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Which California legislative Republicans represent pro-Clinton districts? Sacramento Bee Newly installed Senate Republican Leader Patricia Bates has three GOP-held swing seats to defend next year. The Laguna Niguel lawmaker also may want to keep an eye on her own race. Bates and 16 other legislative Republicans represent districts where ...

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Which California legislative Republicans represent pro-Clinton districts? - Sacramento Bee

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) told reporters, April 4, Republican lawmakers are having productive talks on a new health-care reform bill but would not say if a new proposal would be put forth. (Reuters)

Republicans haven't been able to replace Obamacare, because they think the problem with it, metaphorically speaking, is that the food is terrible and the portions are too small.

That, of course, is what Woody Allen had to say about life in Annie Hall. But the same kind of contradiction you hate something, and want more of it is why Republicans haven't been able to agree on anything other than that they want to be able to saythat they repealed Obamacare. That might work on for campaigning, but, as we've seen, it's a flop in office. President Trump on Tuesday in what's become something of a weekly tradition again promisedhis party would strike a deal. But even if Republicans keep trying to come to terms on a compromise, they're going to keep tripping over the same problem. That's because no matter how much dealmaking prowess you might have, you can't make one if people want fundamentally different things.

Now, when it comes to Obamacare, there are generally two types of Republicans: ones who despise everything about it, and ones who understand nothing about it. The first group are libertarians who want to get rid of the law root-and-branch. They don't think the federal government should play any part in helping people getcoverage, or telling insurers what that has to be. Instead, they'd like to go back to a world where the sick are mostly on their own, and insurance companies are mostly free to discriminate against them. This, together with higher deductibles, is what they believe is the best way to keep costs and premiums down for everybody else. The idea, you see, is that people will spend less overall if they have to spend more out-of-pocket, and if that's too much for them, they can always be put in a slightly subsidized high-risk pool.(Emphasis on the word slightly. The Kaiser Family Foundation's Larry Levitt says that the technical term for the funding in the GOP's latest proposal is chump change.")

In other words, they want to make insurance more affordable for the young and healthy by making it unaffordable for the old and sick, and worse for everyone.

The second group are so-called moderates who oppose Obamacare entirely because of politics, not policy. Which is to say that they attack the unpopular parts of the law, like penalizing people for not getting insurance, at the same time that they support the popular parts, like banning insurance companies from discriminating against people with preexisting conditions. What they don't get, though, is that you can't have the latter without the former. If you're going to force insurers to cover sick people, then you have to force healthy people to sign up too so that premiums don't explode. And if you're going to force healthy people to sign up, then you need to help them be able to afford it.

And that brings us to the GOP's real problem. It's that a lot of Republicans secretly kind of like Obamacare, or at least they like what it does. They don't want to get rid of the way it's covered sick people or expanded coverage or let kids stay on their parent's insurance until they're 26 years old. The only thing they do want to change well, other than the name and the individual mandate is the way that premiums and deductibles have continued to march ever higher. But that, whether they realize it or not, is actually an argument that Obamacare hasn't gonefar enough. That we need bigger subsidies so people can buy better coverage that doesn't make them pay as much out-of-pocket.

So how do you reconcile the idea that the healthy should pay more and the sick pay too much with the belief that the healthy should pay less and the sick be taken care of? You don't. At least not when you're in power. When you're out of it, you can at least hide these differences behind the amorphous mantra of repeal and replace. But not anymore, not whenit'sclear that there's a philosophicaldivide between Republicans who thinkthe federal government shouldn't be involved in covering people, and ones like Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy who believethat there's a widespread recognition that the federal government, Congress, has created the right for every American to have health care. That used to be what Republicans and Democrats argued about, but, now that Obamacare has made people expect more from the government, it's what Republicans and other Republicans argue about today.

And there are going to be large portions of that.

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Republicans can't find a way to repeal Obamacare because too many of them secretly love it - Washington Post

The battle for the Senate in 2018 is caught between two opposing forces: math and President Trump.

