Radio America Online News Bureau

2018

GOP Senate Hopeful Believes California Winnable

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Conventional wisdom suggests 2018 will be a good year for Democrats but one GOP candidate believes not only that Republicans can win but that he can win in California – one of the bluest states in the U.S.

John Estrada is challenging incumbent Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who is seeking a fifth full term and her sixth overall election to the U.S. Senate.  Estrada is a U.S. Navy veteran, a small business owner, and a decades-long activist in California Republican politics.

He ran twice for Congress in the 1990’s and once for lieutenant governor in 2014, bowing in the primary each time.

Estrada says his reasons for getting in the Senate race are simple.

“I care about America.  I want to help the America First agenda.  I have been in the military and I care about my fellow veterans and the people in the military that are trying to keep us safe,” said Estrada.

He says his Navy service showed him just how special the United States is.

“During that time, I got a chance to travel to a lot of foreign destinations which were pretty incredible.  I learned how great America is and how great it has to continue to be,” said Estrada.

There’s a reason that sounds similar to Make America Great Again.  Estrada is running as an unabashed pro-Trump Republican.

“I think Donald Trump has really put a strong message to America and the world that America needs to be first, so I will work with the president,” said Estrada.

Estrada is also clear about why he thinks Feinstein ought to lose her job.

“If somebody has been in office for 25 years and hasn’t done her job yet, I think it’s time to move on.  I think California and America needs a change,” said Estrada.

He points specifically to Feinstein’s work as the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee and what he sees as her lack of effort into determining the role of the FBI during the 2016 campaign.

“I hold her as one of the responsible parties.  She isn’t overseeing the process of what’s going on with the FBI and why they’re going rogue on us,” he said.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton defeated Donald Trump in California by nearly a two-to-one margin.  On that same ballot, two Democrats faced off in the general election as a result of the state’s primary system that advances the top two vote-getters to the general election.

Since 2016, California effectively became a sanctuary state and passed laws making it a crime to call someone by the “wrong” gender pronouns while significantly lessening the penalties for knowingly infecting someone with HIV.  This year Democrats are pushing legislation to raise state taxes on corporations and jail waiters for giving plastic straws to customers without being asked.

So is winning in California beyond hope for Republicans?

“Not at all,” said Estrada, who believes he can win votes other Republicans cannot.

“I truly believe I have the ability to cross over party lines, get conservatives and independents and make it a very competitive race,” said Estrada.

Estrada says Republicans just need to address what really matters in California.

“I think (former House Speaker) Tip O’Neill said is greatly many years ago, and that’s that all politics is local.  What I have found is that the problems in California can be solved by the federal government,” said Estrada.

He says water access is a good example of this.

“We have a great opportunity to bring  sustainable, safe, clean, water for our residents.  Unfortunately, environmentalists have allowed so much of this fresh water to go into the Pacific Ocean and we keep losing opportunities to save that in water storage facilities,” said Estrada.

“With federal dollars, I think we can build enough water storage facilities to help everybody out, all water users,” said Estrada.

Estrada would also take aim at the Endangered Species Act, which he says California and the federal government are using to stifle economic development and even the construction of low-income housing, which he says is a major contributor to the growing problem of homelessness in the Golden State.

But while Estrada has issues he is most passionate about, he says his actions will be dictated by what the people of his state want from him.

“I will take my personal views, being a conservative and take a look, case by case, at how we can help the people of California, because really, it belongs to them.  It’s their state and I’ll be working for them,” said Estrada.

But he is quick to add that when he serves the people of California, he means the citizens of California.

“We have to help our citizens first.  America is a very generous nation.  When there’s disasters across the world, we’re there helping everybody, but there’s a lot of corrupt administrations around the world – a lot of dictators and a lot of corruption – and America’s got to lead,” said Estrada.

