McMorris Rodgers Delivers GOP Talk of Empowerment

Un­der­scor­ing themes of fam­ily, per­son­al em­power­ment, and de­cision-mak­ing over “a gov­ern­ment that de­cides for you,” Rep. Cathy Mc­Mor­ris Rodgers offered an al­tern­ate Re­pub­lic­an ver­sion of the “no dream is too big” prom­ise in the of­fi­cial re­but­tal to Pres­id­ent Obama’s State of the Uni­on ad­dress.

The highest-rank­ing House Re­pub­lic­an wo­man — and the moth­er of three young chil­dren, all born dur­ing her time in Con­gress — Mc­Mor­ris Rodgers, 44, was tapped to de­liv­er on na­tion­al TV a fresh con­trast to the pres­id­ent’s mes­sage. The se­lec­tion of the Wash­ing­ton state law­maker also provided push­back to por­tray­als of a polit­ic­al party at war with wo­men.

And Mc­Mor­ris Rodgers’s per­form­ance went bey­ond simply lay­ing out gen­er­al ele­ments of a GOP agenda that, she stressed, would bet­ter tackle the na­tion’s job­less rates “without more spend­ing, gov­ern­ment bail­outs, and red tape,” and would im­prove edu­ca­tion, re­duce en­ergy costs, and cut taxes.

She touched on some highly per­son­al areas as well. As re­cently as Novem­ber, she and her hus­band, Bri­an Rodgers, de­livered their third child. But it was their first child — Cole, born in 2007 with Down syn­drome — that she ref­er­enced in a cri­ti­cism of the Af­ford­able Care Act.

“Cole and his sis­ters, Grace and Brynn, have only made me more de­term­ined to see the po­ten­tial in every hu­man life — that wheth­er we are born with an ex­tra 21st chro­mo­some or without a dol­lar to our name — we are not defined by our lim­its, but by our po­ten­tial,” she said.

“Re­pub­lic­ans be­lieve health care choices should be yours, not the gov­ern­ment’s,” she said. “And that wheth­er you’re a boy with Down syn­drome or a wo­man with breast can­cer, you can find cov­er­age and a doc­tor who will treat you.”

And her ef­forts to de­liv­er a gentler view of Re­pub­lic­ans and their agenda went bey­ond that. For in­stance, the Re­pub­lic­an Con­fer­ence chair (the fourth-highest elec­ted post in the House GOP caucus) also talked about what she said were “more im­port­ant mo­ments” than those oc­cur­ring in the Oval Of­fice or the House cham­ber.

“They’re in your homes,” she said. “Kiss­ing your kids good night. Fig­ur­ing out how to pay the bills. Get­ting ready for to­mor­row’s doc­tor’s vis­it. Wait­ing to hear from those you love serving in Afgh­anistan, or search­ing for that big job in­ter­view….

“To­night the pres­id­ent made more prom­ises that sound good, but won’t solve the prob­lems ac­tu­ally fa­cing Amer­ic­ans. We want you to have a bet­ter life. The pres­id­ent wants that too,” Mc­Mor­ris Rodgers said. “But we part ways when it comes to how to make that hap­pen.”

Against this back­drop, she said, the GOP’s vis­ion is one that em­powers and trusts people to make their own de­cisions, “not a gov­ern­ment that de­cides for you,” and that it is Re­pub­lic­ans who are work­ing to close the “gap we all face: between where you are and where you want to be.”