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GOP Tag

Emails of four top National Republican Congressional Committee aides were hacked, according to a Politico report published Tuesday. For several months, the NRCC email accounts of these four top aides was surveilled. The data breach was discovered by an NRCC vendor in April who immediately alerted the cybersecurity team. The FBI was also informed of the hack, reports Politico.

You hear it everywhere right now: the Republican Party is united as never before. Mitch McConnell was pretty witty about it: “I want to thank the mob because they’ve done the one thing we were having trouble doing, which was energizing the base.”

Yesterday New Hampshire had a primary, and Eddie Edwards won the GOP nomination for the US House of Representatives from the state's 1st Congressional District:
Eddie Edwards, who was endorsed by Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, defeated six Republican opponents in the 1st Congressional District, which covers the eastern half of the state. A Navy veteran who also served as enforcement chief for the state liquor commission, Edwards is the second African-American to be nominated to a U.S. House seat in New Hampshire.

Republican Troy Balderson has a 50.2% lead in Ohio's 12th District special election over Democrat Danny O'Connor, who has 49.3% of the vote, to take over for Republican Rep. Pat Tiberi. The Republicans have held this seat for decades, but the Democrats saw an opportunity to give life to their supposed "blue wave" and poured an insane amount of money and attention into flipping this seat. Despite the vote count, both sides have claimed victory on this one. Yes, even the Democrats. They got so close, but does it matter? Should the Republicans be worried that it took a slim margin to win a historically Republican seat?

An Iowahawk tweet is frequently posted at Instapundit, which notes that the press decides which stories to cover . . . with a pillow, until they stop moving. As the dust settles from the 2018 primary season and we head into the general election phase, I thought it might be fun to highlight a few items being smothered by our media related to their treasured progressive narratives.

The splashy headlines in the MSM all talk about how the House Freedom Caucus killed the farm bill in the House today since those members demanded the lawmakers vote on immigration legislation first. But it's a good thing this bill died because of the non-sexy components the MSM won't touch. The lawmakers filled the bill with so much pork that it'd shock anyone that agriculture was the main subject.

Leftist billionaire Tom Steyer has made no secret of his desire to see President Trump impeached, and he has been putting his billions where his mouth is. His latest ad-buy via his Next Gen PAC goes beyond attacking Trump and demonizes every left-leaning, centrist, and right-leaning American who votes Republican in this country.  Given Democrats' massive, humiliating losses at every level of government, that's a lot of people. The "Mother's Day" ad warns that the GOP is turning kids into misogynist, thieving, Trump-supporting bullies who march for white supremacy.

Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO) has represented Colorado's 5th district for six years, but it looks like that may come to an end. The Colorado Supreme Court kicked him off the GOP primary ballot after the justices "ruled that a petition gatherer working for Lamborn's campaign did not live in the state at the time." That made the signatures invalid and placed Lamborn "below the threshold for ballot access."

The GOP has decided to use failed Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton as a main part of its midterm strategy in order to keep control of Congress this year. From Fox News:
Even if she avoids the spotlight moving forward, the Republican Party plans to evoke her early and often in key congressional races, particularly in regions Trump won, which feature most of the midterm season’s competitive races. Internal polling and focus groups conducted by Republican campaigns find that Clinton remains one of the most unpopular high-profile Democrats in the nation, second only to Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader.

Earlier this year, Kemberlee blogged about former Massachusetts governor and former GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney announcing his Senate run in Utah.  Romney is running to fill the Utah Senate seat being vacated by Senator Orrin Hatch (R). He failed to secure the Republican nomination yesterday and will now run in Utah's June primary against Utah state representative Mike Kennedy.

The drama is almost over as the Republicans have unveiled their tax bill. They are also closer to victory since Sen. Bob Corker (TN) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) have decided to back the bill, leaving the Senate with only two undecided Republicans. From The New York Times:
On Friday, as Republicans released details about the final bill, it became clear that the agreement would provide deep and longstanding tax cuts for businesses, while providingslightly more generous tax breaks to low- and middle-income Americans byreducing some benefits for higher earners.

The GOP in Congress are no doubt desperate for a victory after the failed Obamacare repeal attempts, but that desperation could come back and bite them. They want to pass the tax bill before Christmas, but all the rushing and late nights have caused errors. From The Washington Post:
Questionable special-interest provisions have been stuffed in along the way, out of public view and in some cases literally in the dead of night. Drafting errors by exhausted staff are cropping up and need fixes, which must be tackled by congressional negotiators working to reconcile competing versions of the legislation passed separately by the House and the Senate.

In one short year, the Republican majority in the U. S. House of Representatives has shifted from seemingly safe to somewhat in jeopardy.  The Democrats have an uphill battle in the Senate, defending 25 seats to the GOP's nine, but a number of circumstances and Tuesday's election results have improved Democrats' chances of retaking the House in 2018. It doesn't appear that Democrats are gaining because of anything they've accomplished; instead, Republicans appear to be losing ground because they have failed to accomplish key goals on which they campaigned throughout the Obama presidency.  From repealing ObamaCare to building the wall to tax and legal immigration reform, Congressional Republicans are disappointing the base who elected them to office on the strength of their promises, promises it has become increasingly clear too many had no intention of fulfilling.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) has told The Dallas Morning News that he will retire at the end of his term:
"Today I am announcing that I will not seek reelection to the US Congress in 2018. Although service in Congress remains the greatest privilege of my life, I never intended to make it a lifetime commitment, and I have already stayed far longer than I had originally planned," Hensarling wrote to supporters today.