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'Stop the violent left' supporting Karen Handel's congressional bid in a special election for Georgia's sixth congressional district aims to tie Democrats to the shooting at a congressional baseball practice on June 14. The Washington Post has chosen to blur a portion of this ad. (Principled PAC)

The culture war is alive and well even where you might not expect it. Thats one of the most overlooked lessons of yesterdays special election in Georgia. While a lot of was made of the absurd amounts of money spent on the race, the question of Donald Trumps effect down-ballot or which voters would turn out, Republicans won by going back to a playbook theyve used a thousand times before, one based on fear and contempt of culturally alien liberals.

In many ways, this race was unique its not as though in 2018 there will be a national spotlight and $50 million poured into all 435 House districts. But if you werent watching closely, you may have missed the scorched-earth culture war campaign that Republicans ran against Democrat Jon Ossoff. They barely attempted to make a case for Karen Handel; instead, their argument was that Ossoff is basically a Hollywood San Francisco radical hippie anarchist lunatic controlled by cover the childrens ears Nancy Pelosi.

That was the running theme of the television ads and direct mailers that flooded the district, convincing Republican voters that whatever misgivings they had about the Trump administration and however much Ossoff portrayed himself as a mainstream technocrat whose biggest priority was bringing high-tech jobs to metro Atlanta, nothing mattered more than their tribal hatred of liberals. You might think Karen Handels brand of extreme social conservatism (among other things she would outlaw not only same-sex marriage but also gay couples adopting children) would be a liability in a highly educated district like the Georgia 6th, but it wasnt.

As Nate Cohn pointed out a few days ago, 13 of the 15 congressional districts with the highest levels of education in the country are safe Democratic districts; only Georgias 6th and a suburban Virginia district are in Republican hands. Thats why Democrats saw an opening in this election. They hoped that with this electorate, which was far more comfortable with Mitt Romney than with Donald Trump (Trump won the district by 2 points, while Romney won it by 23), a mainstream, non-threatening Democrat could win.

But he couldnt. Which isnt to say Ossoff wasnt a candidate without plenty of weaknesses, but if Republicans can win on the culture war in Georgias 6th, they can do it almost anywhere.

Thats partly because they have so much practice. For half a century, theyve been telling voters that Democrats are alien radicals who indulge criminal minorities and bring chaos and violence wherever they go. Richard Nixon rode that message to the White House in 1968 (just check out this ad), and Republicans have been doing it ever since. So Ossoff, Republicans said, was not one of us, the ultimate distillation of the culture war attack. As one ad from the National Republican Congressional Committee said over pictures of anarchists smashing windows and Kathy Griffin holding up Trumps severed head, D.C. liberals, Hollywood elites, this is who supports Jon Ossoff. Because Jon Ossoff is one of them. Childish. Radical. Theyve targeted Georgia, but we can stop them.

In the wake of yesterdays result, a lot of people have advised the Democrats that the solution to this problem is for Nancy Pelosi to resign, which would supposedly prevent Republicans from demonizing her. Some of that advice is coming from people who obviously dont have the Democrats best interests at heart, but a lot of it is sincere. Unfortunately, it misreads not just that attack but also the way the GOP does business. While there may be legitimate reasons to ask whether Pelosi should remain the leader of House Democrats we probably should debate whether the current Democratic leadership is making good strategic and investment decisions thats a separate topic from whether she has become a liability as a cultural symbol.

Its certainly true that Pelosi is a villain for rank-and-file voters. Is that because of her politics? Of course not her positions on issues are basically those of the entire Democratic Party. Is it because shes from San Francisco? Of course Republicans have been using San Francisco as a symbol for conservative baby boomers resentments for decades, a representation of all the drug-taking and free love and fun that the hippies had while the buzzcut squares seethed with jealousy and contempt. Is it because Pelosi is an older woman? Oh, you bet it is. Just like Hillary Clinton, she has been the target of a nakedly misogynistic campaign of vilification for years, one that is now baked deep into Republican politics.

And if youre not a regular consumer of conservative media, you might not realize just how relentless that campaign has been, how often Pelosi is held up by Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and the rest of the talk radio/Fox News nexus as everything that good honest Americans should hate. Which is why nothing Pelosi does actually matters. She barely appears on TV, but shes as potent a symbol for Republicans as ever. She could retire tomorrow, and I promise you, Republicans would still run a thousand ads with her face in them in 2018.

