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Republicans need to become a governing party.

Its a mantra weve been hearing for years, usually in response to speed bumps in the legislative process caused by internecine warfare within the House Republican conference, and always carrying the implication that some Republicans problem is that they only know how to say no.

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Earlier this month, Republicans finally got to yes, at long last passing a bill that may offer relief from some of Obamacares most destructive insurance mandates. The bill was far from perfectand it was certainly not full repeal as promisedbut its passage has paved the way for insurance market reform nonetheless and given new momentum to a legislative agenda that looked dead in its tracks mere weeks ago.

But the bills more lasting impact may be the revolution it represents within the Republican Party. Finally, House Republicans stopped pretending they are united in support of a shared governing vision. They acknowledged at long last that internal constraints imposed by substantive and ideological divisions in their conference, rather than disputes over mere tactics and procedure, are the primary limit on their own ambitions. In doing so, congressional Republicans have enabled the kind of authentic, substantive bargaining between the partys factions that has long eluded them. And they did it by no longer denying reality.

One could be forgiven for having mistaking the Republican Party as the party of no in recent years. The House Freedom Caucus in particular, so often the principled antagonist in tense situations, has found itself saying no a lot, especially when issued ultimatums on major legislation.

Why did they say no? For years, conservative members have felt they did not have a real seat at the negotiating table. It was not that their votes were taken for granted, but rather that their party did not really want their support. They believed, many times accurately, that those actually crafting significant legislation tended to pre-negotiate deals that foreclosed from the start the possibility of addressing conservative priorities. Given the partys ostensible shared commitment to those very same prioritiesthe discretionary spending caps achieved in the Budget Control Act being the most significant recurring example prior to Obamacarethe Freedom Caucus often found itself asking, Why are Republicans negotiating with ourselves?

The real problem, though, was that Republicans actually werent negotiating among themselvesinstead, they were pre-emptively giving in to liberal policy demands. GOP moderates were granted veto power over priorities party leadership pretended were core to the whole partys identity. Meanwhile, party leaders frequently lamented the presence of an implacable bloc of conservative hard-liners who, in their telling, do not know how to get to yes. The deal reached on the American Health Care Acta compromise achieved only by the persistence of Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows in pursuing ad hoc negotiations with the very moderates who were his caucuss bte noirshould explode this lazy assumption.

Why did it take so long? Because the health care bill was the one must pass bill that truly could not expect to see any Democratic support. No Republican member could be counted out. So for the first time ever on high-stakes legislation, leadership, the moderates and the conservatives finally had to learn to live with each other by acknowledging their own differences rather than pretending all differences were reducible to disposition and tactical approach. And they did it.

The most salutary development in this saga was the attention paid to the Tuesday Group, a little-known faction of moderate House members who were the final holdouts from a deal. Early in the debate, their influence went unacknowledged by leadership, which claimed it had done all that could be done to deregulate insurance markets on a budget reconciliation bill. Only after those arguments were debunked did the truth come out: For every conservative vote won over by deregulatory provisions, leadership feared it might lose several moderates, no matter the partys consistent public commitment to repeal of Obamacare. The tried and true strategy of giving the moderates what they wanteda bill preserving Obamacares core regulatory architecture without exposing their demands to scrutiny, and pressuring conservatives to fall in line, came naturally. But then it was exposed for what it was, and a new approachauthentic bargaining between the partys factionswas finally tested.

So now we know: Some Republican members of Congress did not share the partys commitment to repeal. That truth likely extends to other priorities on spending, welfare, taxes and social issues. Members who take issue with the GOPs longstanding platform when it comes time to govern can explain that to their voters, who can make their own judgments in the next election. But in the meantime, the Freedom Caucus and other conservatives have to share government with them. That will be far easier if their role in intra-conference debates is acknowledged as a restraint on the pursuit of conservative priorities than if the conferences moderates continue to operate in obscurity.

What we see now is that the problem in the Republican Congress is not dispositional but structural and substantive: The conference is divided in ways that previously went unacknowledged, between fresh blood elected in successive Tea Party waves and an older guard less committed to conservative principle. It is a governing coalition, not an ideologically cohesive party. The party must understand itself in such terms if its constituent parts are to govern together, as voters sent them to Washington to do.

Republican leaders have for too long failed to grapple with the heterogeneous nature of this coalition they have assembled. The partys self-image has long depended on pretending it is one and the same as the conservative movement that is its electoral base. Even moderates now campaign as conservatives of various stripes.

