Timothy Egan (NYT): When Biography Trumps Substance
Only the snarkiest would not be open to the likable life story of Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the Eastern Washington politician who gave the “official” Republican response to the president’s State of the Union speech. She’s a farm girl from a big empty county just north of here, first in her family to attend college, mother of three, a rare woman in the retrograde men’s club of her party’s leadership.
Her district, poorer than the west side of the state, with much of the broken-family, broken-promise poverty of white rural America, is in real trouble. But the policy prescriptions of McMorris Rodgers have nothing to offer these people. Through her, you can see what happens when biography trumps substance in politics.
…. it would seem surprising that McMorris Rodgers voted to drastically cut food aid last year, and joined her party in resisting emergency benefits to the unemployed. She has been a leading strategist in the unrelenting Republican attempt to kill the Affordable Care Act.
And yet, in her district, people are flocking to Obamacare — well beyond the national average. Though she has been screening town hall meetings to highlight only critics of the new law, her constituents are doing something entirely different in making their personal health decisions.
More here: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/31/opinion/egan-when-biography-trumps-substance.html?_r=0
Found on the Obama Diary
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