That wouldnt last forever, but by the time it faded, the conservative propaganda machine would have replaced her with a different villain. Weve seen again and again how effective that machine can be: One Democratic politician after another has begun with a profile as an inoffensive, hardworking, substantive public servant (think Dukakis, Gore, Kerry), then quickly turned into a monster who threatened everything Republican voters hold dear.

What that means is that the one mistake Democrats cant make again the one theyve made so many times before is to say, If we find the right person, Republicans wont be able to attack him. They will, no matter who that person is. Democrats need to take that culture war attack as a given and find more potent attacks in response the way they did with Mitt Romney, but didnt with Donald Trump. Or with Karen Handel.

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The culture war is alive and well. And Republicans will keep fighting it. - Washington Post (blog)

The Democrat in the Georgia race, Jon Ossoff, was unsuccessful in flipping a traditionally Republican district in the Atlanta suburbs previously represented by Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price. Had the 30-year-old first-time political candidate pulled off an upset, it would have dealt a major blow to the Republican Party's already complicated efforts to gut Obamacare.

Democrats were prepared to cast the results of the closely watched special election as a referendum on President Donald Trump and the GOP's legislative priorities -- chief among them the quest to repeal former President Barack Obama's landmark health care law.

Former Republican Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty said Handel's win provides the party with "huge relief and somewhat of a political sedative" heading into 2018, when Democrats are eager to try to win back control of the House.

"It kind of calms the waters in terms of people looking for predictors or harbingers and what it means for 2018," Pawlenty told CNN. "It says: Perhaps the approach that's being taken in Congress and by the President are more acceptable to a swing district or swing-voting parts of the country than people are predicting."

The controversial proposal, which Handel said she would have voted for, would "gut the protections for Americans with pre-existing conditions -- hundreds of thousands of them," Ossoff argued at a debate earlier this month.

Handel pushed back forcefully, pointing out that her sister was born without an esophagus -- a pre-existing condition.

"For you to suggest that I would do anything to negatively effect her is absolutely outrageous and unacceptable," Handel said.

With health care so much of the focus in the Georgia special election, Democrats were ready to liken an Ossoff victory to that of former GOP Sen. Scott Brown in the 2010 special election in Massachusetts.

At the time, Brown's unlikely triumph over Democratic Attorney General Martha Coakley was viewed as voters' sharp rejection of Obamacare, which Democratic lawmakers were in the middle of crafting. When Brown decisively won the office long occupied by the late-Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy, Democrats were forced to act quickly to pass Obamacare, despite deep reservations and divisions across the party about the legislation.

Now, with Handel keeping Price's old seat in GOP hands, Democratic strategists insist that health care will still be powerful ammunition against Republicans in next year's congressional elections.

"I don't think that very many Republicans will take much comfort on the health care issue even if Handel does win," said veteran Democratic pollster Geoff Garin in advance of Tuesday's result. "I think Republicans will continue to recognize that taking away coverage from millions of Americans and raising costs for millions more is a politically unpopular and dangerous enterprise."

A draft of Republicans' plans in the Senate is expected to be released this Thursday, according to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who wants to put health care in the rear-view mirror before lawmakers leave Washington ahead of the July 4 recess.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer reiterated that sentiment in the briefing room Tuesday.

"The President clearly wants a bill that has heart in it," Spicer said. "He believes that health care is something that is near and dear to so many families and individuals."

Original post:
Georgia race: Republicans jittery about health care breathe sigh of relief - CNN

Republican Karen Handel won a nationally watched congressional election Tuesday in Georgia, and she thanked President Donald Trump after she avoided an upset that would have rocked Washington ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.

Returns showed Handel, a former Georgia secretary of state, winning about 52 percent of the vote over Democrat Jon Ossoff, who won nearly 48 percent in Georgia's 6th Congressional District.

"A special thanks to the president of the United States of America," she said late Tuesday night as her supporters chanted, "Trump! Trump! Trump!"

It was Handel's most public embrace of the man whose tenuous standing in this well-educated, suburban enclave made a previously safe Republican district close to begin with.

Handel's margin allows Republicans a sigh of relief after what's being recognized as the most expensive House race in U.S history, with a price tag that may exceed $50 million.

Yet the result in a historically conservative district still offers Republicans a warning that Trump, for better or worse, will dominate the looming campaign cycle. Georgia's outcome follows similar results in Montana, Kansas and South Carolina, where Republicans won special House races by much narrower margins than they managed as recently as November.