The energy that defines the 2010 Tea Party wave would likely not have existed if the party had presented a fractured, disparate agenda. Many have compared it to Newt Gingrichs achievement in 1994, when he unified the party behind the Contract With America. The coherence of its shared critique of liberal governance was indeed powerful, and it enabled the party to do great things with a weak political hand. But the difference between that wave and the 2010 one, which ushered in the legislative conflict that has become so familiar, is fundamental. In 1994, Gingrich engineered a shared commitment to reform that did not otherwise exist, and he forced that commitment on a party whose senior leaders were hesitant about balancing the budget and reforming welfare when they assumed the reins of power. The ethos of the partys insurgents was the ethos of its leadership and therefore became the ethos of its committee-level power centers. That took a particular leadership style from the top to achieve and a particular moment in time to catalyze.

John Boehner never attempted anything similar, and its not clear that he could have succeeded. A conference led by chairmen who had lived not just through the ups of the Gingrich revolution but also its downs would not have been eager to repeat the experience. So he presided over a divided conference without ever working seriously to heal its rifts or at least channel its generational divisions. Paul Ryan inherited the fruits of his lack of labor with no plan to build an authentic shared commitment. And now he has also inherited the responsibility of unified government.

But how to govern, then? We hear often of a return to committee-centered legislatingregular orderas a potential panacea. This is natural given that so many in the conference chafe at government out of the speakers office, including the speaker himself. But in a conference paralyzed by the tension between the diffusion of individual members agendas and the power held in concentrated centers, the dispute over where precisely those centers will lie committee chairmen or the leaders senior to them is a tangential one. Greg Walden, chairman of the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee that co-authored the American Health Care Act, expounded during recent town hall meetings about his fondness for the very Obamacare regulations that were the central point of contention. The notion that simply devolving power from the speakers office to such leaders, who tend to be on one side of the partys ideological divide, would erase that divides paralyzing implications is fanciful.

That divide, more than the particular distribution of power in the House, is the central fact that must be grappled with in this coalition government. And it is a coalition. A governing Republican Party cannot paper its divides over. It must instead channel and direct them, promoting wherever possible authentic negotiation between blocs of members no longer willing to defer to committees of jurisdiction or binary choices imposed by leadership and eager instead to work out deals themselves. The direct negotiations between the Tuesday Group and the Freedom Caucus over health care advanced the repeal effort and should serve as a working model for legislating on the most important and contentious matters in the 115th Congress, with other blocs invited to join the debate. No longer can the heavy lifting be done by the few in elected leadership or the committees, which is perhaps as it should be in the peoples House. But making such a system work will require each bloc to figure out what it wants, and then negotiate accordingly.

It is especially important that the independent-minded moderates in the conference, long reluctant to play such a leading role and still nostalgic over the days when the turf of committees of jurisdiction on which they did not serve was considered sacred, confront the need to do this work as a bloc with coherent demands. During the American Health Care Act debate, negotiators were stymied several times by the inchoate nature of the moderates health care priorities and their inability to pin down what, exactly, they thought was worth repealing about Obamacare. The moderates, often long-serving members with close ties to party leaders, have relied for too long on those leaders to do their work for them and look out for their interests. If the Freedom Caucus was against what leadership was doing, many often assumed, leaderships approach was probably something they should like.

This is not sustainable in a House that is changing underneath these members feet. If they expect to govern in a coalition whose center of gravity is to their right, they need a better sense themselves of what exactly they stand for and why they believe it, and they need to be willing to defend those views so that coherent negotiations can proceed in the future.

The Freedom Caucus, whose members were accused in the past themselves of being isolated bomb-throwers with scattershot, conflicting demands, has come a long way in solving the very same problems, first by banding together as a cohesive bargaining unit. With the experience of the health care negotiations behind itthe Freedom Caucuss most visible triumph in its young lifethe group will come over time to better understand itself not as a hostile actor within the Republican Party seeking short-term political victories but as a bargaining unit in constructive competition with fellow party members over discrete priorities.

All of this, of course, requires that all sides recognize that such bargaining is legitimate, even necessary, not something to be dreaded or scorned, and that its products need not represent the full vision of each of the conferences components but must account for and balance those visions where they are in tension. No bloc of members in this coalition can be wished away, at least not before the next election.

