Republicans Avoided Voters Like the Plague Over the Fourth of July Weekend

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GOP politicians kept a very low profile over the Fourth of July weekend, giving people few opportunities to organize protests or mass demonstrations over their deeply unpopular healthcare bill.

As Fusion reported last week, almost none of the Republican lawmakers at the center of the healthcare disaster would disclose where they’d be hosting events or making appearances for Independence Day. As it turned out, barely any of them showed their faces in a place where they’d be confronted with any hostility.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), for instance, appeared at a pre-scheduled event in McAllen, TX. But dissenting voices were reduced to protesters holding signs behind a fence outside the venue, The Washington Post reported. Mitch McConnell also managed to outmaneuver protesters with Planned Parenthood at an event for the Hardin County Republicans, where he delivered a signature soundbite about Obamacare being a “disaster.” Before the weekend, his schedulers in Kentucky declined to share the Senate Majority Leader’s schedule of public events with Fusion.

As The Post also reported, Republicans who have opposed the healthcare bill also took steps to minimize the stakes with their public appearances:

Apart from Cruz, all appeared in fairly remote areas; [Lisa] Murkowski and [Susan] Collins stopped by island towns far from the states’ population centers.

Heller, the only Republican up for reelection next year in a state President Trump lost, made a horseback appearance in Ely, Nev., the largest town in a rural county that gave Trump a 53.5-point landslide. Reporters who made the trek heard something that has become rare: Well-wishers asking a senator to vote for the Republican bill. (Heller opposed the first version but is being lobbied to vote for a revision.)

Not all heroes wear capes.

WHAT ELSE?

• An NYPD officer was shot and killed while sitting in his police vehicle this morning in the Bronx in what’s being called an “unprovoked attack.”
• NPR spent the Fourth of July tweeting out the text of the Declaration of Independence word by word, and Trump supporters lost their shit.
• Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA), the congressman with a fondness for posting videos of himself deriding Muslims and wearing muscle shirts, is back with a new release, this time a selfie video shot at Auschwitz where he promotes homeland security and says the U.S. military needs to be “invincible.”