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Here Are The Rules On When Presidents Can Use Military Force Without Asking Congress

By
Gustavo
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0

After President Trump authorized airstrikes in Syria, lawmakers and some pundits questioned his authority or said he needed congressional approval. Some misunderstood the War Power Resolution, others ignored Article II of the Constitution, and others turned it political by comparing it to President Obama’s 2013 decision to seek congressional approval, implying Trump’s decision was wrong.

This is not a political article. Instead, it outlines the president’s authority to use military force without congressional approval. Historically, presidents have regularly used military force without congressional approval. More recently, that has included President Trump in Syria, President Obama in Libya in 2011, and President Clinton in Kosovo in 1999.

Arguably, all three authorized airstrikes for humanitarian purposes couched in the interest of national security. Using force strictly for humanitarian intervention is not currently a recognized legal basis in the United States, but national security is. Domestically, military force is authorized under the Constitution in three ways: (1) Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, on when Congress “declares” war; (2) Article 1, Section 8, on when Congress authorizes the use of force; and (3) Article II under the president’s inherent commander-in-chief powers.

Declaration of War Versus Authorization to Use Force:
Authorization and declaration are different because they have different legal ramifications. Congress has enacted 11 declarations of war related to five different wars. Ten of the 11 declarations were made based on armed attacks or direct threats against U.S. interests. The other declaration was against Spain in 1898 when Spain refused Cuban independence.

Declaring war creates a state of war. Eight of the declarations use the language “state of war.” A state of war has international and domestic legal consequences. Internationally, a state of war replaces a “state of peace,” transforming a law of peace into a law of war. With war:

-partnerships are dissolved,
-treaties abrogated,
-commercial relations and all contracts suspended, and
-States can do what is necessary under the law of nature (precepts codified by the Hague and Geneva conventions) to cause the other state to submit to reason and justice.

Domestically, a declaration triggers federal statutes that give the president special powers, such as:
(1) interdiction of trade,
(2) ordering businesses to produce war material,
(3) authority over nationals of the enemy state in the United States under the Alien Enemy Act,
(4) certain use of electronic surveillance,
(5) wide discretion on appointment and reappointment of commanders, and
(6) control and command of transportation and communication systems.

Congress has not declared war since 1945 but has authorized the use of military force abroad. A big difference is that authorizations do not trigger the above. They’re normally limited in time, space, duration, and objects. Their scope is often broad, though. Interpretations broaden as the inherent powers of the commander-in-chief expand. Congress has also granted wide authorities to presidents from John Adams on.

Article II’s Inherent Presidential Powers
While Article I vests in Congress the power to raise armies, appropriate funds to support them, and declare war, Article II vests in the president an inherent authority to conduct U.S. foreign affairs and use military action to protect the national interest as the commander-in-chief.

Historically, congressional consent has not been required when a president exercises Article II powers. President Obama’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) outlined how Obama had legal authority to use force in Libya without congressional authorization. Relying on past OLC opinions regarding Somalia and Haiti, the OLC said the president had authority to use military action as commander-in-chief for national security and foreign military affairs. Obama’s OLC went further to say two centuries of history confirms presidential authority to use military force absent Congress (quoting “Presidential Power,” 4A Op. O.L.C.).

In 1999, President Clinton relied on constitutional authority when he authorized an air campaign in Kosovo without congressional approval. He relied on his U.S. foreign relations, commander-in-chief, and chief executive authority. There was concern he violated the War Power Resolution (WPR) given the duration of military action.

The WPR requires the president to (1) consult with Congress before introducing armed forces into hostilities or imminent threat and (2) submit a written report to Congress within 48 hours of deploying U.S. forces into hostilities or a foreign nation. Within 60 days the president is required to withdraw forces unless Congress declares war, extends the 60 days, or is unable to meet the 60-day withdrawal because of an armed attack on the United States.

Members of Congress said President Clinton violated the WPR because airstrikes against Serbian forces went beyond 60 days. Twenty-six members sued, but a federal judge ruled Clinton’s actions were lawful.

National Security and Humanitarian Intervention
After Syrian President Bashar Assad used chemical weapons in 2013, the United Kingdom recognized humanitarian intervention as a legal basis to use military action. Likewise, Clinton, Obama, and Trump all expressed humanitarian reasons to authorize military action. However, their administrations tied their actual authority to use force to national security interests. This is because using force for humanitarian intervention is not recognized as a lawful basis for U.S. law. Trump’s national security basis for Syria was to prevent and deter the spread of chemical weapons.

Some will insist that presidents must obtain Congress’ blessing prior to any military use of force. This debate won’t end. What we do know is that presidents have relied on their Article II powers to use force overseas, and their attorneys have argued that the Constitution authorizes them to do so. Historical and legal precedent is seemingly established. To do so, the presidents must claim a nexus between their use of this force and national security interests.

Comey Didn’t Sink Hillary. Hillary Sank Hillary

By
Gustavo
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0

Hillary Clinton was back yesterday, taking “absolute personal responsibility” by blaming Russia, James Comey, and misogyny for her second presidential election loss. If the election had taken place on October 27, Clinton maintained, she’d be president. Perhaps if we all lived in a vacuum where the electorate ignored everything the Democratic Party’s flawed nominee had said and done (and tried to hide), she may well be in the White House — although even that’s debatable.

Clinton’s counterfactual tale about the infamous “Comey letter” has been a security blanket for many Democrats. But, as luck would have it, the FBI director was testifying in front of a Senate Judiciary Committee today, and he reminded us of some factors that Clinton ignored. That’s because even if we concede that Comey’s letter to Congress helped sink Clinton, Hillary deserved that letter, and the FBI director had no choice but to send it.

In essence, what many Democrats have been arguing for the past six months is that Comey should have actively buried evidence that was pertinent to an ongoing congressional investigation — one that, incidentally, had turned up plenty of potential wrongdoing — because it might hurt their preferred candidate’s chances.

On Tuesday, Comey, in fact, confirmed that the FBI had learned that classified emails were forwarded from Clinton’s email account by Clinton aide Huma Abedin to her husband Anthony Weiner so he could print them out. (This appears to be illegal, but perhaps all those immunity deals Comey was handing out came in handy.) Her computer, like other servers and laptops that Hillary’s staff tried to dispose of, hide, clean, and whatnot, were supposed to have been in the hands of the FBI.

It’s worth pointing out that everything in the Comey letter was almost surely going to leak anyway. Not only because of its connection to the Hillary investigation but because of this “fella Anthony Weiner,” as Comey referred to him today, had access to classified information. That may not have made things any better for Hillary, but it certainly would have made the FBI look like it was actively protecting a candidate — which is undoubtedly why Comey said it was potentially “catastrophic.”

