How do I deal with the heat? Violence. In 4.02.0 (and I doubt this was changed in 4.02.1), you only need to defeat three squads of soldiers in order to repel a siege. So long as you engage the weakened squads, you will almost never get shot at, much less lose a Liberal. You can harvest the M16s and ArmyBodyArmor you get from the dead Soldiers, twiddle your thumbs for two weeks, and wait for another attack to come. This can get tedious, however, so what I do is relocate after each siege to a different safehouse. The government will waste its energy raiding the place you've just emptied before shrugging its shoulders and asking, "Where the hell did they go!?"
In my current game, my safehouse has 93% Heat and 90% Secrecy; it's a fully upgraded (sans Liberal Guardian) abandoned warehouse the Conservatives have not yet raided. I've been there for... uh, about a month, I'd say, and all of the laws are still Arch-Conservative, so they have perfectly good reason to attack:
The list of crimes the Conservatives have pinned to my founder. The other nine non-sleeper Liberals have a similar criminal record.
Certainly, I am entertained by looking at other people discuss and implement their Liberal Hierarchies, but I would rather assemble a godawful Gang Leader founder with the worst stats I could generate, execute the starting Gang Members in order to lose Heart, and attempt to win the game from there than make a lengthy chain-of-command. I'll leave the funsies to someone else. =P
-EDIT: Typo! OH NOES.