Let's start with math. Senate Democrats have a heckuva challenge defending their lawmakers in the 2018 midterm election: By virtue of their 2012 victories in some swing and red-leaning states, they now have to defend 25 seats, 10 of which are in states that Trump won.

In some states, like the one Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) is trying to win reelection in, Trump beat Hillary Clinton by more than 40 points! By comparison, Republicans only haveto defend nineseats, one or two of which could be considered vulnerable.

It's feasible that Republicans could expand their 52-seat majority, and, if they had a near-perfect run, get to the coveted filibuster-proof 60.

On the other hand, you have Trump. The party in power normally gets blowback in the first midterm election of a new president.And this president is at historically low approval ratingsthis early on, with warning signs that traditional GOP voters aren't thrilled with his and Congress's performance so far.

Here's another potential warning sign for Senate Republicans that Trump's shadow could undermine their position of strength: Some top potential Senate candidates are turning down the opportunity to challenge vulnerable Senate Democrats.

In Pennsylvania, four-term Rep. Patrick Meehan (R) was considering,then declined, to challenge Sen. Bob Casey. Meehan would have been a bigger name than the two state lawmakers and one borough councilman who have jumped in so far to try to challenge Casey.

In Indiana, a state Trump won by 19 points, Rep. Susan Brooks (R) said she wouldn't try to challenge Sen. Joe Donnelly (D). The IndyStar said Brooks would have been a potentially formidable opponent, though it reports two other GOP House lawmakers are considering a run as well: Reps. Luke Messer and Todd Rokita.

In Wisconsin, a state Trump won by less than a percentage point, leading potential challenger Rep. Sean P. Duffy (R) said he won't run against Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D). This is not the right time to run for Senate, he said in a statement, pointing to his eight kids. A couple of state lawmakers, a teacher, a Marine veteran and a businessman are all considering running, which could create a messy primary.

Republicans' recruitment struggles in Montana is related to Trump but in a different way. Former representativeRyan Zinke (R) was thought to be Republicans' strongest candidate to challenge one of the most vulnerable Democratic senators, Jon Tester, in a state Trump won by 29 points. Then Trump picked Zinke to be secretary of theinterior, and it isn't clear who will challenge Tester beside a first-term state senator who recently announcedhe's in.

November 2018 is still a year and a half away, so there's no rule that Senate candidates have to get in right now. But already, several potential top-tier candidates in Trump states have thought about challenging Democrats, then decided not to. That doesn't help Republicans counter a nascent narrative, both in GOP circles and outside of it, that Trump could weigh them down in 2018.

This is all playing out in the context of Democrats flush with momentum and money from a liberal base stoked to challenge Trump. Many of these Senate Democrats reported this week that they raised a record amount of money for their states a year and a half before the election. (Though Republican Sen. Dean Heller of Nevada kept pace with them, too.)

And a closer-than-expected congressional election in a red district in Kansas and a coming one in Georgia suggest that voters in traditional Republican districts aren't thrilled with their party's performance in Washington so far.

Of course, Republicans have more opportunities to knock off Democrats than just these couple ofstates we listed. And Democrats, who only have two-ish Republican states where they can feasibly play in, don't have candidates yet either.

Butsince we're going to spend the next 574 days trying to assess which opposing force is stronger in the 2018 Senate midterms math or Trump's unpopularity let's plant an early flag and say that, so far, Trump's unpopularity appears to be weighing on Senate Republicans.

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Do Senate Republicans have a Trump recruiting problem? - Washington Post

No matter where you come down on that question -- I think there were clear warning signs for Republicans in their victory -- the history of the first midterm election of a newly-elected president should scare Republicans tasked with retaining their House majority in 2018.

If past is prologue, then Mehlman's chart suggests that Republicans will face across-the-board losses in 2018 and could even lose control of the US House.

The chart documents seat losses in the House, Senate, state legislatures and governor's mansions in the first midterm election of the last eight presidents -- from John F. Kennedy in 1962 to Barack Obama in 2010.

