Of rainbows and rallies
Message of dissent for Mike Pence, as Donald Trump takes victory lap
The voting’s over but cries of “Lock her up!” and “Build the wall!” were heard again this week, and one Washington neighborhood had a message for the incoming vice president. Catch up on these tidbits and other political news you might have missed with these highlights from Trail Guide, the go-to political blog at latimes.com.
Rainbow flags greet Pence in Washington
Vice President-elect Mike Pence’s temporary neighbors have sent a notso-welcome message criticizing his stance on gay rights.
Residents in northwest Washington, D.C., near where Pence is renting a house, have begun flying LGBT pride flags from their homes.
“A respectful message showing, in my case, my disagreement with some of his thinking,” neighbor Ilse Heintzen told WJLA-TV.
As governor of Indiana, Pence signed a measure into law last year that would have allowed businesses to reject gay and lesbian customers on grounds of religious freedom. He later signed a revised version of the law prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation. As a congressman in 2010, Pence criticized efforts to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell” to let gays serve openly in the military.
Pence’s rental is listed at $6,000 per month. According to WJLA, “roughly a half-dozen pride flags” fly on the block, with more to come.
Pence will move into the official vice presidential mansion at the Naval Observatory, also in northwest Washington, after Vice President Joe Biden moves out. — Colleen Shalby
Trump remains in campaign mode
The election had been over for more than three weeks when President-elect Donald Trump took the stage Thursday night in Cincinnati, but inside the arena it was like the campaign had never ended.
Supporters chanted familiar slogans about Hillary Clinton (“Lock her up!”) and illegal immigration (“Build the wall!”). They booed the media when Trump criticized what he called “the very dishonest press.”
The rally was, familiarly, interrupted by protesters, whom Trump mocked as they were escorted out by saying they were going “back home to Mom.”
Trump said he was going to discuss an “action plan” for his administration, but he seemed more animated regaling the crowd with a play-by-play of how television news covered election night. He relished the surprise on anchors’ faces as it became clear that the “blue wall” of normally Democratic states would fall to Trump, handing him a victory.
“We shattered that sucker,” he said. “That poor wall is busted up.”
Trump delivered a strongly nationalistic message and repeated his pledge to put “America first.”
“There is no global anthem, no global currency,” Trump said. “We pledge allegiance to one flag, and that flag is the American flag.”
Although Trump has not expressed regret for some of the racially charged rhetoric of his campaign, he pledged to “find common ground” as president and said, “We spend too much time focusing on what divides us.”
“We condemn bigotry and prejudice in all of its forms,” he said. — Chris Megerian
Electoral College win far from landslide
Trump’s tweet that he would have won the popular vote but for “millions” of illegal voters was not based on fact. There is no proof backing up his statement, and voting researchers uniformly dismissed it as false.
In his tweet, Trump wrote: “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”
Also problematic was his claim in the same tweet that his victory was one of the rare landslides in American political history.
A study of electoral vote results by John J. Pitney, an author and professor of government at Claremont McKenna College, shows that Trump resides on the lower end of the electoral vote scale.
He won 56.97% of the electoral votes up for grabs by virtue of his state wins. That places him 46th out of the 58 elections since George Washington’s era, Pitney found.
In 38 elections, the winners exceeded 60% of the vote, a lopsided verdict by voters.
Clear landslides were won most recently by Ronald Reagan: In 1984, he won 97.58% of electoral votes, and in 1980 he won 90.89%. — Cathleen Decker
The GOP’s timetable to repeal Obamacare
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy cast doubt on whether the Republicanled Congress would be ready to repeal Obamacare by inauguration day, as some in Trump’s transition team have suggested could happen in a special session.
But the Bakersfield Republican said GOP lawmakers would try to start as soon as possible on what he acknowledged would be a complicated two-step process to repeal and replace Obamacare that will consume much of 2017 and beyond.
Their plan involves retroactively passing a fiscal 2017 budget in the early weeks of Trump’s term. Such a maneuver would give Republicans the ability to unwind President Obama’s signature domestic program with a simple majority vote, without facing a Democratic filibuster. Replacing the Affordable Care Act would come later, and likely extend into fiscal 2018.
“Once it’s repealed you will have hopefully fewer people playing politics and everybody coming to the table to find the best policy,” McCarthy told reporters Tuesday. “I just want to make sure we get it right.”
McCarthy cautioned that repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act would be more complicated than simply sending a bill to the White House for the president’s signature.
Instead, Congress will need to insert special repeal instructions as part of the wonky budget reconciliation process. And that will take time, he said.
McCarthy said replacing Obamacare would be even tougher than repealing it. Even though Republicans have promised their own healthcare law, they have never been able to produce an agreed-upon alternative.
To gather ideas, McCarthy said he would solicit advice from governors and state insurance commissioners.
Since Congress did not pass a 2017 budget for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, they hope to retroactively approve one in the weeks ahead so they can include the first part of the special instructions needed to repeal the program. But he doubts that will be completed by the time Trump takes office.
“I don’t think you can do it before [Jan.] 20th,” he said. “There’s only so many legislative days.” — Lisa Mascaro
Quote of the week
“You are a terrific guy.” — Donald Trump, in a phone call with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif