keep quiet.

I wanted to say something so bad, let him know what I thought, said a woman on a nearby porch, who gave her name only as Edna and identified herself as a 76-year-old lifelong Republican. She said several people in her family would lose coverage if the Affordable Care Acts expansion of Medicaid were rolled back, but when she ran into Mr. Gardner with his grandmother at the Yuma Days dance at the local high school a week ago, she let it drop.

I went to school with his aunt, Edna said. I see his mom and dad daily. We are all friendly. Am I going to boo at him in front of his grandmother in her wheelchair?

There is also the question of whether talking to ones senators, much less yelling at them, will make much of a difference anyway, a pessimistic thought on a day celebrating the ideals of self-government.

I think theyve got their priorities mixed up, said Connie Christiansen, standing on the lawn of her familys house in Shell Rock, Iowa, having watched as Boy Scouts, tractors, ATVs and musicians but no United States senators passed by.

If she saw Mr. Grassley, she said, she would tell him to retire. She had simply forgotten about Iowas other senator, Joni Ernst.

Ms. Christiansen called her 25-year-old cousin, Maggie Cain, over with a question: What do you think about talking to senators?

I feel like it wouldnt really make a difference, Ms. Cain replied.

See? Ms. Christiansen said. It doesnt make a difference how young you are. You feel the same. Helpless.

An earlier version of this article incorrectly reported that Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, had no public events on July 4. Mr. Portman marched in two parades.

Campbell Robertson reported from Alderson; Dave Philipps from Yuma, Colo.; Jess Bidgood from Eastport, Me.; and Emily Cochrane from Shell Rock, Iowa. Kim Raff contributed reporting from Ely, Nev.

A version of this article appears in print on July 5, 2017, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: With Voters Riled, G.O.P. Senators Lie Low.

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Senate Republicans Lie Low on the Fourth, or Face Single-Minded ... - New York Times

Throughout the Obama years, one of the more frequent Republicancriticisms of the Democratic presidentwas that he was engaging in class warfare against the richand punishing success.President Obama, Republicans claimed time and again, was fosteringresentment against the wealthy and cynically exploiting class divisions for political gain. Class warfare may make for good politics, but it makes for rotten economics, said Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., at one point,while responding to Obamas proposal for a minimum tax of 30 percent on millionaires (i.e., the Buffett tax).

Like the allegationsthat Obama was a foreign-born Muslim or a socialist (and occasionally evena communist), however,this chargenever had much truth to it. The wealthiest Americans continued to do exceedingly well under Obama. Indeed, President Obamawas if anything the antithesis of a class warrior, as he approached governing in a detached and technocratic manner,often setting aside moral questions about class, inequality and social structure to concentrate on more practical questions. (Would a true left-wingclass warrior have protectedWall Street CEOs from the pitchforks?)

Though Obama was far from the moralizing class warrior that Fox News depicted him to be, Republicans perceived him as such because his administrationspolicies were not always favorable towardbillionaires and corporations, and on occasion the presidentwould remark on the fact that economic inequality hadincreased. Ironically, the conservative obsession with Obamas apparent class politics often revealed more about Republicans and their own class politics than it did about Obama. While the 44th presidents administration sought to played a neutral role in terms of class interests (something that earned him plenty of criticism from progressives), modern Republicans have never failed to serve the interests of billionaires and corporate America.

This kind ofrhetoricwas part of a long tradition in which Republican politicians denounce class warfare and those who purportedlyengage in it while actively waging their own class war against the poor and working class.

This class warfarehas become all the more apparent since the GOPtook over the federal government earlier this year. Nothing has revealed the GOPs disdain for poor people and working-class familiesquite like the Republican health carebillscurrentlyin the House and Senate, which would both provide generous tax cuts to the rich while cutting health benefits for the poor, the middle class and the elderly (and also throw more than 20 million people off health insurance, according to the CBO). It is hard to exaggeratethe mass suffering that these bills would cause. As Jeff Spross recently pointed out in The Week,Not in their most fevered imaginations do left-wing tax-hikers envision inflicting this kind of suffering on the 1 percent.

In the Nation,Zoe Carpenter accuratelysummed up Trumpcarelast week: The Senate GOP isnt fixing healthcare. Its waging class war.

With thisclass waron fulldisplayone might expect a growingnumber of Americans to finallyrecognizethe GOP as the party of, by and for the rich. But its not as if this is a new effort. Republicans have been waging this class war for decades, yetjust eight months ago Donald Trump managed to win the election by running as a populist, and his victory was due in large part to the support he received fromRust Belt states, where working-class people have felt the brunt of the GOPs decades-longassault on working people. To some extent, Trump succeeded in the Rust Belt because he was seen by many people as a different kind of Republicanwho would actually help workers (his stance on free trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership obviously played a role in this perception). But Trumps success was also the result of a kind of cultural class warfare thathas been in the GOP playbook for a very long time.

