OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2015
Right-wing cabal is on the right track in Congress
S
ome think the Freedom Caucus in the
U.S. House is an evil cabal of polit-
ical outlaws, while in other circles they
are patriots trying to squeeze a little de-
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of Congress.
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but then remembered, “Hey, my friend
Cynthia’s one of those nuts. Why am I mak-
ing negative assumptions about her?”
This gang of 40 or so U.S. representatives
is blamed for the pending retirement of House
Speaker John Boehner, residual doubts about
who will be able to replace him and a linger-
ing threat of missing national debt payments
or temporarily shutting
down parts of the gov-
ernment. To most here
on the West Coast, all
this is a tedious and eco-
nomically
dangerous
distraction from the job
of running the country.
Rep. Raúl Labrador,
R-Idaho, and Rep. Cyn-
thia Lummis, R-Wyo.,
are the only Northwest
Matt
members of the caucus.
Winters
They both were among
those who attended a
pitch Tuesday from a potential candidate for
speaker, a position that is third in line for the
presidency.
“I’m not sure that (prospective speaker)
Paul Ryan could walk on water today,” Lum-
Courtesy of U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi
mis said after the meeting, “but give him 10
U.S. Rep. Cynthia Lummis, second from left, is a member of the Freedom Caucus in Congress, the group that has roiled GOP leadership
days.”
After knowing her since 1983, I’m pretty in recent weeks. Above, she is shown attending a University of Wyoming event with the state’s U.S. senators and two constituents.
sure Cynthia can’t walk on water either. She
was a year ahead of me in law school. We later
ran an unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign
for Mary Mead, mother of Wyoming’s current
Gov. Matt Mead. Cynthia came away with
invaluable lessons on how to win a statewide
campaign, while I was so disgusted by the
whole process I moved to Seattle and became
an independent.
C
ynthia’s a lovely person — bright, fun-
ny, and moderate in her personal views
— though being a wealthy rancher does to
some extent preordain her to being a polit-
ical right-winger. I’d happily give her a hug
in Cheyenne or the corridors of the Rayburn
building in D.C.
A national reporter recently said much
the same of the Freedom Caucus as a whole:
that they are among the most friendly and in-
telligent people you’ll meet in Congress, not
hateful radicals but libertarians who don’t like
being pushed around. Progressive people dis-
agree with them about many things, but we
wouldn’t think them mean.
An Associated Press story this week de-
scribed Cynthia’s thinking about the speaker
standoff:
“‘Recent speakers, both Republicans
and Democrats, have exercised their power
through rewarding allies and punishing en-
emies among their colleagues in Congress,’
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worthy of complete rejection.’”
She elaborated, “When I look for a speaker
candidate, it’s not going to have anything to
do with whether they’re conservative or mod-
erate, or whether they’re a reformer or estab-
lishment in terms of their philosophy about
legislation. Rather, it’s going to be their phi-
losophy about leadership. Are they willing to
turn their backs on the command and control,
reward and punishment system of leadership,
and return to system where committees work
their will?”
It’s all too easy
to ‘other-ize’
anybody we
disagree with.
(Like Cynthia and me, Baird also earned an
advanced degree from the University of Wyo-
ming in the mid-1980s.)
A big reason why voters tend to like their
own congressional representatives, even as we
loath the institution to which they belong, is
that most of them are nice, smart, ambitious —
the sort of people who have striven for success
since high school. Being elected to Congress is,
in effect, one of the top prizes in life’s populari-
ty contest. Then they get to D.C. and are expect-
ed to defer completely to agendas set by a few
party leaders, big contributors, union bosses
and other nearly invisible “lever-pullers.”
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encing legislation and aiding constituents in
our relationships with federal agencies. Even
the least consequential of congressmen and
women still are well paid, fawned over and
pampered. But beneath it all can be sensed
a feeling of self-loathing, of having won the
political Olympics only to learn the winner’s
medal is made of brass-colored plastic.
lthough some doubt there ever was a
In modern America where we self-segre-
Golden Age when Congress actually gate based on political beliefs, it’s all too easy
functioned as an institution, Cynthia’s views to “other-ize” anybody we disagree with. If the
don’t sound so different from those of former country is going to survive in its current form,
Washington state Rep. Brian Baird, who came structural reforms must be forged in Congress.
to feel marginalized as a Democrat when his America doesn’t needed a second revolution.
party controlled the House. Baird’s ideas for But Congress needs a bunch of them, across
institutional reform didn’t sit well with na- the political spectrum.
tional Democratic leaders who regard rank-
—M.S.W.
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Matt Winters is editor and publisher of the
pawns, expected to move as a single mass in Chinook Observer and Coast River Business
whatever direction they are instructed to go. Journal.
Cliff Owen/AP Photo
House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio kisses Rep. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., before
administering a ceremonial re-enactment of the House oath-of-office Jan. 6, on Cap-
itol Hill in Washington.
A
Mary Clare Jalonick/AP Photo
Republican Cynthia Lummis, right, campaigns in a grocery store in Lander, Wyo., in
2008. Lummis was in a close race with Democrat Gary Trauner to fill Dick Cheney’s
former House seat.
Open forum
Call the governor
H
ow many meetings have you
attended that start with, “We
are here to listen to your input”? Oh
come on now, it’s OK, and won’t
be cheating if you count the Feder-
al Energy Regulatory Commission
(FERC) in your total.
Clearly, Oregon Gov. Kate
Brown wants to hear your opinion,
because there is a phone number,
503-378-4582, and a real staff per-
son to record your comments. You
are probably thinking, “What am I
going to call the governor about?”
Glad you asked. How about the
fact that 68 percent (no that’s not a
typo, it really was nearly 7 out of
10) of Clatsop County voters said
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natural gas (LNG) pipeline in the
jaw droppingly beautiful Lower Co-
lumbia area we call our home. Peri-
od. And that wasn’t just Warrenton
and Astoria voters, it was the whole
county.
Now comes Oregon LNG, who
wants to build an LNG terminal
on the Skipanon peninsula that is
so big, it will cost enough money
to wear out your calculator bat-
teries, and will release 2.6 billion
tons of carbon monoxide, plus
methane gas, annually into the air
we breathe. Wow. That sounds im-
portant enough to me to be a 2016
campaign election issue — cough,
cough.
So how else would this terminal
affect our daily lives? In all likeli-
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nancially with decreased property
values and increased insurance rates
for homes and businesses in the
huge blast zone around the terminal.
It would also likely reduce rev-
enue from sport and commercial
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Astoria with the hundreds and hun-
dreds of trucks transporting con-
struction material through down-
town, from Tongue Point to the
Skipanon, for four years.
In addition, it would put all
Lower Columbia residents at seri-
ous risk because of the earthquake/
tsunami zone location. If a person
doesn’t care about that, they should
probably check their pulse to see if
their heart is still beating.
For goodness’ sake, Oregon LNG
doesn’t even have land to build on,
because the court ruled that the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers has an
easement on that property.
Ask Gov. Brown to use her au-
thority, the Coastal Zone Manage-
ment Act and the Clean Air Act to
stop this project. No matter how hard
anyone tries, you cannot mitigate a
major earthquake/tsunami, global air
pollution, the extinction of a salmon
run or the will of the people.
So whip out those cell phones and
call Gov. Brown again and again and
again at 503-378-4582 — there is no
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you should feel much better after
you have had your say. Some people
even say it’s therapeutic.
So come on, folks. This is our
democracy. Let’s make it work the
way it’s supposed to.
CARL DOMINEY
Astoria
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