Republicans immediately crowed over winning a seat that Democrats spent $30 million trying to flip. "Democrats from coast to coast threw everything they had at this race, and Karen would not be defeated," House Speaker Paul Ryan said in a statement.

Democrats still must defend their current districts and win 24 GOP-held seats to regain a House majority next November. Party leaders profess encouragement from the trends, but the latest losses mean they will have to rally donors and volunteers after a tough stretch of special elections.

Handel, 55, will become the first Republican woman to represent Georgia in the U.S. House, according to state party officials.

Her win comes after losing bids for governor in 2010 and the Senate in 2014, and it builds on a business and political career she built after leaving an abusive home as a teen.

"It's that fighting spirit, that perseverance and tenacity that I will take to Washington," she said Tuesday night.

Handel is the latest in a line of Republicans who have represented the district since 1979, beginning with Newt Gingrich, who would become House speaker. Most recently, Tom Price resigned in February to join Trump's administration. The president himself struggled here, though, edging Democrat Hillary Clinton but falling short of a majority among an affluent, well-educated electorate that typically has given Republican nominees better than 60 percent of the vote.

Handel emphasized that Republican pedigree often in her campaign and again in her victory speech.

She also noted throughout the campaign that she has lived in the district for 25 years, unlike Ossoff, who grew up in the district but lives in Atlanta, a few miles south of the 6th District's southern border.

In victory, she commended Ossoff and pledged to work for his supporters. She noted last week's shooting of Republican Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana and said politics has become too embittered.

"My pledge is to be part of the solution, to focus on governing," she said.

Ossoff, taking the stage at his own party after conceding the race, told his supporters his campaign "is the beginning of something much bigger than us," adding, "The fight goes on."

Party organizations, independent political action committees and donors from Los Angeles to Boston sent a cascade of money into a race, filling metro Atlanta's airwaves with ads and its 6th District neighborhoods with hordes of paid canvassers.

Contrary to the chants at Handel's victory party, she insisted for months that voters' choice had little to do with Trump. She rarely mentioned him, despite holding a closed-door fundraiser with him earlier this spring. She pointed voters instead to her "proven conservative record" as a state and local elected official.

Her protestations aside, Handel often embraced the national tenor of the race, joining a GOP chorus that lambasted Ossoff as a "dangerous liberal" who was "hand-picked" by House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California. She also welcomed a parade of national GOP figures to Atlanta to help her raise money, with Ryan and Vice President Mike Pence holding fundraisers following Trump's April visit.

It was enough to help Handel raise more than $5 million, not a paltry sum in a congressional race, but barely a fifth of Ossoff's fundraising haul. The Republican campaign establishment, however, helped make up the difference. A super PAC backed by Ryan spent $7 million alone.

On policy, she mostly echoes party leaders. She said she'd have voted for the House Republican health care bill, though she sometimes misrepresented its provisions in debates with Ossoff. She touts traditional supply side economics, going so far as to say during one debate that she does "not support a living wage" her way of explaining her opposition to a minimum-wage increase.

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Republican Karen Handel wins Georgia special election for hotly contested House seat - Chicago Tribune

White House deputy press secretary Sarah Sanders stole a line from President Trump on Wednesday to celebrate Republicans' winning their fourth and fifth special election less than a day earlier.

"Frankly, I think Republicans are going to get tired of winning at some point if the Democrats don't ever get an agenda," Sanders told Fox News' "Fox and Friends" Wednesday.

Sanders said conservatives were able to pull out wins in Georgia's 6th Congressional District and South Carolina's 5th Congressional District on Tuesday because Republicans have campaigned on an agenda, while Democrats have not touted a plan for leading.

"The American people put him and other Republicans in place for a reason they have an agenda, they want a healthcare system that works, they want an environment where we're creating jobs and growing the economy," Sanders said. "That's what this president is focused on. That's why he was elected in the first place, and that's why he continues to keep winning."

Trump's line about winning became famous during a speech he gave while visiting the Iowa State Fair during the presidential campaign. He continued to use it throughout the campaign and it became a signature phrase.

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Sarah Sanders: 'Republicans are going to get tired of winning' - Washington Examiner

The paradox of secrecy in American politics is how much attention it gets. Over the last couple of weeks, the penchant of the White House and the Republican Senate for blocking the release of information has become a central issue in Washington. Its a case of making lemonade from lemons: If you cant cover the story, cover why you cant cover it.

