Sonoma County Republicans celebrate President Trump’s first 100 days

Those gathered in Santa Rosa Wednesday evening over cake and champagne said the administration was off to a successful start.|

Ahead of President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office, Sonoma County Republicans gathered in Santa Rosa over “cake and champagne” Wednesday evening to celebrate what they said was a successful start to the current administration.

“He’s created more jobs. He has actually taken a position of world leadership that our last president totally gave up,” said Dave Saluan, a retired police officer who lives in Petaluma.

Salaun was among several dozen people who attended the celebration, which was organized by the Sonoma County Republican Party. The event was held in the conference room of an office complex on Guerneville Road, near Coddingtown Mall.

The event featured a keynote speech by Tom Del Beccaro, former chairman of the California Republican Party and a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in 2016. Del Beccaro, an author and lawyer, began his talk with a statement that drew enthusiastic applause.

“I have four words for you,” he said. “Supreme Court Justice Gorsuch.”

Trump’s appointment of Gorsuch, a judge Del Beccaro said will uphold the Constitution, was among four things he wanted in a Trump presidency.

The other three, he said, were a successful foreign policy, successful replacement of Obamacare and tax and regulatory reform.

Beccaro said Trump delivered on the Supreme Court nomination, and Democrats’ claims that Trump would destabilize the world are proving false.

What remains, he said, is for Trump and Republicans in Congress to make good on their promise to fix the “health care delivery system” and enact major tax and regulatory reform that would reinvigorate the country’s economic growth to 3.5 percent from the current 1.8 percent.

The GOP’s performance in the 2018 midterm elections depends on the party’s ability to deliver on these key legislative tasks, Del Beccaro said.

For much of his talk, Del Beccaro set out to describe why the country was so divided.

He said the country’s divisions were directly related to the size of government coupled with anemic economic growth.

Government spending, federal, state and local, has become too large a share of the nation’s economy -currently $6 trillion. When that happens, he said, competing interests vie for the “spoils,” whether that’s private industry or government agencies and lobbyists on both sides.

Less reliance on government spending and greater economic growth in the private sector, he said, would result in less social conflict.

“If you want to reduce division, you have to reduce the size of government,” he said.

On health care, the GOP must deliver as promised, he said.

“If the Republicans want to do well in 2018, they have to improve the health care delivery system,” he said.

For John Muehsam of Occidental, Trump has been doing a good job. Muehsam and others said his first 100 days have been unfairly judged by the media.

Muehsam, for example, rejected the description of Trump as having backed down on funding for the wall between the United States and Mexico.

“I object to the phrase ‘backed off,’?” he said. “That implies that he has backed off the wall, period. What he has done - he’s accepting for the moment a budget that does not fund the wall at this time so that he can get other things in the budget that he deems important.”

You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 707- 521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @renofish.

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