For conservatives, none of this is to suggest that the task of reshaping the Republican Party into a truly conservative partyone in which kowtowing to moderates is no longer a constant fact of lifeis no longer worth pursuing. Just the opposite; the disappointing experience of governing in a coalition that is not what it claims should underscore the need to continue the long-term debate over what it is the Republican Party stands for, a debate that will play out not just on the House floor but in many primary elections to come. That is a multi-cycle project that is entirely compatible with recognizing the restraints the current coalition imposes and therefore not requiring conservatives to set their policy sights lower in the course of making expedient accommodations to short-term legislative reality.

Conservatives and all other factions of the Republican Party have been fighting for years to make the case for their vision for the country, to convince their fellow citizens to embrace it and empower them to pursue it. That struggle continues on all sides. At long last, though, Republicans are learning now know how to govern together despite it. Acknowledging the real contours of the coalition is the essential first step to navigating them.

Michael A. Needham is chief executive officer of Heritage Action for America, and Jacob Reses is director of strategic initiatives for Heritage Action for America.

Michael A. Needham is chief executive officer of Heritage Action for America

Jacob Reses is director of strategic initiatives for Heritage Action for America.

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How Republicans Stopped Pretending and Started Getting Real - Politico

With the Republicanhealth care plan continuing to earn negative headlines and unfavorable poll numbers, House GOP lawmakersreturning to Washington this week have a public relations challenge of epic political proportions.

They succeeded barely at passing their health care bill. Now they needto sell it.

Somemembers tried to do that over recess. A handful held in-person town halls, with New Jersey Rep. Tom MacArthur, the architect of the amendment that resurrected the plan, taking questions for nearly five hours. Othershit the media circuit or wrote op-eds in their local newspapers.

But the effort is disjointed at best, with one major outside group shouldering the burden of a TV advertising campaign to respond to the liberal groups attacking the plan. Many conservative outside groups are holding off, knowing that the legislation will change in the Senate.

The reality is, its hard to litigate what this policy will be until we see what the final product is, oneGOP operative said.

But in the meantime,as public opinion shapes, the mass confusion is enough to concern some Republicans worried about holding onto their majority in 2018.

Republicanshave done a terrible job explaining the AHCA to voters. No one has any idea what is in the bill besides the controversial items that are going to cause real political harm to members, said one GOP strategist, referring to the billby its abbreviation. Outside groups are doing the best they can with this s--- sandwich.

Despitebeing vilifiedby the left, MacArthur has tried to be the empathetic face of the bill. So how does he think hispartyshould educate voters about it?

You dont do it up here, he said, pointing to his bald head. You do it here, he said, tapping his chest. People have to know what our intentions are, they have to see our heart on the issue, MacArthur said, hours before his town hall in Willingboro, New Jersey.

But when he faced the crowd that Wednesday night, angry constituents accused the second-term Republicanof talking about his daughters death too much, to the point of politicization.

Im not looking for sympathy, MacArthur told them. Im trying to convince people I get it.

MacArthur said members like him should be back in their districts talking totheir constituents, but he refused to criticize his colleagues who werent holding town halls.

Only a handful of members who could have tough re-election races faced their constituents in person last week. Those that did were looking to correct the record on what they saw as lies being spread about the bill.

Iowa GOPRep.Rod Blum attempted to explain that the law would only affect a small portion of the population who participate in the individual exchanges. Other Republicans took a similar tactic, sayingtheir states would not apply for waivers allowing insurers to opt out of essential health benefits requirements.Some lawmakers suggested senators would fix unpopular parts of the House bill.

But convincing Americans who are afraid of losing their health insurance is no easy task.Even MacArthur, who intentionally held his town hall in a Democratic stronghold in his district, didnt have much hope of persuading many of those constituents about the plan.

Look, do I hope to convince some people? Sure. But thats not really the objective, he said before the town hall. I think a lot of people are very settled on their views on health care, and Im not likely to change them.

MacArthur is especially upset about outside spenders messaging against the GOP bill.

Theyre intentionally confusing people because it whips them up, he said. Its our job to clarify. He sees that as the responsibility of members, the party and outside groups.

But so far, only one outside group is on air backingthe plan. The American Action Network, the issue advocacy organization tied to GOP leadership, has spent $2.5 million since the bills passage; theyre planning to spend at least $7 million over 60 days to defendthe plan.

