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Where’s CMR’s resolve?
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers has landed on the wrong side of history with her Dec. 18 vote against the impeachment of Donald Trump. Our democracy is at stake in a battle between an imperial president, a cowardly GOP and congressional oversight powers.
This genuflecting Trump supporter lost the city of Spokane to Democratic challenger Lisa Brown by 17 points in November 2018. Unfortunately, Spokane County and the rural enclaves of the 5th Congressional District carried her to re-election.
Her performance in the Trump impeachment saga shows once again that she doesn’t deserve the honor of representing us. Her eagerness to support a lawless president is evidence that she cares more about her own safe seat than honoring the U.S. Constitution, whose creators predicted the rise of despots like Trump and installed safeguards to contain them.
Where is her outrage against Trump’s decision to withhold congressional funding to our ally Ukraine while pressuring Ukraine’s president to investigate Democrat Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 election?
Where is her resolve to defend the Constitution’s separation of powers doctrine, which grants Congress equal standing with the executive branch and confers oversight powers - including impeachment - to the House of Representatives?
Her cowardly acquiescence to Trump is shameful. Unlike former Republican stalwarts like Sen. Margaret Chase Smith, who stood up to Joseph McCarthy, and Maryland’s Rep. Lawrence Hogan, who voted for the impeachment of Richard Nixon, McMorris Rodgers is part of a new generation of Republicans who put their party above the nation’s welfare.
Karen Dorn Steele
Spokane