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Awards: Person of the Year, Turncoat of the Year, Predictions for 2018

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America reveal their choices for the biggest Three Martini Lunch award categories.  They explain their choices for Person of the Year, as Jim names someone he once dismissed as unserious and Greg selects a large group of people joined by a common theme.  They also hold nothing back in detailing which people most egregiously turned their backs on conservative principles in 2017.  And they ditch their traditional New Year’s resolutions to offer fearless predictions for 2018.  Happy New Year to all of our wonderful listeners!  We will return on January 2, 2018.

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Trump-McConnell Spat Foreshadows Intense 2018 Primaries

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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and President Trump are publicly exchanging barbs about what is reasonable to expect the Congress to accomplish, and longtime conservative activist Richard Viguerie says the the frustration is ure to boil over into the 2018 primary season.

The back-and-forth started on Monday, when Sen. McConnell told a Rotary Club audience that the GOP Congress is getting hammered by its base for accomplishing little because Trump has set aggressive expectations.

“Part of the reason I think that the storyline is that we haven’t done much is because, in part, the president and others have set these early timelines about things need to be done by a certain point,” said McConnell.

“Our new president, of course, has not been in this line of work before, and I think had excessive expectations about how quickly things happen in the Democratic process,” he added.

Wednesday afternoon, Trump pushed back via Twitter.

“Senator Mitch McConnell said I had “excessive expectations,” but I don’t think so. After 7 years of hearing Repeal & Replace, why not done?,” tweeted Trump.

Some in the Washington media circle characterize the dispute as signs of a Republican civil war or at least dysfunction.  Viguerie slightly disagrees.

“There’s probably not a lot of love lost between President Trump and Sen. Mitch McConnell.  But the reality is they have to get along,” said Viguerie.

But Viguerie is quick to point out that the sharp divisions that emerged within the GOP in 2016 are still there.  He says GOP base voters will hold Republicans responsible for not repealing Obamacare after passing bills to do so in the Obama years, and he says Americans won’t care much about the specifics of why it didn’t happen.

He further asserts that even after seven years of vowing repeal, the GOP was still caught flat-footed in 2017 when the opportunity to do it came about.

“I suspect the number one reason is they didn’t think they’d be in the White House.  I think most of the Republicans from Washington felt that Hillary would win the election and, truth be told, a high percentage of them probably preferred Hillary Clinton to President Trump,” said Viguerie.

As a result, he suggests many Republicans are actively guarding the status quo.

“Quite frankly, they’re terrified that he may really  follow through on his promise to drain the swamp and pour salt over it so that nothing will ever grow there again,” said Viguerie.

“President Trump and candidate Trump campaigned strongly against the Washington establishment.  He called for draining of the swamp.  If anybody could be considered the mayor of the swamp, it would be Sen. Mitch McConnell,” said Viguerie.

And Viguerie says the fissures exposed during the 2016 GOP primary season will emerge again soon.

“This is a battle that is going to be taken into the 2018 primaries, where lots of Republicans are going to run against Sen. McConnell and the Washington establishment.  This is probably just the first few, early shots of a big battle between the establishment and the president,” said Viguerie.

He says that friction could imperil some important pieces of legislation throughout the rest of this Congress but that it would be wrong to declare this a do-nothing Congress.  Viguerie says judicial confirmations alone, from the Supreme Court to the appellate and district benches, will make a huge impact on America’s future.

And he says Republicans and conservatives can breathe easier over one other key factor.

“There will be many bad things that won’t happen because Hillary is not president,” said Viguerie.

A funny thing just happened on the way to this 2018 showdown, however.  While pro-Trump Republicans Roy Moore and Mo Brooks are challenging appointed GOP Sen. Luther Strange in this month’s Alabama primary in the race to fill the term of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Strange just won Trump’s enthusiastic endorsement.

“Senator Luther Strange has done a great job representing the people of the Great State of Alabama. He has my complete and total endorsement!” tweeted Trump on Tuesday.

Viguerie says grassroots conservatives should not read too much into that.

“He does need to have Mitch McConnell’s support and that of the Senate Republican leaders.  To go against an incumbent senator, even though he was appointed, would probably be a bridge too far,” said Viguerie.