The average loss in the House for the President's party over that period is 23 seats. If you take out the 2002 midterms -- a totally unique situation created by the terrorist attacks of 2001 -- the average loss is 26 seats. If Democrats make gains consistent with that history, they will be right on the edge of re-taking the House; the party needs a 24-seat gain for the majority in 2018.

All of which should worry Republicans more than anything that happened in Kansas on Tuesday night.

The history of Senate seat switches in a president's first midterm election is slightly less conclusive and, given the 2018 map, may be less predictive as well.

Since 1962, the average loss for the President's party in the Senate is 2.5 seats -- although three presidents (Kennedy, Richard Nixon and George W. Bush) actually picked up Senate seats in their first midterms.

As for governorships and state legislatures, Republicans are nearly maxed out in terms of gains -- meaning that the party is primed to suffer large-scale losses consistent with historical norms. (The President's party has typically lost five governor's mansions and 245 state legislative seats in the first midterm.)

Add it all up and you can see why 2018 should be a tough year for Republicans. Of course, if Trump's candidacy (and victory) proved anything, it's that history is only predictive until it isn't anymore.

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Forget Kansas. This chart shows why Republicans need to worry about 2018 - CNN

HOOD RIVER, Ore. Rep. Greg Walden, who helped craft the failed House GOP health-careproposal as a key committee chairman, said Tuesday that Republicans may have to wait even longerto act on it.

Walden, an Oregon Republican and chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said the GOP may have to use a future budget measure to pass itsversion of repealing and replacing Obamacare.

You could make an argument that says, Okay, we couldnt get it done now, Walden said in an interview.

Weve had people tell us: Why take this on first? You should have done infrastructure, you should have done tax reform, he added. It may be where we end up.

Walden was referring to the stalled American Health Care Act which he and other senior Republicans, including House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) attempted to pass before lawmakers left Washington for a two-week recess. Ryan ultimately did not bring that bill to the House floor after negotiations with conservatives and moderates fell apart amid bitter infighting. Trump backed the plan and lobbied members to support it. But he vowed to move on after the plans implosion and seek the passage of his other legislative priorities.

The president may have changed his mind, however. In an interview with Fox Business on Wednesday, Trump said that health care must come first before he turns to other items on his agenda, such as a tax-code rewrite anda $1 trillion infrastructure plan.

Health care is going to happen at some point, Trump told Fox. Now, if it doesnt happen fast enough, Ill start the taxes. But the tax reform and the tax cuts are better if I can do health care first.

But the AHCA failure significantly complicates things in terms of timing and process. Republicans are using special budget rules to smooth the passage of several top priorities, including a health-care and tax revamp. Those rules allow them to pass measures with a simple majority in the Senate instead of the 60 votes typically needed to enact legislation in the Senate, where they are not expected to get any Democratic support. (Republicans have 52 seats in the Senate.)

Walden noted in the interview that health care could be considered in next years budget bill. Im not saying this is going to wait until next year, but you will have another budget next year, he explained.

It is unclear whether Walden was referring to the 2018 budget bill, which Republicans had intended to use as a vehicle for the tax overhaul that Trump now says could be on hold. The president acknowledged in the interview that the failure to enact a health-care measure means that the party has not achieved the expected savings needed to pay for a reduction in tax rates.

Walden insisted that despite GOP disarray, the health plan is still alive, pointing to efforts by Vice President Pence and other White House officials to rally support on Capitol Hill.

Theres a lot of pressure at the end to get something going, he said.

Much is riding on the GOP effort to overhaul the Affordable Care Act. Many Republicans gained their seat in past elections on promises to repeal it, and the laws marketplaces are facing serious difficulties amid reduced plan offerings and hiked premiums.

Walden called it frustrating for Republicans to falter so publicly in their efforts toward that end.

Legislatings nots easy, especially on something this big that matters so much to peoples lives, and Id rather take the time to get it right, he said.

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GOP House leader says there are ways Republicans can forge ahead on health care - Washington Post