Cathy McMorris-Rodgers Archives

Cathy McMorris Rogers: Leader or Potted Plant?

(11/15/17) Where’s our representative, Cathy McMorris Rogers?

Here we are with the Republicans in Congress lining up in front of media microphones to denounce an alleged sexual predator, Judge Roy Moore, who thinks he should be their guy in the Senate from Alabama.  Gadsden, Alabama’s pride and joy has the GOP leadership apoplectic at the prospect of having to eject an elected senator like Moore who has a history of prowling malls and high school civics classes in his 30s looking for dates.

Admittedly, this depraved (retired?) predator Roy Moore plans to infect the Senate, not the House of Representatives. But you have to wonder, wouldn’t a powerful woman like Cathy McMorris Rodgers in GOP leader in the House have something to say about the victimization of young girls by a politically powerful man?  Apparently not. Silence.

Cathy McMorris Rogers purports to be the fourth most powerful person in Congress. Yet Wikipedia officially lists the Republican leadership as: Speaker Paul Ryan, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Majority Whip Steve Scalise. Then it moves on to describe the Democratic Party leaders, Nancy Pelosi and Stenny Hoyer.  Oops! They missed McMorris Rodgers, the fourth most influential legislator in the House of Representatives.  All that clout, and yet no mention of Cathy. Hmmmm…

Not to worry.  If you want to find the fourth most powerful Congressperson, you need only adjust your glance during any of the seemingly endless appearances of other Republican leaders on your TV screen.  Just look to the left or right and behind any of these brighter lights of the GOP.  There McMorris is!

That’s’ our Cathy, standing a row or two back, sometimes obscured by a flagpole or potted plant, always with good posture. There’s our McMorris Rodgers with the same forced grimace-cum-smile.  There’s CMR, head nodding approval at just the right moments, politely applauding on cue.

Occasionally we may even see our Congresswoman McMorris Rogers in a solo appearance as she leaves the podium at the beginning of a presser, just before someone the media actually wants to hear from takes to the dais.  Apparently, Cathy is useful for microphone checks.

Often, Cathy McMorris Rodgers is the only distaff member of her caucus in the crowded video frame at media opportunities.  She serves to prove the GOP leadership is not composed entirely of cranky old Southern men with names like Buddy or Trey or Jefferson Beauregard or smug X-Gen refugees from a Nordstrom catalog. McMorris Rodgers sidelined position in this bold new Congressional leadership team is somehow supposed to reflect her power, accumulated via six re-elections, in the Congressional 5th District, a seat the Democratic Party has pretty much written off as unwinnable…until this year.

For the first time in a long while, the Democratic National Committee and the Congressional Campaign Committee are committing resources to taking back the 5th Congressional District, part of a larger effort to recapture the House of Representatives, https://www.rollcall.com/politics/dccc-target-list-gop.

That may account for the recent uptick in canned email updates I have been getting from the our Representative McMorris Rodgers lately.  Often these emails will include a Rogers interview copied from some obscure conservative radio broadcast or podcast or a blurry video from the basement of some Bannon wannabe.

Since McMorris Rodgers painfully boring response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address 2014, (See it here, if you are having trouble sleeping through Donald Trump’s tweet storms:  https://youtu.be/QKWc_mMal1A).

This presentation should make it clear why Congresswoman Rogers has been pretty much the potted plant at GOP media events. As she said in that snoozer, “Who’d have believed a young girl working the drive through at the McDonald’s in Colville….”

She makes a good point. I’ve been to that Colville McDonald lots of times and I can tell you that I don’t remember a single face from that drive-through window, not even CMR’s.

Clearly, voters in Eastern Washington can do better – much better, as it turns out this cycle. This election cycle, voters in Eastern Washington don’t have to pick one tribe or the other. Yes, CMR’s opponent will be running under the Democratic party banner.

Lisa Brown, will be running mostly under her own flag, a bright, inspiring banner of legislative and economic development achievements that helped Eastern Washington survive the Bush-Cheney recession as Majority Leader of the Washington State Senate.

Then she came home to lead the development of a full-on, uniquely conceived medical school for Washington State University.  While in the state senate, Brown pressured, cajoles, smoozed and persuaded her peers to support establishing WSU’s first medical school right here in Spokane.  And due to her leadership as Chancellor of the WSU Spokane campus that developed a truly unique focus on developing general practitioners who will stay in Eastern Washington to practice in the critical, but vanishing, role of family doctor.

