We Need Accountability From Our Congressional Representative
Opinion Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the author/producer’s interpretation of facts and data.
By Baila Lemonik, Dan Stoller, Celeste Theis and Margaret Yonco-Haines
Washington is broken, and Congressman Mike Lawler isn’t doing anything about it.
Recently, a group of MAGA Republicans in Congress led a successful effort to remove their own leader, U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, plunging the House of Representatives into chaos. Weeks of dysfunction ensued, with several would-be speakers cast aside until Republicans, including Lawler, finally lined up behind far-right Louisiana Congressman Mike Johnson.
Throughout the process, Republican politicians were quick to point fingers, call names and whine – none more so than Mike Lawler.
Lawler was all over TV and social media during the speaker crisis, desperately blaming Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz and even Democrats for all the disarray. Lawler repeatedly painted McCarthy as a martyr, the leader of a band of principled Republicans who ran to “save the country.”
But those of us who have closely followed Lawler’s career know that his self-serving narrative served to mask a more troubling truth: Mike Lawler plays the moderate at home, while simultaneously empowering the extremists he publicly derides in Washington.
Lawler’s patron, McCarthy, was never a moderating force. He relentlessly pandered to Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene and other far right leaders in his quest for power, starting with his vote to overturn the 2020 Presidential election after the January 6 insurrection and culminating in baseless impeachment proceedings against Joe Biden that lacked even a shred of evidence of criminality or misconduct by the President. Congressman Lawler stood with his leader in supporting the impeachment proceedings, piously lecturing people about the need to follow the “evidence,” which the Republicans’ own experts admitted didn’t exist.
After the MAGA-led coup that took McCarthy out, Lawler vowed repeatedly that he wouldn’t support right-wing extremists like congressmen Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan for speaker. Of course, Lawler’s principles only kept political expediency at bay for so long.
In the end, he sheepishly backed Mike Johnson, a MAGA favorite who urged Capitol rioters to “Fight on!” on Jan. 6, 2021, led House Republican efforts to overturn the 2020 Presidential election resulted and wholeheartedly supported the bogus Biden impeachment.
The congressional circus Lawler has ridiculed with his words yet enabled with his actions would be entertaining if the consequences of their actions weren’t so alarming. As Washington descended into chaos, the needs of Congressman Lawler’s constituents in the lower Hudson Valley were ignored. Rather than working to deliver more affordable healthcare or lower the cost of housing for the people in his district, Rep. Lawler engages in political doublespeak on cable news by claiming his support for impeachment hearings to move forward isn’t support for impeachment itself.
Rather than fighting for a federal budget that can pass with bipartisan support, Lawler continues to be willing to bring the country to the brink of a government shutdown unless Congress passes Republican plans to gut needed social programs such as Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid.
Lawler may not like Gaetz and Greene, but by following the likes of McCarthy and Johnson – along with the sham impeachment hearings, debt ceiling posturing and shutdown baiting they prefer to actually governing – Lawler is as culpable in the dysfunction in our capital as anyone.
With elections fast approaching, Mike Lawler will have to decide whether he actually wants to be the reasonable, pragmatic representative he claims to be. Unfortunately, his track record so far is one of telling those of us in Westchester, Putnam, Dutchess and Rockland counties what he thinks we want to hear, while voting like any other MAGA Republican as soon as he lands in Washington.
Baila Lemonik represents Putnam Progressives; Dan Stoller is from Northern Westchester Indivisible; Celeste Theis is from CcoHope; and Margaret Yonco-Haines is part of Take17.
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