Democrats reportedly plan total war on Trump

Kucinich reacts to Democrats' early Trump impeachment talk

Senior Democratic officials reportedly say that they will adhere to the call from their liberal base and take an all-out-war stance against President Trump.
The New York Times reported Thursday that there was a time when Democrats were divided on their Trump approach. Trump did win former blue states in his November victory and Democrats in those states witnessed a new vulnerability.
The report, however, said that protests and angry emails have prompted Democrats to "cast aside any notion of conciliation with the White House.”
“My belief is, we have to resist every way and everywhere, every time we can,” Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington told the paper. Inslee said there was a “tornado of support” for a wall-to-wall resistance.
TRUMP GETS READY TO TAKE CENTER STAGE AT CPAC
Douglas E. Schoen, a former pollster for President Clinton and Fox News contributor, wrote in an opinion piece that “Trump's ascendance is rooted in America’s preference for center-right policy."
"As the Democratic Party shifted ever leftwards under Obama, it suffered net losses of 11 Senate seats, 62 House seats, and 10 governorships since 2010, as well as nearly 1000 state legislative seats.”
He went on to say, “The groups driving the Democratic Party to the left believe their only path to victory is mobilization. These forces are pushing the party away from the American public, which fundamentally is center-right, and channeling the concerns and priorities of the core Democratic coastal base.”
Sen. Thomas R. Carper, D-Del., is considered a “middle-of-the-road.” He told The Times that loathing Trump is not a governing strategy.
“There is this vitriol and dislike for our new president,” he said. “The challenge for us is to harness it in a productive way and a constructive way, and I think we will.”

CPAC: Pence says 'America's ObamaCare nightmare is about to end'

Vice President Mike Pence sought to rally conservatives for the fight to repeal and replace ObamaCare Thursday, telling a fired-up CPAC audience that the health care law "has failed" and "must go."
"Let me assure you," Pence told the cheering crowd. "America’s ObamaCare nightmare is about to end."
"This failed law is crippling the American economy and crushing the American people," added Pence, who called promises made by liberals about former president Obama's health reform "fake news."
"Now we all know the truth," the vice president said. "Higher costs, fewer choices, worse care. That's ObamaCare."
CPAC LEADER BLASTS 'ALT-RIGHT' AS CONSERVATIVES DEFINE AGENDA UNDER TRUMP
Pence vowed that ObamaCare would be replaced with "something that actually works, something that's built on freedom and individual responsibility." He promised "an orderly transition to a better health care system" and repeated Trump's campaign vow that any new healthcare law would allow the purchase of insurance across state lines and ensure that customers with pre-existing conditions would be covered.
Pence did not offer a timetable for any new legislation. Another CPAC speaker, former South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, called earlier Thursday for the immediate dismantling of the 2010 health care law, saying the argument that a replacement plan must also be in place is “ludicrous.”
Pence's speech capped the first day of the annual conference, during which President Donald Trump's top aides warned activists not to waste GOP control of the White House and both houses of Congress.
"We as conservatives have an opportunity that only comes around every few generations, or maybe just once in a lifetime," Pence said. "My friends, this is our time."
HALFTIME REPORT: WHAT TRUMP SHOULD SAY ON TUESDAY
Referencing the turbulent town halls that have greeted Republican lawmakers during the congressional recess, Pence urged CPAC attendees to "rise to the challenge before us."
"The other side is not sitting idle," the vice president warned before telling his audience to "mobilize" and "march foward" to defend Trump's agenda.
"Our fight didn’t end on [Election Day]," Pence said. "We won the day, but make no mistake about it. The harder work, the most important work, now lies ahead."