The day after the bills passage, the National Republican Congressional Committee released a digital adabout House Republicans keeping their promise to voters. But the committee wont disclose where the ad isrunning or how much money is behind it. When it comes to messaging on the plan, the NRCC is in a difficult spot since some of its most vulnerable members voted against it.

President Donald Trump may have invited GOP lawmakers who voted for the legislation to the Rose Garden, but the optics of that celebration resulted in even more negative headlines. And theres been almost no effort from pro-Trump outside groups to sell the plan in the days since. America First Policies, the pro-Trump group that spent $3 million targeting 12 Republicans before the bill passed, is watching the legislative process to see what happens.

We are focused on making sure the repeal and replace of Obamacare gets signed into law, said Brian O. Walsh, the groups president. He said the group may engage in some activity before the Senate takes up the bill, but thats not certain.

The Club for Growth, which backedthe latest iteration of the bill, released an ad thanking MacArthur. But that spot has since gone off the air, and the group has no plans for additional spending until it sees what happens in the Senate.

Having passed a plan in the House, the GOP conference is on defense. Even Republicans who voted for the bill admitits always easier to be against something than it is to be for it.

Thats a reality Democrats know all too well, with some in the party faulting former President Barack Obama for not adequately selling his signature 2010 health care legislation.

But some Republicans saythe GOP can and should still be on offenseagainst the 2010 law, which is still the law of the land.

Part of that thinking, of course, is that repeal and replace is unfinished business and things will change in the Senate. We are losing the argument when we are litigating a single piece of legislation, the GOP operative said.

But that strategy is also about highlighting why Republicans felt the need to do away with the 2010 health care law in the first place a crusade that helped them win congressional elections for the past seven years. The NRCCs digital spot, for example, is really a contrast ad that shifts to a much darker musical score to characterize the status quo.

We need to be louder and more aggressive reminding the American people how bad the current situation is, the operative said. That allows the alternative to simply be better, he said.

Bridget Bowman contributed to this report.Get breaking news alerts and more from Roll Call on your iPhone or your Android.

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Republicans' Latest Health Care Challenge: Selling Their Bill - Roll Call

By Lauren Fox CNN

(CNN) -- There is a bipartisan effort underway to overhaul the Affordable Care Act.

Emerging from a meeting on the first floor of the Capitol Monday night, Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana told reporters they are attempting to work with Democrats to see if there is a way forward to fix the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

"We had 10 or 11 senators who came tonight. I think that's significant," Collins told reporters after a meeting. "What we're trying to do is to get away from the partisanship that has made it very difficult to come up with solution and we're trying to get away from semantics, we're trying to get away from people being locked into a party position and instead raise fundamental questions about how can we move forward."

Collins and Cassidy are authors of their own legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare, but said that their legislation wasn't necessarily the starting point for any negotiation.

"This was really a meeting to look at all sorts of ideas," Collins said.

The moderate Republican senators stressed that the talks are still preliminary, with just a handful of Democrats involved. They estimated there were three or four Democrats in the meeting and a few more interested who couldn't attend Monday night. Sens. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin of West Virginia -- both red-state Democrats facing re-election in 2018 -- were spotted coming out of the meeting room.

Also spotted at the meeting were Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Dan Sullivan of Alaska.

When asked if any progress had been made in the meeting, Manchin told reporters, "no, not really."

"There's no way I can vote for a repeal," Manchin said.

Manchin said there were "some good ideas thrown out and talked about."

"It was mostly to see is there a way forward without repealing. Is there a way forward without throwing the baby out with the bathwater?" Manchin said.

The meeting happened as Republican senators charge ahead with their own working group of 13 members who have been tasked with finding a GOP path forward to repeal and replace Obamacare. Collins and Cassidy said their party's leadership, however, was made aware of their bipartisan effort.

CNN's Phil Mattingly contributed to this report.

TM & 2017 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.

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Republicans and Democrats try to launch bipartisan effort on health care - AZFamily

The Supreme Court deals a significant blow to discriminatory voter ID laws enacted by Republican-controlled state legislatures.

In an exceedingly rare but entirely welcome bit of good news to start off the week, the Supreme Court declined this morning to hear a challenge to last year's federal appeals court ruling that struck down most of North Carolina's discriminatory voter ID law, which means that that appellate court's decision will stand, for now.