But he says those special circumstances should not dampen expectations for a fierce intraparty fight in 2018.  Republican are defending just eight of the 33 races on the ballot, but Viguerie says there will be spirited fights to determine the nominations in many of those states.

“This unrest at the grassroots that Trump so successfully connected with and tied into in this last presidential election is just building steam.  We have a disruption that’s going on in American politics and I think we haven’t seen anything yet,” said Viguerie.

And Viguerie says that means tensions will only rise among the GOP factions over the next year.

“Not at all.  I think whatever unrest, distrust, disconnection between the grassroots Republican voters and their leaders is going to do nothing but grow.  The failure of the Republicans to repeal Obamacare just adds gasoline to that fire,” said Viguerie.

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‘They Have to Do It By September’

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Republicans in the Senate have been pouring cold water on expectations of producing a health care reform bill anytime soon, but a leading health care expert says the GOP realistically has just over three months to get it done.

“If they’re going to do this with only 51 votes in the Senate, they have to do it by September,” said Galen Institute President Grace-Marie Turner.  “Frankly, I think they want to do it before the August recess so that they can get on with the rest of the agenda.”

The can officially start working on the bill now that House leaders have finally sent it to the upper chamber.  It was on hold while lawmakers waited on the Congressional Budget Office scoring of the bill to make sure their calculations on how the legislation would impact the deficit were accurate.  They were.

Despite moderate Republicans like Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Dean Heller, R-Nevada, saying the House bill was a non-starter for them, Turner suspects the final Senate version will end up looking pretty familiar.

“They will make some changes to the House bill and they will very much call it their own, but I think a lot of those structural elements of the safety net, the bridge to new coverage, the state flexibility on regulations and the Medicaid reform, I think we’re going to see all of that in there,” said Turner.

She says those four components are critical and are in the House bill: providing help for individual market consumers who no longer have reasonable coverage options, creating a transition to a market-based system, giving states more power to define plans and foster competition and changing Medicaid so it doesn’t devour state resources for all other priorities.

Turner says the House crafted it’s bill with Senate rules in mind.

“The House did try very hard to bend over backwards so that it’s version of the legislation complied with Senate rules,” she said.  “They didn’t want the Senate to have to change it too much.”

Still, Turner does expect the Senate to spend more tax dollars on providing for people with pre-existing conditions.

“The Senate is going to dial things back in different ways and probably provide even more protections than the House bill did for pre-existing conditions protections.  I do think that that has been an inflamed issue that is very much overstated,” said Turner.

“The House bill provided $138 billion to the states to be able to take care of people who have pre-existing conditions and have high health care costs.  All evidence is that would be more than enough to do it,” said Turner.

Turner also suspects the Senate may be less conservative in curtailing Medicaid expansion than the House bill.  And another issue that GOP moderates are likely to fight is the slashing of tax dollars for Planned Parenthood.

With the House bill passing precariously in May, it’s unclear what impact any substantial Senate changes will have on final passage.  But Turner warns the House that whatever they get back from the Senate – if they get anything back from the Senate – may be their one chance to get anything done this year and maybe in this Congress.

“I think everybody knows that whatever the Senate gets through, the House is going to have a very difficult time changing it.  I think it’s very likely going to be take it or leave it,” said Turner.

If we get to that point, Turner suspects voter outrage over the possibility of getting nothing done will likely compel passage of an imperfect bill.

“I don’t think any of them want to go back to the voters in 2018 next year and say, ‘Sorry, for four elections we told you we were going to repeal Obamacare and we just kind of couldn’t figure out how to do it.’  They all know they have to figure out how to do it,” said Turner.

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Three Martini Lunch 12/21/16

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America react to a Washington Post report suggesting the 2018 Senate map gives the Republicans a chance to hold a 60-seat majority.  They also shudder as German authorities confirm they’re looking for a Tunisian asylum seeker as the one responsible for the Berlin terrorist attack.  And they scratch their heads over the reasons some Democrats are giving for opposing Keith Ellison as the next DNC chairman, instead of the really glaring reasons he would be a terrible choice.

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