Trump set to take center stage at CPAC as theme appears to be now or never

Ted Cruz on how conservatives are viewing President Trump

When President Trump takes the stage at CPAC on Friday at 10 a.m. ET, there will likely be as many optimistic conservatives inside the Maryland convention center as there are suspicious.
But no matter how you define Trump's conservative bonafides, it appears to be the first time in decades for a Republican president-- whose party controls both chambers of Congress-- can implement a largely conservative agenda.
"We conservatives have an opportunity that only comes around every few generations,” Vice President Pence told CPAC on Thursday. “My friends, this is our time.”
VIDEO: BANNON ATTACKS 'OPPOSITION PARTY' MEDIA AT CPAC
There are some conservatives who will never embrace the former Democrat who, according to the Associated Press, once elicited boos at the conference held annually at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in suburban Maryland.
Trump addressed CPAC in 2011 and was booed when he said crowd-favorite Sen. Ron Paul “can not get elected.” Paul and his son Sen. Rand Paul usually dominate the conference’s straw poll. Sen. Ted Cruz won last year’s poll and Trump came in a modest third.
VIDEO: KRAUTHAMMER: BANNON SHOWS HE WAS THE BRAINS OF OPERATION
Trump skipped last year’s event during the presidential primary and the group, in response, said the decision “sends a clear message to conservatives.”
The Guardian newspaper wrote, “As the real estate developer said of Ron Paul in 2011, “I think he’s a good guy but honestly he has zero chance of being elected. You have to win an election.” Trump won that election, and this will be first time that the conservative movement under Trump will be on full display.”
Kellyanne Conway, a senior advisor to Trump told CPAC that “tomorrow it will be TPAC when he’s here."
One of Trump's top issues is how he will approach his call to repeal and replace ObamaCare. Trump has recently said that his administration will release a plan in the upcoming weeks, but the issue has been a hot topic for conservatives who want to see the law repealed.
VIDEO: TED CRUZ ON HOW CONSERVATIVES VIEW TRUMP
Despite some differences, Trump appears to be gaining support from top conservative leaders.
Matt Schlapp, the head of the American Conservative Union, which holds the event, said Trump has been “pitch-perfect with conservatives as he starts his administration.” He complemented Trump’s Cabinet selections and his choice to replace Justice Scalia on the Supreme Court.
Schlapp told NBC News that Trump managed to marry “conservative instincts” to a populist tone.
Grover Norquist, another CPAC faithful, mentioned Trump’s tax plan and said, “Damn near the entire conservative wish list on tax policy is in his tax reforms.”
White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon told the CPAC crowd on Thursday that “appreciation” will largely be the theme for Trump during his speech.
LIST OF CPAC SPEAKERS
Bannon appeared on stage with White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus to, according to some reports, show a united front after speculation that Trump’s inner circle is divided.
“Trump may either accomplish more than Republican presidents did in terms of a conservative agenda, despite all the chaos and drama…or he will redefine conservatism,” Rick Tyler, a GOP strategist and former spokesman for Cruz’s presidential campaign, told NPR. “The movement is at a crossroads, and it remains a known unknown where it is going.”
Ben Howe, a contributing editor at Red State and critic of Trump, told NBC that the conservative wing of the party was divided last year, but this year it is “going to be the ‘Make America Great Again’ CPAC, which is going to be a very different makeup then what I’m accustomed to.”

Cry Baby Democrat Cartoons

Civil Rights Activist: Illegal Immigration Hurts Job Prospects for Black Men

Tucker Carlson was joined tonight by a civil rights leader who says that black males are disproportionately hurt by illegal immigration.
Peter Kirsanow, a member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, explained that black males are more likely to experience competition from illegal immigrants.
"It's Econ 101, Tucker. When you have an oversupply of labor, the price of labor is going to be depressed," Kirsanow said, adding that there's a striking oversupply of low-skill labor.
He noted that this doesn't effect just black males, but all low-skilled American workers.
He said that black males, however, are disproportionately concentrated in low-skill labor markets, which is also where the bulk of legal and illegal immigrants over the past 20 years are concentrated.
"We're talking about, at the very low end, hundreds of thousands of blacks losing jobs, probably if you do the math, up to 1.2 million blacks losing jobs," Kirsanow said. "This has significant, obviously, impacts on the black community."
He lamented that many on the left and many black congressional leaders have embraced the "open borders philosophy" that's done such damage to black employment prospects.

Conservatives flock to CPAC to chart agenda under Trump

Byron York on significance of Trump's scheduled trip to CPAC

For the last eight years, conservatives used their signature annual gathering to blast the Obama administration and plot a Republican takeover. Now, the GOP is in charge -- and this week’s Conservative Political Action Conference is the movement’s first big chance since President Trump’s victory to hone their agenda.
“The conservative movement has elected a Republican president,” American Conservative Union Chairman Matt Schlapp said Wednesday, at the start of the annual conference, which his group sponsors. “It’s not so much now about complaining about President Obama’s agenda as it is about what we’ll do with political power and the responsibility to get the economy moving.”
Leaders are hoping to use the conference to strategize about what they can accomplish now that Republicans control Capitol Hill and the White House and to work to better articulate their values at a time when the very definition of conservatism has seemed to waver.
The conference at National Harbor, just outside Washington, D.C., will feature a host of lawmakers and officials -- starting with top White House advisers on Thursday afternoon, followed by Vice President Pence on Thursday evening and President Trump on Friday morning.
But much of the buzz around the four-day event has centered on CPAC organizers pulling the speaking slot of “alt-right” provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, after the release of an audio tape in which he made what Schlapp called “disgusting” comments.
Yiannopoulos seems on the year-old tape to defend adults having sex with minors. Yiannopoulos apologized this week for the comments and said he had been sexually abused as a teen.
Schlapp said Wednesday that CPAC invited Yiannopoulos because the backlash he faced for his college talks were part of a large, chilling effect regarding free speech on campus.
“We understand the alt-right, but it has no voice in conservativism,” Schlapp said. “Bigotry has no voice in conservativism.”
The flap highlighted tensions between traditional conservatives and the alt-right, which helped boost Trump’s bid.
The Republican president, with his threats to void or renegotiate international trade deals and his interest in a multi-billion-dollar infrastructure package, is not exactly a prototype conservative.
But Schlapp said conservatives hope to hear him say, “I know you all did a lot to get me elected,” and perhaps after the four-day event better understand “what they care about.”
The attendance of Trump, the first president since Ronald Reagan to visit CPAC in a first term, has indeed brought some energy to the 44-year-old event.
But other scheduled speakers and events -- including the speech by Pence and a one-on-one Thursday between White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and Trump strategist Steve Bannon -- are also attracting a lot of interest.
Bannon and Priebus are reportedly involved in a White House power struggle but say they get along.
Yiannopoulos had worked for Bannon at Breitbart News before Bannon stepped down and Yiannopoulos resigned in the wake of the scandal.
The event concludes Saturday with the annual CPAC straw poll, an early indication of which potential White House candidates have  conservative support.