Among other things, the North Carolina law had reduced the length of the early voting period and eliminated same-day voter registrationboth of which, according to data specifically requested by the lawmakers who enacted the bill, were tools disproportionately used by minorities to cast their ballots. Most famously, the legislature imposed strict voter ID requirements that just so happened to include as eligible forms of ID those more often held by white voters, and exclude those more often held by minority voters. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals was having none of it, unceremoniously striking down those provisions after finding that lawmakers had targeted African-Americans with "almost surgical precision." This may shock you, but North Carolina's legislature is controlled by Republicans.

The Supreme Court's decision came with an unusual bit of editorializing from Chief Justice Roberts, who reminded observers that the Court's decision to deny certiorari should not be interpreted as a ruling on the merits. This is likely an allusion to a recent flurry of politicking in North Carolina, where the newly-elected Democratic governor and the incumbent Republican legislature are fighting over which entity actually controls the lawsuit. If the legislature prevails, or if it launches its own independent challenge to the Fourth Circuit's ruling, the substantive issue may well come before the Court again.

But, for now, let us celebrate. Voter ID laws are vehicles for state-sanctioned race discrimination disingenuously trussed up as common-sense solutions for a problem that literally does not exist. They lead to significant drops in minority turnout wherever they are implemented, cleverly and quietly preventing untold numbers of Americans from exercising their constitutional right to vote for their elected leaders. And they lead to heartbreaking results like this one, the product of the voter ID law enacted by the Republican-controlled state legislature in Wisconsin:

[Glady Harris] had lost her drivers license just before Election Day. Aware of the new law, she brought her Social Security and Medicare cards as well as a county-issued bus pass that displayed her photo.

Not good enough. She had to cast a provisional ballot that ended up not being counted.

For the last two decades, she has lived and voted in Wisconsin. Retired from her job working at an HIV/AIDS community resource center, she no longer drives and relies on public transit and friends to bring her to doctors appointments, the grocery storeand the voting booth.

She was distraught when she was told her vote would not be counted unless she went to a local DMV office for a replacement card and then return with it to a local election office.

"There is no understanding this. It was unfair, and I think it was cruel," Harris said.

A few days after the election, Harris found her drivers license. It had fallen between her mattress and headboard.

It is cynical, undemocratic bullshit for Republican politicians to claim a popular mandate for their ideological agenda when one of the party's primary strategies for obtaining political power is systematically thinning the electorate. Voter ID laws are only steps removed from the overtly racist Jim Crow-era poll taxes and literacy tests, which were similarly arbitrary barriers perniciously employed by Southern states in a desperate, despicable effort to disenfranchise minority voters. Stories like Gladys' Harris help to expose this for what it is: a fraudulent scheme designed to protect the political interests of people who fear losing a fair right in the marketplace of ideas. Today's Supreme Court decision, God willing, means that its days are numbered.

MORE STORIES LIKE THIS ONE

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Voter ID Laws Show that Republicans Can't Win Elections Anymore Without Gaming the System - GQ Magazine

Georgia Republican House candidate Karen Handel, who has been critical of Democrats outside the district supporting her opponent, was caught on an audio recording telling donors that national GOPheavyweightswill be lending a hand to her campaign.

At a meet and greet for Dekalb County Republicans at a private home, Handel is heard speakingabout plans to have Vice President Mike Pence campaign with her.

Handel saysthat she cant give adate yet for the VPs visit, but would when she had it.

Hopefully its going to be both a fundraiser and a rally,she says in the recording. Thats what we're pushing for so that we have as many people as possible.

An attendee at the meet and greet provided the audio toa source, who provided it to Roll Call. Handels campaign has not responded to requests for comment.

In the recording, Handel also touts that Florida Sen. Marco Rubio might come to campaign.

Everyone around the country is really watching things and making sure we have the absolute best possible team and all of the resources to get this job done, Handel is heard saying.

Republicans have criticized Ossoff for his ties to national Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and for getting supportfrom liberal types in Hollywood.

Handel is set to campaignwith House Speaker Paul D. Ryan on Monday.

Pollingshows Handel and Ossoff in a dead heat. A new poll by Gravis Marketing shows Ossoff with a slight lead against Handel, but it also shows that 53 percent of voters who did not vote in the primaryleaning toward Ossoff in the runoff and only 32 percent leaning toward Handel.

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Handel Touts National Republicans' Contributing to Her Campaign - Roll Call