It’s time to recall CMR

When I read the Jan. 6 news that Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers was siding with President Trump’s effort to reverse the 2020 presidential election results, a historic moment flashed before me. It was the 1954 image of U.S. Army attorney Joseph Welch challenging another Trump-like demagogue, Wisconsin Republican Sen. Joseph McCarthy, for destroying the lives of American citizens in his Communist witch hunt. “Have you no sense of decency?” Welch pressed McCarthy. That urgent question led to McCarthy’s congressional censure and political demise a few months later.

Does McMorris Rodgers have a sense of decency? She doesn’t get a pass for belatedly reversing her stance after a Trump mob staged an insurrection that led to the deaths of five people and temporarily halted the Biden/Harris vote certification. According to presidential historian Michael Beschloss, the Jan. 6 chaos in Washington D.C. was America’s first domestic terrorist attack incited by a sitting president.

McMorris Rodgers has crossed a red line. Her rhetoric encouraged this attempted coup by repeatedly attacking the validity of a presidential election that courts and election officials have concluded was conducted fairly and accurately. Until the violence hit, she was calling on Congress to overrule American voters. She should be recalled from office, along with other Trump acolytes who participated in this unprincipled and deeply dangerous affront to our Constitution. She has violated her oath to “preserve and protect” that sacred document, and she no longer deserves the honor of representing us.

Karen Dorn Steele

Spokane