Whatever his political calculations, however, there was simply no reason for him not to apprise Congress of that kind of discovery. As this article by Newsweek pointed out at the time, Comey had an ethical obligation to inform Congress despite the best contrary efforts of overt partisans like Attorney General Loretta Lynch. Not only because Department of Justice rules maintain that relevant committees should be apprised of new evidence, but because Comey had informed Congress that he had completed its review. Once he did that, and once he came into possession of significant evidence that would have to be examined by the FBI, Comey had a duty to notify Congress to amend his initial testimony, which was no longer true.

Setting all that aside, however, it’s also worth reiterating that it was Hillary, not Comey, who initially set up a secret server to circumvent transparency, likely to hide favor-trading related to her foundation. It was Hillary, not Comey, who sent unsecured classified documents through that server, although she almost surely knew it was wrong. (The New York Times had pointed out chances are high that these documents were intercepted by foreign powers.) It was Hillary, not Comey, who was responsible for attempts to destroy all evidence related to that server. It was Hillary’s people, as Comey noted in his original congressional testimony, that had “cleaned their devices in such a way as to preclude complete forensic recovery.” And it was Hillary’s aide who failed to inform the FBI about classified emails on her computer.

It was Hillary who ran a poor campaign and lost to one of the most unpopular presidential candidates in history. As David Axelrod pointed out today, she never took responsibility for any of it:

But Jim Comey didn’t tell her not to campaign in Wisconsin after the convention. Jim Comey didn’t say to put any resources in Michigan until the final week of the campaign. And one of the things that hindered her in the campaign was a sense that she never fully was willing to take responsibility for her mistakes, particularly that server. And, you know, so if I were her, if I were advising her, I would say don’t do this, don’t go back and appear as if you are shifting responsibility off of yourself. She said the words ‘I am responsible,’ but everything else suggested she doesn’t feel that way and I don’t think that helps her in the long-run. So if I were her, I would move on.

Moreover, as Comey basically admitted again today, Clinton had clearly broken the law. The only struggle was proving intent (though gross negligence was the standard.) So rather than smearing Comey, Clinton should be thanking him for not suggesting she be indicted.

Top Senator: Wait, The Firm Behind Trump Dossier Was Funded By Russia?

By
Gustavo
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0

Multiple U.S. senators are now demanding that FBI Director James Comey disclose whether Fusion GPS, the Democratic opposition research firm that produced the debunked dossier on President Trump’s alleged Russia ties, was itself a Russian agent working on behalf of Vladimir Putin’s regime. In a letter sent to Comey in March, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) dropped a bombshell and disclosed that a complaint against Fusion GPS had been filed with the Department of Justice alleging that the oppo firm “violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act by working on behalf of Russian principals to undermine U.S. sanctions against Russians.”

On Wednesday, another senator joined the mix with pointed questions for the embattled FBI head. Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.), who has been a vocal critic of President Trump, peppered Comey with questions about ties between Fusion GPS and what Graham termed “the Russian intelligence apparatus”:

Graham: Are you familiar with Fusion?
Comey: I know the name.
Graham: Are they part of the Russian intelligence apparatus?
Comey: I can’t say.
Graham: Do you agree with me that if Fusion was involved in preparing a dossier against Donald Trump, that would be interfering in our election by the Russians?
Comey: I don’t want to say.

It was a surprising question about information that has not been well reported in the media. Graham referenced an April 28 letter from Grassley to Comey. Grassley noted a pattern of FBI obstruction into the committee’s investigation of Russian interference, at least when that investigation touched on decisions made by the FBI.

Grassley asked for information on March 6 about the FBI’s relationship to Christopher Steele, author of a political opposition research dossier that alleged collusion between associates of Donald Trump and the Russian government. The FBI failed to respond, despite a March 20 deadline.

On February 15, Grassley and ranking member Sen. Dianne Feinstein asked for a briefing and documents related to the resignation of Trump National Security Advisor Mike Flynn and the leaks of classified info involving him. There was a “startling lack of responsiveness” to the request, Grassley wrote. Comey finally briefed Grassley and Feinstein in mid-March, addressing also a small number of the questions about Steele.

On April 19, the FBI claimed that the meeting addressed the concerns of both letters. “That is incorrect,” Grassley noted. Not only has the FBI failed to provide the documents requested in the March letter or answer the vast majority of its questions, there appear to be “material inconsistencies” between the description of the FBI’s relationship with Steele that Comey gave in the briefing and information contained in Justice Department documents made available to the committee after the briefing.

Grassley wrote that whether those inconsistencies were honest mistakes or an attempt to downplay the FBI’s relationship with Steele, he still needs the answers and documents he requested. But then he noted this new information:

Fusion GPS is the subject of a complaint to the Justice Department, which alleges that the company violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act by working on behalf of Russian principals to undermine U.S. sanctions against Russians. That unregistered work was reportedly conducted with a former Russian intelligence operative, Mr. Rinat Akhmetshin, and appears to have been occurring simultaneously to Fusion GPS’s work overseeing the creation of the dossier.

Grassley said he requested information about this on March 31 but that Justice failed to respond. He is now demanding answers to all of his questions, along with new questions about what the FBI knew about Russian involvement with Fusion GPS, by May 12. The earlier letter, discussed here, included questions about whether the dossier was used to seek a FISA warrant against anyone. Spoiler: It was strategically leaked that it was.

Now Grassley is demanding documentation of all payments made to Steele, as well as disclosure about whether the FBI was aware that Fusion GPS was at the same time allegedly working as an unregistered agent for Russian interests, when the FBI became aware of this allegation, and whether this information was included in FISA warrant requests or any other related documents.

Comey refused to answer Grassley’s questions along these lines during the hearing, causing Grassley to be visibly and audibly frustrated at the obstruction.

Cut The Comedy From The White House Correspondents Dinner

By
Gustavo
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0

The annual White House Correspondents Dinner has typically been a kind of gentle roast. As a guest of honor, the president is pleasantly chided by a comedian and chides back at the Washington media. There is a lot of self-deprecation and teasing. Roasts are fun. But there is a very important rule about roasts: they only work if the guy being roasted is there.

Much of the charm and humor of a roast comes from the fact that the roasted has agreed to the whole thing, and happily laughs along at the insults. President Donald Trump, unlike his predecessors, chose not to participate. Some support the decision, saying the whole thing is tasteless insiderism; others oppose it as another needless thumb in the media’s eye from the commander in chief.

But it doesn’t really matter. That’s because if someone doesn’t agree to be roasted, you don’t roast them. Hasan Minjah’s suicide bombing as the event’s MC was a predictable and preventable attack on comedy. By the time his “Not see, Steve Bannon, Nazi, Steve Bannon” bit flopped like a crooked middleweight, it was clear that the awkward had become the embarrassing.