Over the past few decades Republicans have not only waged an economic class war against the working class but a cultural class waragainst the so-called liberal elite which includes college professors, journalists, Democratic politicians, urban professionals, Hollywood entertainers and so on. While Trumps rhetoric may be unusually belligerent, the practice of railing against cultural elites has been employed by conservatives forgenerations, as Thomas Frank explored in his 2004 book, Whats the Matter With Kansas?The true genius of the rights culture war is that it enablesclear economic elites like Trump to portray themselvesas populists,even while they enactpolicies that servebillionaires and multinationalcorporations.

Right-wing populism, Frank observes, both encourages class hostility in the cultural sense and simultaneously denies the economic basis of the grievance. Thus, Republicans can wage their class war on the working class while still claiming to be populists who are fighting for real Americans. Frank elucidates further on the right-wing conception of class:

Class, conservatives insist, is not really about money or birth or even occupation. It is primarily a matter of authenticity, that most valuable cultural commodity. The erasure of the economic is a necessary precondition for most of the basic backlash ideas.

That last point has become all the more relevant in the era of Trump. If the erasure of the economic (from class) is in fact a necessary precondition for the ideas we see embodied in the Republican Party today, then the obvious solution is to restore the primacy of the economic. Frank goes on to make an interesting analogy, describing the right-wing populist vision as nothing more than an old-fashioned leftist vision of the world with the economics drained out.

Where the muckrakers of old faulted capitalism for botching this institution and that, he writes, the backlash thinkers simply change the script to blame liberalism.

This analogy is somewhat unfair toleftists, who had a much more sophisticated worldview that was largely based on reality since capitalism reallywas at fault for many of the problems identified by the muckrakers. But it does raise an important question: Is a modern version of the old-fashioned leftist vision the best way to defeat the phony populism of the right? Obviously left-wingers like Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn believe it is, and the latters unexpected success in last months British election certainly bolsteredthe argument.

Thomas Frank who knows a thing or two about right-wing populism agrees with this sentiment. In his most recent book, Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?,Frank looks at how the Democratic Party abandoned class politics toward the latter part of the 20th century and embraced corporate-friendlycentrism, which gave right-wingers a perfect opportunity to advance their own warped formof class politics. Today we are living in the aftermath of this Democratic shift towardsneoliberalism.

If class warfare is being waged, it is not Democrats who are the aggressors, saidHenry Aaron of the Brookings Institute inan analysis of the House version of Trumpcare published in March. This is doubtless the case, and it is why the Republicans have been so successful in crushing the working class while maintaining theirpopulist veneer.If Democrats want to expose Republicans as the party of the 1 percent and start winning elections again, then perhaps it is time for them to become the aggressorsand start waging a class war of their own.

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Now more than ever, Republicans are engaged in class warfare: Isn't it time for Democrats to fight back? - Salon

Kansas City Star (blog)

David Brooks: What's the matter with Republicans? Kansas City Star (blog) Over the past two months the Trump administration and the Republicans in Congress have proposed a budget and two health care plans that would take benefits away from core Republican constituencies, especially working-class voters. And yet over this ... and more »

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David Brooks: What's the matter with Republicans? - Kansas City Star (blog)

Today these places are no longer frontier towns, but many of them still exist on the same knifes edge between traditionalist order and extreme dissolution.

For example, I have a friend who is an avid Trump admirer. He supports himself as a part-time bartender and a part-time home contractor, and by doing various odd jobs on the side. A good chunk of his income is off the books. He has built up a decent savings account, but he has done it on his own, hustling, scrapping his way, without any long-term security. His income can vary sharply from week to week. He doesnt have much trust in the institutions around him. He has worked on government construction projects but sees himself, rightly, as a small-business man.

This isnt too different from the hard, independent life on the frontier. Many people in these places tend to see their communities the way foreign policy realists see the world: as an unvarnished struggle for resources as a tough world, a no-illusions world, a world where conflict is built into the fabric of reality.

The virtues most admired in such places, then and now, are what Shirley Robin Letwin once called the vigorous virtues: upright, self-sufficient, energetic, adventurous, independent minded, loyal to friends and robust against foes.

The sins that can cause the most trouble are not the social sins injustice, incivility, etc. They are the personal sins laziness, self-indulgence, drinking, sleeping around.

Then as now, chaos is always washing up against the door. Very few people actually live up to the code of self-discipline that they preach. A single night of gambling or whatever can produce life-altering bad choices. Moreover, the forces of social disruption are visible on every street: the slackers taking advantage of the disability programs, the people popping out babies, the drug users, the spouse abusers.

Voters in these places could use some help. But these Americans, like most Americans, vote on the basis of their vision of what makes a great nation. These voters, like most voters, believe that the values of the people are the health of the nation.

