House GOP leader McMorris Rodgers faces Obamacare backlash
SPOKANE, Wash. — Cathy McMorris Rodgers got an earful about health care on a recent Friday afternoon knocking on doors in the suburban Balboa neighborhood of Spokane. McMorris Rodgers, the top-ranking Republican woman in the House facing the toughest reelection contest of her career, heard one resident complain his wife’s monthly insurance premiums have swelled to over $700 per month. Another agonized about affording long-term care for her elderly mother. Yet another worried whether Medicare would go bankrupt.
In past election cycles, the seven-term lawmaker might have had an easy talking point: Repeal and replace Obamacare. But like other Republicans who suddenly find themselves on the defensive on health care, she avoids mentioning her party’s long-standing pledge to eliminate the 2010 law.
McMorris Rodgers is not just another endangered Republican facing a tough race. She’s No. 4 in the House Republican leadership — and the only woman. The fact that she’s now steering clear of one of the GOP’s core tenets about repealing Obamacare shows just how treacherous the health care issue has become on the campaign trail. A mother of three, including a child with Down syndrome, McMorris Rodgers is often portrayed as a softer, more compassionate face of a party that’s tacked harder right in the age of Trump. But she’s also the sole Washington state lawmaker to have voted to repeal Obamacare last year.
Now, she faces attack ads spotlighting that vote, not to mention lawn signs imploring voters to “repeal McMorris Rodgers, not our health care.” And while McMorris Rodgers talks about the importance of insurance protections for people like her son who have pre-existing conditions, she voted for a bill that health experts largely agree would have eroded those protections.
“She’s still defending that vote,” said her Democratic rival Lisa Brown, a former state Senate majority leader with health care bona fides, including helping to start a medical school in eastern Washington. “She’s still saying, ‘Well, people just didn’t understand our vision.’ It’s so much not in the best interests of this region and the whole state of Washington that I had to conclude she’s either really out of touch with the district … or has just decided to choose the party over the district.”
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/10/17/mcmorris-rodgers-obamacare-backlash-850496
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