Nothing Is Transgressive About Tired Headlines

Part of the problem with the Bannon Nazi joke and the Jeff Sessions “N-word” joke and the “Trump is a Russian puppet” jokes is that they don’t sound much more extreme than what the Washington press corps believes and reports. Jokes are jokes because they are humorous exaggerations that shed light on reality. Minhaj was basically listing a bunch of Salon and Huffington Post headlines.

To make matters worse, Minhaj completely whiffed on the biggest elephant in the room. He was talking to a group of journalists who largely got the 2016 election as wrong as anyone has gotten anything wrong in the history of wrongness. Failing to hammer home on that is like roasting the ’86 Red Sox and leaving out Bill Buckner.

The final result of the evening was that a 501(c)3 nonprofit charity established to protect some of the most powerful voices in media hired a comedian to slay the president while calling them brave heroes who are being persecuted. It’s not a good look. In fact, it looks a lot like the “Not The White House Correspondents Dinner” that Samantha Bee was running across town for some reason.

People Like Me

Bee also decided to put on a show that roasted the president without him being present. She was at least decent enough not to do it under the auspices of a supposedly non-political, nonprofit corporation. In a recent interview with CNN, she was quite clear about who her brand of comedy is intended for: “I do the show for me and for people like me, and I don’t care how the rest of the world sees it quite frankly. That’s great. We make a show for ourselves. We put it out to the world. We birth it and then the world receives it however they want to receive it.”

This is a derisive way to engage in political discourse, which Bee is clearly doing. But much like Teen Vogue, which progressives have vaulted into the stratosphere of serious journalism lately, Bee has no serious set of standards. Her bland shtick is “I’m right, they’re wrong,” accompanied by some snarky sass.

Bee’s style of the corporate shilling against the evils of Trump is all fine and good. She’ll make a few bucks, people who hate Trump will laugh, and most people will ignore it. The problem is that her “Not The Whitehouse Correspondents Dinner” looked so much like the actual White House Correspondents Dinner.

The Age Before Snark

The White House Correspondents Dinner doesn’t need a comedy show. In fact, the two speakers who preceded Minhaj, who aren’t comedians but got about as many laughs, set a much better tone for the evening. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein both gave remarks that should have had a chilling effect on the assembled jour arati.

Once again recounting their tales of Watergate glory, they both stressed the importance of seeing a story through and letting it take you where it goes, not the other way around. Bernstein said that in 50 years he never had a story he reported land the way he thought it would. Woodward warned against making a big potential claim of wrongdoing before the reporting was fully done.

Compare that to today’s news outlets, which jump on every Russia interference in the election story by presenting the worst possible scenario. It’s a parade of “what ifs” fueling the bizarre fantasies of people who are still surprised Trump wasn’t impeached in the first 100 days.

Drop The Yucks

Assuming President Trump continues to refuse to participate in the White House Correspondents Dinner, the event should just drop the comedy. Honor important people, give awards, drink, eat relatively high-end hotel fare, and call it a night.

In his song of the same name, Morrissey wrote, “that joke isn’t funny anymore, it’s too close to home and it’s too near the bone.” That is true of the WHCD at this point. It’s no longer playful jokes. It’s the people who are supposed to give us the facts laughing at presidential advisers being called Nazis. We need a lot less of that.

Meanwhile, President Trump held another of his storied rallies in the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He was trolling the fancy events in Washington DC in no uncertain terms. Both he and Minhaj where playing to friendly crowds. The difference, as usual, was that Trump killed.

What Is Going On With The Democrat Party?

By
Gustavo
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0

This week, newly minted Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez will travel cross-country with Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Keith Ellison on a Democratic Party “unity tour” that will take them to Maine, Kentucky, Florida, Texas, Nebraska, Utah, Arizona, and Nevada—mostly red states that Trump won.

The purpose of their road trip, dubbed the “Come Together And Fight Back Tour,” is to shore up a badly fractured Democratic Party and present some semblance of a united opposition to the Trump administration. (The tour is selling T-shirts that boast, “I’m one of 65,844,610 Americans against Trump.”)

Whatever the merits of hawking anti-Trump shirts and uber-progressive talking points in Grand Prairie, Texas, the fact that Perez feels the need to embark on such a tour with Sanders and Ellison in town speaks volumes about the transformation of the Democratic Party under Obama.

Put simply, this is Sanders’ party now. The avowed socialist’s insurgent presidential campaign last year exposed a sclerotic Democratic Party leadership woefully out of touch with its progressive base—a base that was at times openly hostile to the party’s designated heir apparent, Hillary Clinton, and completely uninterested in appeals to the white working class.

Recall that Sanders made economic populism the centerpiece of his campaign, and some of his rhetoric on that score mirrored Trump’s. But his most fervent supporters were always more interested in socialism and identity politics—free college and amnesty for illegal immigrants—than bringing manufacturing jobs back to the Rust Belt.

Democrats Have Jumped the Shark

Now, Sanders is the Democratic Party’s only credible messenger to that base, which is why Perez desperately needs Sanders with him as he rolls through flyover country. The partnership is not without some irony. Back in February, Perez narrowly defeated Sanders’ preferred candidate to run the DNC, Keith Ellison. The Perez-Sanders-Ellison spectacle is, therefore, a testament not just to the leftward lurch of Democrats, but also of their desperation and disorientation.

Party leaders have concluded, quite incorrectly, that if they want to be competitive at the state and national levels they must adopt the economic socialism of Sanders and the identity politics of Ellison, an African American and one of only two Muslims in the House.

But Ellison is also a fervent progressive and a radical leftist. Besides being the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and an early endorser of Sanders, he has some rather disturbing ideas about Israel and Jewish people, an abiding affection for Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, and a host of other deeply unsettling views.

Perez, by contrast, belongs to the Democratic Party establishment. He served as secretary of Labor under Obama, who endorsed him for DNC chair along with a number of Democratic governors and other establishment-aligned Democrats. When his victory was announced, Ellison supporters erupted in protest, shouting, “Party for the people! Not big money!” When Perez was finally allowed to speak, he immediately named Ellison as deputy chairman.

The message now, of course, is unity at all costs. Yet even before the unity tour kicked off, Sanders and Perez were butting heads over another lost election. Last Tuesday, Republicans won a special congressional election in Kansas for the seat Mike Pompeo vacated when he was confirmed to be Trump’s director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

On Sunday, Sanders called out the Democratic Party for not doing enough to help win that election. The next day, Perez shot back on NPR, claiming that the DNC offered its voter file, conducted robocalls, and, despite losing, basically won because it wasn’t a blowout. “If we replicate success like that everywhere, we will flip the House in 2018,” he said, adding, as if to convince himself, “And we’re making tremendous progress.”