Cathy McMorris Rodgers can continue to hide from the white male bullies like Judge Roy Moore.  She is an expert at fading into the background when the political heat rises.

But Lisa Brown didn’t deliver these very real benefits of North Side freeway funding, Kendall Yard development incentives or Spokane’s first complete medical school by hiding behind her male counterparts, smiling complacently in row two or three of every photo op.

At long last it should be abundantly clear to the Eastern Washington voter that we can do better…a lot better by voting for her. She’s the one in the front row, at the microphone, leading, not the potted plant in the background behind that collection of cranky old men.

By Jim Wavada

I just love all the little ole folks in my district number 5
I make sure they have what they need to stay alive
Nothin fancy, as I can’t be givin my money to poor folk
(Truthfully), in our rich circle we laugh and call them a joke
But I am so caring that I would never ever tell them my thots
Many of them seem to be just fine with the little bit they gots
I mean a roof over their heads, green grass and a clear sky
The folks in my district may not have much, but they’ll get by
There are those who still don’t know I’m for the rich and not for them
I have no doubt they’ll get out there and once again, vote me in.
For 11 years I have damaged the people, but they still vote for me
My rich friends and corporations pay me well, for them to never see
How very shrewd, manipulating, untruthful and uncaring I proudly am
I am rich, rich, rich and powerful, and for them I don’t give a damn.

by Pat

Lies

(Letter-to-the-editor) We all know the story of Pinocchio and how his nose grew when he told a lie. Wouldn’t it be great if that would happen to members of Congress every time they lied? Cathy McMorris Rodgers would seek a nose reduction immediately.

Her strategy to climb the political ladder is to spin the truth, or simply not tell it. On the issue of children, she voted to give huge subsidies to the farming industry but voted to cut 8.6 billion from food stamps. Her spin, “By making common-sense reforms…savings are reached without removing anyone from the SNAP program.” There goes her nose.

Cathy’s nose grows when she talks about women. She says she’s for women, then votes against equal pay, against protecting all women from violence, against healthcare and against a minimum wage. There grows her nose.

Concerning healthcare she voted 54 times to prevent healthcare, wants to make Medicare a voucher program and Medicaid a block grant, yet sends out glossy fliers touting she “is fighting to protect Seniors’ healthcare from cutbacks.”  Her nose just continues to grow and grow.

Ms. Patricia Bates

Clarkston, WA

Governor McMorris-Rodgers in 2016?

Jerry Cornfield, a columnist for the Herald, suggest that Cathy McMorris Rodgers may run for Governor of Washington against Inslee in 2016.  Can ya imagine what the State would look like if she did?  She would probably try to do away with basic health, the Department of Ecology would likely be cut in half, and birth control less accessible. 

Will McMorris or someone else run?

The issue of whether she or some one else would run for the Governor of Washington in 2016 is discussed in more detail at OurnextGovernor

Washington Governor Jay Inslee will be up for re-election in 2016, and the presumption is that he will run for re-election. However, who is likely to be the Republican nominee that challenges him for Governor of the State of Washington?  . . . Jerry Cornfield, Herald Columnist, listed some of his guesses about who will run for Governor of the State of Washington against Inslee. He quotes Rob Mckenna as saying he will not run a second time. 

Jerry Cornfield, Herald Columnist, says this about McMorris.

She is in her fifth term and is chairwoman of the GOP caucus making her the highest ranking Republican woman in Congress. She enjoys the national stage more than that of Olympia where she spent four terms as a state lawmaker. That might be reason enough for her to abstain from the governor’s race.

In the end I believe that Cathy McMorris Rodgers will stay in the U.S. House for at least another ten years.  It has been very good for her career and advancement in the hierarchy of the Republican Party.  However, I suspect that her party advanced her to the Chair of the House Republican Conference to be their token woman in their leadership, and I don’t think they will advance her any farther in the House leadership. The Republican Party and especially Republicans in Congress are still too much of an old boy network. When she wakes up to this, perhaps the Congresswomen will consider a run for Governor of the State of Washington, but it will probably not be in 2016.

We launched a website against Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rodgers called We-Can-Do-Better.org.  On it, we tear down the myth that she is a citizen legislator. Her popular appeal is the idea that she is just a down-home girl from the fruit stands of Eastern Washington who is doing a short stint in Congress.  She is not.  Cathy McMorris-
Rodgers is career politician who has been intricately involved in Republican Party politics to facilitate the Wall Street and Corporate take over of America.

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