Perhaps most immediately important is the Senate GOPs refusal to reveal anything about the bill the health-care bill currently under consideration. Meanwhile, the administration has been quietly clamping down on various forms of access, from public schedules to visitor logs to the daily briefings at the White House. The executive branch has taken to refusing requests for information from congressional Democrats too.

The White House Press Briefing Is Slowly Dying

The result is a weird reversal of the normal course of business: Gossipy nuggets leak out of the White House on a daily basisTrump is yelling at TVs! Trump is angry at Jared! Sean Spicer/Reince Priebus/Steve Bannon is on the chopping block!and the president tweets as fact things his lawyers claim are not true, yet next to nothing is known about a huge bill that could change health coverage for millions of Americans.

This kind of secrecy is bad for policymaking and bad for democracy, but since abstract arguments like that are difficult to plead effectively, its customary to argue that secrecy is also politically unwise. For example, it is clearly hypocritical. When Obama was president, Republicans complained that the White House was too secretive, and that Democrats were trying to railroad through health-care reform without public inputeven though the process behind the Affordable Care Act was far more public and lengthy than the present process. But hypocrisy is seldom lethal for any politician, let alone a party, especially in todays partisan climate.

Another argument is that clamming up will actually hurt the clams. As Politicos Playbook puts it today, This could be bad for the White House, as it will be far more difficult for them to drive a message and respond to questions. This might be true, but take it with a healthy dose of skepticism. For one, its obviously self-serving for journalists to say that giving journalists more access is good for them, and the press corps, smelling blood, is out for damaging stories about Trump. Sometimes openness is not a zero-sum game, but in this case, it probably is.

Second, wheres the proof? The George W. Bush administration was more secretive than the Clinton administration; the press howled; and Bush got reelected. The Obama administration was more secretive than the Bush administration; the press howled; and Obama got reelected. Part of Obamas success was that he found other ways to get his message out: Social media, for example, and interviews with non-traditional interlocutors, from Zach Galifianakis to YouTube stars. Trump may be different in degree and extremity from his predecessors, but his administrations secrecy is part of a disturbing, bipartisan progression.

The secrecy will continue as long as it works. It certainly worked in the House, where GOP leaders watched a first attempt at a health bill go down as its flaws became public. For the second try, they acted fast and quietly, not even waiting for the Congressional Budget Office to score the bill.

And so far, the strategy is working for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as well. Its not just Democrats and the press who are upset; some Republicans are speaking out too:

But until enough members of the GOP caucus actually demand that McConnell open up the process, their complaints will make little difference. In fact, that might be by design. McConnell and his lieutenants would much rather have an argument about process and take the lumps they get from that fight: They can write complaints off as either the whingeing of a biased press or hypocrisy from Democrats who did the same thing. Thats far better than trying to defend an unpopular bill that will likely push millions off insurance, redistribute money to the wealthy, and slash popular entitlements. The secrecy gives disgruntled Republican members of the caucus something else to complain about instead.

(The general public may not really be the audience from whom the Senate leadership is hiding its bill; public disapproval of the House health bill is already very high, and Democrats will vote en masse against it. The bigger danger for McConnell is that Republican constituenciesfrom the business lobby to GOP governorswill react fiercely to the bill and convince Republican senators to defect.)

Meanwhile, Senator Chuck Grassley, the Iowa Republican, has taken a bold stand on behalf of Democratic colleagues, writing a letter to President Trump complaining about the executive branch ignoring document requests. But as long as Grassley stands alone, and has only angry letters to write, the White House can blithely ignore him, too.

In the long run, shutting out public attention can have some ill effects. Just ask Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who has gone to historically drastic extents to avoid dealing with reporters. The result has been that the State Department cant seem to ever present a clear message about what its policies are, and keeps getting undercut by the president. Perhaps cutting down on briefings will make the administrations message control even worse, though its hard to imagine what that would look like. (The White House did belatedly add an on-camera briefing to Tuesdays schedule.) Perhaps enough Republican senators will get upset about the closed-door health-care process to force it out into public hearings. But for as along as it continues to succeed, secrecy is likely here to stay.

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Republicans Will Continue to Stick With Secrecy as Long as It Works - The Atlantic