The Real Transformation of U.S. Politics Is On the Left

All this inside baseball of the Democratic Party is notable for how little attention it has gotten in the mainstream media, which lately has been far more interested in how Trump is supposedly changing conservatism. Last week in The New York Times Magazine, Rick Perlstein, a left-wing academic who bills himself as a historian of conservatism, confessed that Trump’s election revealed that his own account of conservatism is incomplete, if not flat-out wrong.

His argument is more or less that Trump’s conservatism belongs to a long history of white rage in America, harkening back to the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and pro-Nazi fascist groups of the 1930s. In Perlstein’s tortured history of American conservatism, you can draw a line from Hiram Evans, imperial wizard of the KKK in the 1920s, to Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, Barry Goldwater in the ‘60s, and President Trump today.

It’s an absurd argument that could only be put forward by a left-wing academic whose understanding of American conservatism was never more than a caricature, and who has indulged a general ignorance of changes to the American electorate since the Second World War.

A more measured take on Trump and conservatism ran last week in The Atlantic, whose McKay Coppins suggested: “there’s evidence that Trump’s conquest of the GOP is causing activists to redefine ‘conservatism’ itself.” All of that is well and good. Certainly, Trump is challenging some orthodox conservative positions, especially on free trade and government spending.

But for all the changes afoot in the GOP, the real transformation in American politics is happening on the Left, where progressive zealots have taken over the Democratic Party and all but named Bernie Sanders their quixotic leader.

The irony is that those who lionize Sanders still don’t seem all that concerned about the things he cares about. Asked about the unity tour earlier this month, Sanders said, “It’s absolutely absurd that the Democratic Party has turned its back on working people in literally half the country.”

Sanders is right on that count. Working-class Democrats voted for Trump last year in all the places Clinton needed them to vote for her. Sanders’ concern about his party’s alienation of these voters is justified. The problem is, he’s now the de facto leader of a party that has embraced his socialism but written off the white working class, which it needs to win national elections.

The Democratic Party seems to sense that it needs these voters, but it has no idea how to get them back. So off Sanders goes to literally half the country, arm-in-arm with Perez and Ellison, hoping to find support for the post-Obama Democratic agenda.

Maybe they’ll find some support, but their progressive message is likely to resonate only with whatever socialists they find in Utah or transgender activists they find in Nebraska. Maybe that will revive their electoral ambitions for the 2018 midterms. Maybe they’ll run on that. Let’s hope they do.

If The Objective Was For Only Strikes on Syria, That Is Better Than War In Syria

By
Gustavo
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0

On Thursday night the United States struck air bases in Syria with cruise missiles. This was done in retaliation for the use of chemical weapons against Syrian citizens.

Observers have noticed that President Donald Trump’s decision to attack Syria is at odds with his rhetoric over the last four years. Not only has he pushed a foreign policy that emphasizes American interests instead of humanitarian concerns, he’s specifically identified Syria as a place the United States should avoid invading. There are many examples of his arguments against action in Syria, but this tweet from June 2013 is representative:

Thursday also featured Secretary of State Rex Tillerson discussing “regime change” in Syria, and President Trump said the chemical attack in Syria on Tuesday “crossed a lot of lines for me.”

Interventionists such as Sen. John McCain, Sen. Lindsey Graham, and political commentator Bill Kristol were pleased with the strikes in Syria. For Trump supporters who had supported his rhetoric of restraint toward the region, it was a disappointment.

These people believed President Trump would steer a course different than the one adopted by the foreign policy establishment in both the Republican and Democratic parties.

However, there is a national interest case for striking Syria this week that is easier to make than the case for full-fledged war with Syria, which requires much more discussion and for which congressional approval should be sought. Some would argue that congressional approval should have been sought even for the limited strikes, and a representative case was made here in 2013 when the issue last flared.

That Syrian President Bashar al-Assad used sarin gas against civilians is significant in multiple ways. Yes, al-Assad has been brutally killing people for years, but the use of chemical weapons is a violation of a treaty Syria has signed, and a violation of a norm that Americans have an interest in upholding.

Assad’s government signed the global treaty that bans chemical weapons four years ago. He agreed to dispose of his chemical weapons, and the Obama administration claimed that Syria voluntarily did so completely just last year. President Barack Obama had talked about intervening in the Syrian civil war in 2013 but abandoned that plan after Syria signed the chemical weapons ban.

Assad’s use of sarin gas is a clear violation of that treaty, and the norm against chemical warfare is in the American interest to uphold. The best way to stop future use of chemical weapons and other weapons of mass destruction is to ensure that the American response is severe. The response should cause significantly more damage than any temporary advantage gained by their use. Americans live throughout the world and the country wants to make sure that no Americans or American interests are caught up in the use of weapons of mass destruction.

The case for larger intervention in Syria, however, is much more complicated and worthy of debate. As Sean Davis wrote in, “So You Want To Go To War In Syria To Depose Assad. Can You Answer These 14 Questions First?” Americans should have a clear understanding of goals and strategy before invading yet another country.

How is American interest served by deposing Assad? What will victory look like? How long will it take to achieve that victory? What military, diplomatic and financial resources will be required? Who else will join with America to depose Assad? Will war increase tensions with Russia or will the United States attempt to work with them on a shared goal in the region? What government will replace Assad and what role should the United States have in securing it? How will the United States ensure this invasion will work out differently than the failure to maintain victory in Iraq and Libya?

There is a national interest case to make for involvement in Syria, both to address the ISIS problem and the global refugee crisis, but the country must have a debate about whether it’s prepared to spend what it will take to accomplish those goals. Failure to have that conversation, much less have it honestly, is what has led Americans to get involved in too many regions without having the wherewithal to win those wars decisively.

Still, the use of limited strikes to retaliate for Assad’s use of chemical weapons in violation of a global treaty is not necessarily a major conflict with Trump’s previous foreign policy goals of restraint. The discussion of “regime change” and building of coalitions to depose Assad, however, is a major change.

Why Is The Susan Rice Role In The Obama Spying Story A Big Deal?

By
Gustavo
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0

Since Donald Trump won the election for president in November, U.S. media outlets have received and eagerly published selective, damaging leaks about him from anonymous intelligence officials. The general effort, which appeared highly coordinated, was to delegitimize Trump’s election and paint him as a stooge of Russia or otherwise unfit for office.

The media outlets claimed their information came from very highly placed officials in the Obama administration. Even if they hadn’t claimed their anonymous sources were Obama officials, the information they were leaking, such as the name of a U.S. citizen caught up in surveillance by the Obama administration, would have been known only by highly placed intelligence officials.

