In an interview with Reason posted yesterday, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the chairwoman of the House Republican Conference, explicitly denied that Rep. Steve King is running the GOP’s policy on immigration and took issue with the party’s Nativist image.
“He does not — his position does not reflect the broad view of Republicans,” she said of King.
That’s interesting, since just last week the House GOP passed a draconian immigration bill crafted by none other than Steve King. King even called one of the bill’s key provisions “a mirror of what I’ve done the last two years here in this Congress.”
While Reason notes that the McMorris Rodgers interview was conducted in July, back in June House Republicans passed an amendment authored by King to gut the DACA program giving temporary relief to Dreamers.
McMorris Rodgers also struggled to respond to a question about gay rights, saying that she was open to civil unions for same-sex couples and insisting that marriage recognition should be an issue left to the states. McMorris Rodgers was once a cosponsor of the Marriage Protection Amendment, which would have banned same-sex marriage nationwide, but is not a cosponsor of the current version of the Federal Marriage Amendment.
Jeremy Hoper writes that “she sounds like most Democrats circa 2004—and we know how that played out.”