Revised 'extreme vetting' order drops language rejecting Syrian refugees, official says

President Donald Trump's revised immigration executive order will drop language indefinitely suspending acceptance of Syrian refugees by U.S. authorities, a senior administration official told Fox News Wendesday.
The new order, which Trump is expected to sign next week, will also add language exempting legal permanent residents, or green-card holders, from a travel ban in a move the administration hopes will remove any reasonable grounds for a legal challenge.

Trump's prior "extreme vetting" order temporarily suspended all travel to the U.S. for citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries for 90 days. A federal judge in Washington state halted enforcement of the order and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals refused to reinstate it.
The official said that new language in the revised order will make clear that the intent of the action is to "temporarily block the admission of people with no prior status in the U.S. who are currently overseas until a program of extreme vetting can be put in place."
The White House believes that new order will satisy the courts because it is "grounded in existing security determinations," the official said.
The official told Fox News that it is likely that certain classes of visa holders currently in the U.S. or who have been in the U.S. but are currently abroad will be exempted as well. This could include certain student or other education-related visas as well as work permits.
The new order would direct a temporary suspension of admission of all refugees while revised screening meansures are put into place, the official added.
The new order does implement a temporary visa ban for travelers from the same seven countries as the previous executive order: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.
The revised order will also mandate a 50 percent reduction in refugee admissions for 2017 to just 50,000.  According to the White House, approximately 35,000 refugees have already been allowed into the country this year, leaving only about 15,000 slots left for the remainder of the year once the refugee admission program resumes.

Voters' support of ObamaCare rising, despite Republican push

A new poll released Wednesday adds a new element for congressional Republicans to consider about their repeal-and-replace approach to former-President Obama’s cornerstone legislation: more American voters appear to be support the law.
According to a Politico/Morning Consult poll, there is an even split between registered voters who support the law and those who oppose it. Currently, 45 percent approve of the legislation compared to a poll back in January—before President Trump took office—that showed 41 percent of voters approved of the bill.
VIDEO: UPROAR AT TOWN HALLS AIMED AT REPUBLICANS OVER OBAMACARE
Kyle Dropp, the co-founder of Morning Consult, told Politico that the closer ObamaCare comes to the chopping block, its weekly poll “has shown an uptick in the law’s popularity.”
The only item in the poll that remained unpopular was the individual mandate.
Trump, who said during his campaign that he will replace the law with “something far better,” has tried to calm critics who say Republicans are divided on the issue.
Trump has been edging away from the promise to quickly eliminate the entire law. Still, annulling its taxes would be a partial victory and is irresistible for many GOP lawmakers and the conservative voters at the core of their support.
"We should do full repeal," said Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, a leading House conservative. "And full repeal means not taking the taxes" from people.
DR. MARC SIEGEL'S ADVICE FOR THE OBAMACARE TRANSITION
Despite the law’s apparent increase in popularity, just last week the CEO of Aetna said in an interview that the law is in a “death spiral” because younger, healthier people have dropped out while premiums continue to climb.
Under the 2010 law, people are required to have health coverage or risk fines from the IRS -- a penalty usually deducted from a taxpayer's refund. That underlying requirement remains on the books, and taxpayers are still legally obligated to comply, the IRS said.
But the agency is changing its approach to enforcement. Originally, the IRS had planned to start rejecting returns this year if a taxpayer failed to indicate whether he or she had coverage. Now the IRS says it will keep processing such returns, as it has in the past.
Many of the law's supporters consider the coverage requirement essential for nudging younger, healthy people into the insurance pool to keep premiums in check.