As the publishers of the information that was illegally disclosed, many media outlets weren’t keen to make a story, much less a big story, about the leak campaign by Obama officials. This despite the fact that the same Obama officials who had run the infamous Iran Echo Chamber operation, in which reporters were duped into reporting the Obama administration’s spin on the Iran deal, had bragged that they’d continue a highly developed communications operation in the Trump era.

In early March, Donald Trump tweeted out a series of unsubstantiated claims:

Now, President Trump is not known for being precise with either his language or his allegations, and a hostile media rightly took him to the task. It’s not unimportant to debunk the idea that Barack Obama personally got down on all fours and crawled into the phone system at Trump Tower to lay down some wiretaps on a particular date, and many media figures did so immediately.

Yet as to the larger question of whether Trump and his team were generally surveilled by the Obama administration before, during, or after the campaign, the media have a lack of interest to the point they appear comatose. The collection of information on Trump’s team was undeniable, as it was being leaked to the Washington Post and other outlets, so the lack of journalistic curiosity has been perplexing.

Two weeks ago, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes, revealed that he’d seen dozens of reports featuring unmasked information on Trump and his associates and family members. He said these reports arose out of incidental collection during FISA surveillance, had nothing to do with Russia, were disseminated widely throughout the intelligence agencies, and contained little to no foreign intelligence value.

It should go without saying that the country’s powerful surveillance capabilities are not to be used against American citizens so that such unmasking should be exceedingly rare, be done for only the strongest reasons, and make pains to avoid the appearance of politicization. Nunes said the incidental collection might be legal but the unmasked dissemination of information about political opponents was disconcerting.

Despite the bombshell allegations, many in the media responded by downplaying or denigrating his news, distracting with process complaints, or quickly thrown-together stories from anonymous sources with no evidence claiming more breathless wrongdoing with Russia.

On Monday, Eli Lake of Bloomberg Views reported that sources said: “Susan Rice requested the identities of U.S. persons in raw intelligence reports on dozens of occasions that connect to the Donald Trump transition and campaign, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.” Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the National Security Council’s senior director for intelligence, was conducting a review of unmasking procedures when he “discovered Rice’s multiple requests to unmask U.S. persons in intelligence reports that related to Trump transition activities.”

Susan Rice was Obama’s National Security Advisor for his second term.

Again, many in the media are attempting to downplay, denigrate and distract, some are doing so shamelessly. Here are five reasons why this is a story worth covering:

1) Susan Rice’s Story Changed Dramatically From Two Weeks Ago

Two weeks ago, PBS’ Judy Woodruff asked Rice a very general question about Nunes’ claims:

JUDY WOODRUFF: I began by asking about the allegations leveled today by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes that Trump transition officials, including the president, may have been swept up in surveillance of foreigners at the end of the Obama administration.
SUSAN RICE, Former U.S. National Security Adviser: I know nothing about this. I was surprised to see reports from Chairman Nunes on that count today.
I know nothing about this, she said.

Yesterday, in a damage control interview with prominent Democratic journalist Andrea Mitchell, Rice admitted her unmasking efforts and said they were routine. Mitchell’s 16-minute interview involved no tough questions. Mitchell asked, “Did you seek to unmask the names of people involved in the Trump transition?” Rice responded in the Clintonian fashion, “Absolutely not for any political purposes.” A natural follow-up would have been if she requested the unmasking for any other purpose. It didn’t occur to Mitchell. Instead, she followed-up with the related question, “Did you leak?” to which Rice responded, somewhat confusingly, “I leaked nothing to nobody.”

Somehow Rice tried to claim later that her initial statement of having no clue about Nunes’ earlier claim was not at odds with her 16-minute answer about her unmasking efforts.

Rice has a reputation for dishonesty, most notably for her claim that a September 11, 2012, attack in Libya that killed four Americans was a spontaneous result of anger at a video critical of Islam. At the time she said this, the State Department knew well that it was a coordinated terrorist attack.

Rice also falsely claimed that Bowe Bergdahl “served the United States with honor and distinction,” when critics began raising questions about why President Obama traded high-value Taliban detainees and a ransom for the Army deserter. Bergdahl is expected to face a court-martial in August for desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. His desertion was already known at the time Rice made her comments.

2) The Unmasking Was Related To Political Information

When Nunes first alerted the public about his concerns over the unmasking and dissemination, he noted that the information had nothing to do with Russia and had little to no intelligence value. Lake reported that Rice’s multiple unmasking requests were related to reports on Trump transition activities. She is said to have requested the identities of Americans in reports of monitored conversations between foreign officials discussing the Trump transition and in surveilled contact between the Trump team and monitored foreign officials.

“One U.S. official familiar with the reports said they contained valuable political information on the Trump transition such as whom the Trump team was meeting, the views of Trump associates on foreign policy matters and plans for the incoming administration,” according to Lake.

When Rice gave her interview to the friendly journalist Mitchell, she gave a hypothetical example of when it would be appropriate to request an unmasking of a U.S. citizen’s name that was caught up in foreign surveillance. She said that if two foreigners were talking about a terrorist attack to be committed with a U.S. citizen, she would seek out that name. That’s a great hypothetical. And no one is making the claim that Susan Rice sought to unmask a Trump family member or transition member’s name because she believed they were about to set off a bomb. They are making the claim that the information in the reports was politically valuable and related to the Trump transition.

3) Susan Rice Worked In The White House

Rice was known as Obama’s “right-hand woman,” “like a sister,” and was his National Security Advisor throughout his second term.

Weeks ago, diplomat Richard Grennell said that if Rice were involved, that would implicate President Obama:

‘But within that realm there could have easily been a political calculation to listen in, and then to take those transcripts and the summaries of those transcripts, make sure that those in the NSC and the political people – like Ben Rhodes and Susan Rice – make sure that they have them so they can leak them to reporters.’
‘I think that it would be easy to figure out if Susan Rice and Ben Rhodes knew about this,’ he added, ‘because if they did, clearly President Obama knew about it.’

Even if Rice wasn’t working with Obama on this effort or informing him of her activities, her role as National Security Advisor means her unmasking request in this instance doesn’t make sense, according to Andrew McCarthy. If the identities of U.S. citizens had intelligence value, it would have been unmasked by agencies that conduct investigations, he wrote:

Consequently, if unmasking was relevant to the Russia investigation, it would have been done by those three agencies. And if it had been critical to know the identities of Americans caught up in other foreign intelligence efforts, the agencies that collect the information and conduct investigations would have unmasked it. Because they are the agencies that collect and refine intelligence ‘products’ for the rest of the ‘intelligence community,’ they are responsible for any unmasking; and they do it under ‘minimization’ standards that FBI Director James Comey, in recent congressional testimony, described as ‘obsessive’ in their determination to protect the identities and privacy of Americans.