In their view, government doesnt reinforce the vigorous virtues. On the contrary, it undermines them by fostering initiative-sucking dependency, by letting people get away with their mistakes so they can make more of them and by getting in the way of moral formation.

The only way you build up self-reliant virtues, in this view, is through struggle. Yet faraway government experts want to cushion people from the hardships that are the schools of self-reliance. Compassionate government threatens to turn people into snowflakes.

In her book Strangers in Their Own Land, the sociologist Arlie Hochschild quotes a woman from Louisiana complaining about the childproof lids on medicine and the mandatory seatbelt laws. We let them throw lawn darts, smoked alongside them, the woman says of her children. And they survived. Now its like your kid needs a helmet, knee pads and elbow pads to go down the kiddy slide.

Hochschilds humble and important book is a meditation on why working-class conservatives vote against more government programs for themselves. She emphasizes that they perceive government as a corrupt arm used against the little guy. She argues that these voters may vote against their economic interests, but they vote for their emotional interests, for candidates who share their emotions about problems and groups.

Id say they believe that big government support would provide short-term assistance, but that it would be a long-term poison to the values that are at the core of prosperity. You and I might disagree with that theory. But its a plausible theory. Anybody who wants to design policies to help the working class has to make sure they go along the grain of the vigorous virtues, not against them.

David Leonhardt is off today.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on July 4, 2017, on Page A21 of the New York edition with the headline: Whats the Matter With Republicans?.

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What's the Matter With Republicans? - New York Times

Whether its leaders and members realize it, the Republican Party is at risk of becoming the Vladimir Putin-aligned party in the United States. It can be convincingly argued that its already similar to Putin-supported parties in Europe, given Donald Trumps presidency, the Republican bases increasingly favorable views of Moscow, and the House GOP leaderships disinterest in investigating and preventing Russian interference.

Increasingly sophisticated Russian influence and cyberoperations threaten Americans ability to choose their own leaders. This isnt hyperbole. In fact, its hard to overstate just how serious this issue is. Yet, President Trump continues to sow doubt about whether Moscow even interfered in the 2016 presidential elections and to suggest the questions insignificance by ignoring it all together.

Our commander in chief seems more interested in protecting Moscow than he does in deterring its future attacks. The Washington Post reported that the administration is actually considering allowing the Russian government to reopen the two spy compounds that President Barack Obama closed in late December in response to Russias election attack. There are also reports that the White House plans to step up lobbying efforts against a new Russia sanctions bill that the Senate passed with overwhelming bipartisan support this month. The measure would add new financial sanctions and require congressional review before Trump could lift these or other retaliatory measures currently levied against Moscow, including the closing of the two compounds.

Worse, Trump appears to have some support in this from Republican leaders in the House. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, R-Wisconsin, and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-California, have delayed the bill, citing the constitutional requirement that such bills originate in the House.

This is little more than a red herring. Nothing prevents them from inserting the text of the Senate bill into a House measure, passing it and sending it back to the Senate for final approval, which it would likely grant under expedited procedures. Instead, Ryan and McCarthy appear to be more interested in delaying and weakening the bill.

Behind their neglect are changing Republican voter opinions, which are becoming alarmingly more pro-Russian. According to a Morning Consult-Politico poll conducted in May, 49 percent of Republican voters consider Russia to be either an ally or friendly. Only 12 percent consider it an enemy. In 2015, only 12 percent of Republicans held a favorable view of Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to Gallup. As of February, that figure had jumped to 32 percent.

These dangerous trends impair the nations will to protect itself, and they are entirely the result of Republican leaderships failure to oppose Trump from the beginning. Republican voters had long held a healthy distrust of Putin, but Trumps persistent affinity for Moscow and other Republican leaders silence are changing Republican voters minds, now making it politically costly for GOP leaders to defend the nation from this foreign adversary.

Because they control the executive and legislative branches, it is ultimately up to Republican leaders to prevent future Russian attacks on American democracy, even if such attacks may benefit the party electorally. Deterrence is an indispensable part of this equation. It cannot be accomplished without punishing Moscow for its violations of our sovereignty and threatening harsher responses for future trespasses.

In passing the Russia sanctions bill, Senate Republicans have shown they understand this. GOP leaders in the House must work with their Senate colleagues to pass a strong sanctions package that requires a congressional review of changes to Russia sanctions implementation desired by the president. He simply cannot be trusted to protect the integrity of Americas democracy on his own.

Republican leaders and the party are at a crossroads. They will either choose liberty in an independent America or to serve a distant, foreign master who seeks no more than to enrich and empower himself at the expense of free society everywhere. If Republican leaders choose the latter, the majority of Americans will have no choice but to hold them accountable as opponents to the cause of freedom.

Evan McMullin is a former CIA operations officer who ran as an independent candidate in the 2016 presidential election. He is co-founder of the nonprofit Stand Up Republic.

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Republicans are risking becoming the party of Putin - Bangor Daily News