In an interview with the Washington Examiner, Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel sounded an alarm that the GOP does not get moving on its agenda in Congress, it runs the risk of being moved out.
“It’s hard to win if you don’t govern. If you make these promises, it’s going to be hard for us to win in the midterms,” McDaniel said. “I think it’s early. I think the president’s working hard on those issues and we’ve already seen some very strong governance from the White House with deregulation, with [Neil] Gorsuch, with Keystone [Pipeline], with jobs coming back. But we have to continue that, and we have to keep promises that we made on the campaign trail.”
While there was initial talk of moving on to tax reform and leaving the repeal of ObamaCare, discussions have picked up between the White House and the Freedom Caucus and the centrist Tuesday Group.
House Speaker Paul Ryan described it as ‘Republican growing pains.’
Ms. McDaniel says it shows the strength of diversity in the Grand Old Party (GOP, Republican).
“I actually think it’s a strength of our party that we have a robust dialogue, that you bring different viewpoints to the discussion. The Democrats are always in lockstep with each and that is exactly why we have the disaster of Obamacare. They didn’t have a discussion,” the former Michigan GOP chairwoman, who has been the RNC chair for only three months, said. “They didn’t have people pointing out, ‘hey, there’s a flaw here. Let’s talk about this. Let’s take it to our constituents. Let’s have a transparent process. Let’s maybe read it before we pass it.’ Those types of things maybe would have made it a better bill.”
Noting that in 2018 ten Democratic senators are up for re-election in states where Trump won, McDaniel cautions that it is easy to organize opposition by the party out of power, but maintains the Republicans are “focused on the entire ticket and maintaining and expanding majorities in the Senate and the House going into 2018. When you are doing what we do, which is build the ground game, you don’t just lift the top of the ticket, you lift the whole ticket.”
Democrats on the Attack
Meanwhile, attempting to shift back the balance of power, the Democrats are sifting through possible candidates in 64 congressional districts as they chase opportunities for next year’s midterm elections.
According to Politico, they are knocking on the doors of veterans, women and others who have never held elected office, and owners of small businesses as they try to benefit from the anti-Trump energy in the streets.
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) leaders have already met with 255 potential candidates. DCCC Chairman Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) said, “We are going to be on offense, we are going to take this fight to the American people.”
A recent recruiting meeting brought together Vote Vets, a liberal group focused on veteran’s issues, and women interested in politics. Convened by Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), herself a veteran, she spoke with a dozen veterans about defense and international issues, including two female helicopter pilots, all of whom have recently completed their tours of duty or will soon. “Especially among the younger generation of veterans, you have a community that is far less conservative than people might think,” she said.
Rep.l Seth Moulton (D-MA) has garnered some 22 fellow veterans who are interested in public office. “I don’t think you have to be a veteran to run for office, but when you’re looking for a group of people who might be able to rise above the bitter partisan gridlock, veterans are a good place to look,” he said. “Washington seems like a dirty place. But so was Afghanistan. And so was Iraq. And we’re going to clean it up.”
Presidential Approval Back Up
Even after weeks of blistering attacks, the latest Rassumusen Poll, among the most accurate in the 2016 election cycle, has President Donald J. Trump back at 50% approval.
Figuring that just attacking President Trump will not be sufficient to turn the tide, Democrats are digging into finances and committee votes of Republican members of Congress. They are focusing more on the South, and in districts where stronger opponents than those that ran in 2016 might have a better chance of unseating the GOP.
But National Republican Campaign Committee press secretary Jesse Hunt said, “The activist-base Democratic Party is demanding all-out obstruction in Washington, D.C., to the entire Republican agenda, and it’s going to make it difficult for Democratic to make the necessary course correction in these competitive Congressional districts,” Hunt said. “As a result of that, you’re going to see the Democratic base demand far left progressive candidates that don’t fit the suburban districts they need.”
Republicans have led Democrats in fund-raising each month of 2017, and have met with 100 prospective candidates on their own.
According to GOPUSA, the seating of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch will begin the return of respect for constitutional powers and “undo what eight years of Obamanista rule inflicted on the nation.”
What’s more, an inspector general’s report discovered “the IRS routinely seized millions of dollars from legitimate businesses between 2012 and 2015 simply based on the business people’s practice of making bank deposits of less than $10,000 to avoid onerous paperwork. This guilty-until-proven-innocent scheme of the IRS victimized countless small business people, some of whom didn’t recover what was seized even after being cleared of any criminal activity.”
A random sample revealed 91 percent of the businesses in a sample of 278 forfeiture cases had made their money legally.
At the Environmental Protection Agency, large donors to the Democrats routinely abused Clean Water and Clean Air acts without any retribution. President Trump has directed the EPA to review its regulations, and has reversed regulations that were intended to put coal operators out of business.
Additionally, the GOP sees the Justice Department as also having served purely ideological ends during the Obama administration, especially in the Civil Rights Division and in the Voting Section. Much of the wrongdoing came under Thomas Perez, now the chair of the Democratic National Committee. The agency needs to be returned to the non-partisan, chief enforcer of the nation’s laws as it was intended. ##
Related by RC Williams – Consumer Confidence Surges to New High Under Trump Admin.
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