Understand: There would have been no intelligence need for Susan Rice to ask for identities to be unmasked. If there had been a real need to reveal the identities — an intelligence need based on American interests — the unmasking would have been done by the investigating agencies. The national-security adviser is not an investigator. She is a White House staffer. The president’s staff is a consumer of intelligence, not a generator or collector of it. If Susan Rice was unmasking Americans, it was not to fulfill an intelligence need based on American interests; it was to fulfill a political desire based on Democratic party interests.

It is unclear what President Obama knew about Rice’s successful request to unmask information on Trump transition members.

4) This Substantiates Nunes’ Claim

When Nunes told the public that information about the Trump team had been collected, unmasked, and widely disseminated, many media figures questioned the legitimacy of his claim. With the news that no less than Susan Rice requested unmasking of political operatives, it appears that Nunes was onto something.

Also of note, Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democratic member of the committee, had been very upset with Nunes for telling the public and the White House about the reports he’d seen before briefing the committee. However, after Schiff saw the information, he more or less went quiet. He didn’t say the reports were a distraction or unimportant, unlike other Democratic operatives.

5) Civil Liberties Questions Remain

The most frequent defense of the Obama administration’s unmasking efforts is that incidental information collection on U.S. citizens is routine and that requests to unmask that information about U.S. citizens are also routine. When we learn more about the widespread dissemination of such information, we can anticipate that the media and other Democrats will say that such dissemination is more than routine.

When Nunes revealed the collection, unmasking, and dissemination news, he specifically referenced the incidental information collection on members of Congress during the Iran deal. The U.S. spies on foreign leaders, including Benjamin Netanyahu and his advisors. As a result, the Obama administration picked up politically valuable information:

White House officials believed the intercepted information could be valuable to counter Mr. Netanyahu’s campaign. They also recognized that asking for it was politically risky. So, wary of a paper trail stemming from a request, the White House let the NSA decide what to share and what to withhold, officials said. ‘We didn’t say, ‘Do it,’ ‘ a senior U.S. official said. ‘We didn’t say, ‘Don’t do it.’ ‘
Stepped-up NSA eavesdropping revealed to the White House how Mr. Netanyahu and his advisers had leaked details of the U.S.-Iran negotiations—learned through Israeli spying operations—to undermine the talks; coordinated talking points with Jewish-American groups against the deal; and asked undecided lawmakers what it would take to win their votes, according to current and former officials familiar with the intercepts.

The Bush administration also collected and used information on members of Congress this way.

In some ways, this “routine” defense of collecting and disseminating information on political adversaries is the most disconcerting. The federal government’s surveillance powers are intense, from metadata collection to surveillance of communications. Such information is easily weaponized and exceedingly difficult to oversee for accountability purposes.

As one journalist who used to be worried about such things wrote a few years ago:

Instead, the NSA’s approach of grabbing up every bit of information that it can guarantees that the metadata and sometimes even the content of legislator communications are swept up, and will continue to be available to a secretive class of executive branch employees for years to come. There is an obvious potential that this will be exploited with abusive intent–it isn’t like we’ve never had a president try to spy on his political opponents before! But even absent any nefarious motives, incidentally collected data could damage the integrity of our political system.

Members of the media should try to cover, rather than cover up, this aspect of the story. The civil liberties of U.S. citizens are of vital importance and the unmasking of information on them should not be routine, not regular, and not a light matter.

The media have thousands of questions to force answers on regarding this important story. As Ari Fleischer wrote on Twitter:

About Susan Rice: The President’s National Security Advisor has authority to request unmasking of American names from intel agencies.
But in this instance, I am stunned by the lack of curiosity most media have shown about the facts and circumstances present here.
This is a good example of media giving soft coverage to President Obama while they’re hard on the GOP in general & Trump in particular.
Bear in mind, Rice is the official who praised Bowe Bergdahl for his ‘honorable service’ & claimed he was captured ‘on the battlefield.’
She also said two weeks ago in a TV interview that she didn’t know anything about the unmasking.
I would have thought the media would ask tough questions. There is no reason this should be a FOX News and conservative press issue only.
If I were a reporter, I would want to know why Rice sought the unmasking. The FBI is investigating possible Trump collusion, not the WH.
How often did she ask? What reasons did she give? (Each request is tracked and cataloged in writing by the NSA. A procedure exists.)
The info would have been provided ONLY to her as the requester. It is highly classified. Did she share it? With whom? Why?
If she shared it with anyone, why did she do so? What did they do with it? Did they give it to the media or tell media about it?
One of the reasons we live in a polarized era is because too many reporters look the other way at issues like this. Bias is real.
It’s not too late. The press knows how to dig and get answers. I hope they do so.

It’s not just Rice. She wasn’t the only person to request the unmasking of Trump officials regarding politically sensitive operations, and she wasn’t the person who requested that Flynn’s name be unmasked, meaning she requested at least one other Trump associate’s unmasking. We still don’t know who committed the crime of leaking Flynn’s name to the Washington Post. It’s time to start working on covering this story, rather than running interference for anonymous sources.

Why Is CNN Refuting The Susan Rice Story It Refuses To Cover?

By
Gustavo
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For months, CNN has been all over stories that attempt to undermine the legitimacy of Donald Trump’s presidency by suggesting ties to Russia. It would be impossible to catalog the hourly drumbeat of “new” stories on this angle that have gone on for months, despite the lack of named sources or actual evidence.

The cable news outlet heavily pushed the infamous “Russian dossier” story that was quickly harmed by BuzzFeed showing how dubious to the point of laughable the dossier was. The network’s obsession extends to running red-washed photoshopped graphics of Trump advisors in front of St. Basil’s. The Russia scare headlines run into the dozens each and every day.

A couple weeks ago, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee publicly stated that he’d seen dozens of reports that were disseminated widely in the intelligence agencies featuring unmasked information on people close to Trump. He stated that these reports were of little to no intelligence value so that the unmasking was disconcerting. He also stated that these reports had nothing to do with Russia.

Devin Nunes, the Intel chair, wasn’t speaking anonymously. He was being specific about what he saw and what concerned him. Surely you would think the network that breathlessly reported what turned out to be an easily debunked dossier would understand the significance. Surely you would be wrong.

The media that gets upset when they are called the opposition by President Trump rushed to emphasize the really important parts of a story about intelligence collection of political opponents. I joke. They instead focused on the fact that Nunes was a Republican and supported Trump and their opinion that he shouldn’t have told the White House.

Yesterday, the news broke at multiple outlets that the unmasking wasn’t done by a low-level official at an intelligence agency, but by Susan Rice herself. She was President Barack Obama’s National Security Advisor. All of a sudden people began admitting that Nunes was right that information on political opponents had been collected, unmasked, and disseminated, but they turned to downplaying this as significant news.

This is a media-wide problem, but no one has been more shameless about this than CNN, which formerly at least attempted to position itself as politically neutral. CNN has decided to declare the news story “fake” because of this report from former Obama political appointee Jim Sciutto (who was a colleague of Susan Rice at the Obama State Department), who now covers the Republican administration:

Wait, wait, wait, wait. Slow down here. A person close to Rice said she did nothing wrong? Well, this changes … oh wow, this changes … nothing. I mean, people close to Mike Flynn said he did nothing wrong, and they even had quite the case, but I don’t recall Sciutto either running with that angle or believing such an angle “debunked” the coordinated leak campaign against Trump he was a recipient of.

Of course, Susan Rice’s family and friends will rush to her defense. That’s what friends are for. But that doesn’t “debunk” a story. The idea that you wouldn’t pursue this story and all of the interesting questions raised by it is an affront to journalism. But that seems to be the road CNN has chosen to go down. A few examples:


Don Lemon appears to read directly from the first draft of Democratic National Committee talking points:

 

CNN should really kill its chyrons before they kill CNN’s credibility:

My favorite thing about Chris Cillizza was that time he wrote the piece attacking the Trump campaign headlined “Can we just stop talking about Hillary Clinton’s health now?” about two minutes before Hillary Clinton’s limp body was shoved into a van. My second favorite thing is that he’s now “editor-at-large” at CNN. He says of the major Rice news, “Trump just keeps creating smokescreens to mask his Russia problem.”

Anderson Cooper and Jim Sciutto team up here to push the “ginned up as a distraction” talking point:

 

Here’s Jim Sciutto with the Democratic National Committee talking points after they’ve gone through a few rounds of editing from Ben Rhodes. The lack of balance in this report would be funny if it didn’t deal with national security and civil liberties:

 

To make the case, as CNN’s reporters and anchors sometimes try to, that Donald Trump’s comments against the press are intemperate and irresponsible, you simply can’t prove him right. CNN has been given a chance to restore seriously damaged credibility and a reputation that it strongly favors Democrats and strongly opposes anything Donald Trump says or does. They should reconsider whether their turn to hyperpartisanship is in the long term interests of their company or the country. Right now, they’re a joke.

Ari Fleischer offered a few sample questions that real journalists would be interested in asking if they were interested in real journalism:

If I were a reporter, I would want to know why Rice sought the unmasking. The FBI is investigating possible Trump collision [sic], not the WH.

How often did she ask? What reasons did she give? (Each request is tracked and cataloged in writing by the NSA. A procedure exists.)

The info would have been provided ONLY to her as the requester. It is highly classified. Did she share it? With whom? Why?

If she shared it with anyone, why did she do so? What did they do with it? Did they give it to the media or tell media about it?

One of the reasons we live in a polarized era is because too many reporters look the other way at issues like this. Bias is real.

It’s not too late. The press knows how to dig and get answers. I hope they do so.

It takes a little bit more work than reporting what a friend of Susan Rice anonymously says in her defense, or putting “fake news!” in the chyron, but it’s worth the effort.

Planned Parenthood Abortionist Confesses She Would Let Babies Die After They Survived An Abortion

By
Gustavo
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In a new undercover video released by the Center for Medical Progress, a former Planned Parenthood abortionist explains how the abortion provider skirts state law and employees forcibly rip apart fetuses.

At a networking reception at a Planned Parenthood conference, Dr. DeShawn Taylor, a longtime abortionist in a Los Angeles facility and former medical director of Planned Parenthood of Arizona, described to CMP journalists how she would dismember a baby in order to harvest as many viable organs from it as possible. Tiny human organs can be sold to researchers for profit.

“It’s not a matter of how I feel about it coming out intact, but I gotta worry about my staff and people’s feelings about it coming out looking like a baby,” she says.

 

She also talks about how much easier it is to dismember a baby by delivering it in the breech (feet first) position.

“Breach makes it a lot easier because you can, you know, but the thing is, there’s still going to have to be some decompression of the calvarium [skull] for it to come out,” she says.

Altering an abortion procedure in the manner that Taylor describes is considered to be a partial-birth abortion, which is illegal in all states. Her description of this technique mirrors what other Planned Parenthood abortionists have said in previous undercover videos released by CMP.

Federal law states that during an abortion there must be “no alteration of the timing, method, or procedures used to terminate the pregnancy [that is] made solely for the purpose of obtaining the tissue.” If a baby survives an abortion, Arizona state law requires abortionists to take him or her to the hospital in an effort to save the child’s life. In contrast, Taylor explains she would adhere to state law selectively, depending on who was in the room when the baby was ripped out of its mother’s womb.

“In Arizona, if the fetus comes out with any signs of life, we’re supposed to transport it to the hospital,” Taylor says. 

When an investigator then asks Taylor how Planned Parenthood abortionists determine if there are signs of life in a baby to indicate it has survived an abortion, she responds: “Well, the thing is, I mean the key is, you need to pay attention to who’s in the room, right?”

Taylor, who says she routinely aborts babies who are up to 24 weeks into the pregnancy, at which point they can survive outside the womb, said performing an abortion on a baby without using lethal chemicals requires a lot more force.

“My biceps appreciate when the (chemical digoxin) works” to kill the fetus before the procedure, she says. “I remember when I was a [family planning] fellow and I was training, I was like, ‘Oh, I have to hit the gym for this.’”

On Tuesday, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra charged two CMP journalists with 15 criminal counts for recording conversations with abortionists in public places, claiming the recordings violate privacy laws and are not covered under whistleblower statutes. These charges are the latest attempt by Democratic lawmakers to go after CMP for exposing Planned Parenthood’s organ trafficking scheme.

Becerra recently replaced Kamala Harris as California’s attorney general after the latter was elected as a U.S. senator in November. Harris, who has received more than $81,000 from Planned Parenthood, also had the U.S. Department of Justice raid CMP’s David Daleiden’s home last year.

3 Non-Stupid Strategies For Republicans To Reverse Their Obamacare Fail

By
Gustavo
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Coming up with a bill that managed to get no bipartisan support, excited no part of their own party, writing it in secret without members even fully understanding it, then rushing to pass it shows a tone-deafness unlike any since Alanis Morissette.

The most amazing thing about this strategy is that Republicans willingly chose it. There was no urgency, no huge demand, no extenuating circumstances that forced them to rush a bill like this through. They could have just repealed and replaced later, fulfilling their promises to conservatives; or put together a well-thought-out, collaborative replacement bill later this year that reflected a great amount of research and consensus.

Or they could have done nothing, content that Obamacare would continue to implode on its own. Choosing none of these paths is baffling.

So what should they have done differently? Well, like most other parties, the most important thing for Republicans, as with most political parties in the world, is to stay in power. Approaching Obamacare as I describe below would maximize this goal.

That’s not to say it would lead to the best health-care bill possible, or even the best health insurance bill possible, and certainly not the best health care possible. But it would allow Republicans to fulfill a core promise to supporters, retain the legislative majorities necessary during President Trump’s term to pass other important things like deregulation, immigration reform, and tax reform, and likely minimize the long-term political fallout as much as one can when trying to reconfigure such a complex issue as health care.

1. Repeal Obamacare Completely, Effective in 2020

While not exactly a profile in courage, repealing Obamacare with a delayed implementation date serves a few purposes. Firstly, if fulfills promises Republicans have been making for nearly a decade. They have promised that, if they are in power, Obamacare, or any sort of mandated, government health-care, will not be on the books. It shows conservatives they can govern and will, even if kicking and screaming, make the hard choices needed.

It would also do a lot of good politically. While conservatives will, of course, object to any delay, I doubt it would lead to a large-scale revolt since Republicans will have kept their promises. They could also say a grace period is necessary for people to transition from exchange plans, insurance companies to create new plans, to create a new health-care paradigm, etc.

Slowly decommissioning Obamacare would do two other things. Firstly, it would help undercut the obvious arguments from Democrats, of people dying in the streets and the cruelty of people losing health insurance. Anecdotal appeals to emotion are guaranteed to follow any repeal or replacement, no matter how trivial.

When Democrats present these horror stories in the next few years, a party with a good, united message (let’s pretend this applies to the Republican Party) could simply respond that Obamacare is still in force, so all these tragedies are happening under Democrats’ health-care plan and that is precisely why they have repealed it. When insurers leave the exchanges because there is no future in them, most people don’t care about death spirals or lack of future profit opportunities, they just know that their insurer pulled the health plan and Republicans can say it was because of Obamacare’s failure, not in spite of it.

Secondly, because of this affix, very few people would face real consequences until well after the 2018 elections. While the media and their Democratic allies will pound home the horror of Obamacare repeal, most people, especially the vast majority of the country whose policies come through their employers, will notice very little consequence from unchanged policies. This will forestall for Republicans what happened to Democrats in 2010 so they can keep working majorities through President Trump’s term.

2. Immediately Stop Obamacare’s Medicaid Expansion

Medicaid expansion is responsible for most of the newly insured whom Obamacare advocates love to tout. Amazingly, many of these people were already eligible for Medicaid before Obamacare was law. The attention and outreach from Obamacare just moved them into the program.

Therefore, most of the low-hanging fruit is already enrolled in Medicaid. Freezing the program’s new enrollment means nearly everyone who wanted Medicaid now likely has it. No one will be kicked off, the rug won’t be pulled out from states that expanded, and very few people are likely to be negatively affected, especially if the economy continues to pick up steam.

But this will freeze both real and potential cost expansion through Medicaid, helping with the deficit, stopping the digging into our fiscal hole, and making future changes easier.

3. Vote Through Popular, Bipartisan Single-Issue Fixes

The biggest fallacy of this whole experience seems to be that Republicans need to replace a comprehensive monstrosity of a federal health insurance plan with another one. Instead, Republicans should take the much smaller parts of Obamacare people like and Democrats have constantly advocated for, and keep voting on them.

This is probably the least conservative part of my plan but very important politically. I am basing this on continuing Obamacare as-is versus implementing only certain parts, rather than the political bloodbath Republicans will face with a repeal and no plan or effort towards at least some replacement.

What ideas would those be? Well, tort reform and selling insurance across state lines are very popular conservative ideas that would likely sail through Congress and receive very little pushback from the American public. To make this work politically, Republicans would have to work with Democrats and not just put forth a Republican laundry list of preferred policies.

Therefore, things such as keeping people younger than 26 on their parents’ insurance plan should be included. While definitely infantilizing, it is lower-cost and probably wouldn’t be the hill most conservatives or insurance companies would be willing to die on.

Despite likely raising conservative and insurance company, it would likely be necessary to push three longtime themes of Democratic health-care dreams: guaranteed issue, no lifetime limits, and community rating. All are budget busting. All are extremely popular. None is particularly conservative. But not getting behind them in some way guarantees a political disaster in 2018/2020 akin to what Democrats went through a decade earlier. Who knows what new health debacle they will try to foist on the country if returned to power.

These Ideas Would Turn a Political Loss Into a Win

Furthermore, Republicans can make these ideas far more actuarily sound than they are now, keeping the political credit for pushing them while making them less likely to lead to the death spiral we are seeing now. Putting in a grace period after people sign up for insurance to use some or all of it would reduce the financial incentive for people to wait to sign up until they get sick or can exploit with pre-existing conditions.

Could Bill Nelson of Florida explain he voted against community rating, forcing older people to pay more because it might help Trump politically?

Allowing insurance companies to consider more factors than age and smoking in their rate calculation, such as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ decision to change the ratio of age-factor pricing from 3 to 1 to 5 to 1, would also help. Perhaps also raising lifetime and annual limit caps very high and starting a reinsurance or government-funded program for the small number of people that would exceed these new caps would reduce the actuarial risk on that to assist with insurance company pricing.

These policies would put Democrats in a huge political bind, similar to President Trump co-opting some of their issues in his campaign. Do Democrats vote against these things because they are now being proposed by Republicans? Because they aren’t liberal enough? Would Democratic members of Congress and senators in states Trump won be able to rationalize voting against guaranteeing insurance to those with pre-existing conditions after all this time saying it was Republicans who want people to die? Could Bill Nelson of Florida explain he voted against community rating, forcing older people to pay more because it might help Trump politically? Republicans could then be on the attack, hitting Democrats with their own words and threats.

Don’t forget, repealing Obamacare would change political reality. A Democrat landslide in 2018 or 2020 couldn’t just re-impose Obamacare. They would have to go through the entire process to put the law back in place. So while they may try to make it about how the Republican version of these issues is so much worse than what was in place, come 2020 none would be and a vote against them means Democrats, not Republicans, would be on the hook for failure to pass them, limiting the political damage. I find it hard to believe that some red state Democrats wouldn’t join Republicans to pass some of these much smaller bills, which would allow Republicans to claim a mantle of bipartisanship in their health-care bills that Democrats never could.

Republicans should have followed this kind of framework, and they still can. House Speaker Paul Ryan and other Republican leaders can say we tried a comprehensive replacement, the votes weren’t there, so instead we will keep the promise to our constituents, repeal, then try to pass replacement in smaller batches.

The political damage is already done. Now all they can do is try to salvage some goodwill and good policy outcomes as best they can. Repealing the Affordable Care Act, freezing Medicaid growth, then piecemeal replacement is the best possible plan to do so.

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