Monday, February 06, 2017

After decade Roskam must finally confront issues, voters

My Congressman Peter Roskam (IL-6) must rue the day his 'wild card' candidate Trump was elected president. It unleashed a groundswell of pushback by a sizable minority of Sixth District voters Roskam has ignored for a decade. Roskam has never represented the Sixth District. He serves the 1%, the climate change deniers, the heartless striving to de-insure the 20 million newly covered by the Affordable Care Act, the religious zealots seeking to block women from their gynecologist, the neocons promoting confrontation with Iran, the xenophobes lusting to tear apart undocumented families, among other special interests not connected to decent public service. When a morally compromised con man offered both a path to satisfy these dysfunctional agendas and keep Roskam's similarly inclined base voting for him, Roskam didn't blink, going all in with his vote and support, even though he claimed he'd never condone within his family Trump's bragging about his penchant for sexual assault. So much for decent, responsible leadership on behalf of all his constituents.
Those Sixth District constituents will no longer ignore Roskam's fraudulent stewardship. They have exposed his refusal to serve their needs by confronting him publicly, forcing him to reveal his utter lack of interest, concern, indeed, decency. When 16 citizens showed up for a meeting to discuss his eight year campaign to abolish of Obamacare, his staff cancelled the meeting, citing a reporter present. God forbid the public learn of Roskam's cowardice to engage outraged voters. When 400 showed up to protest his preaching to a closed door choir in support of the Muslim ban, Roskam used the side door coming and going. Only the true believers get to connect with the congressman.
Roskam's imagined lifetime sinecure raking in a cool quarter million a year plus in salary and benefits has suddenly become uncomfortable. He's become the phantom to constituents looking for serious discourse on critical issues of public interest; indeed, life and death. Any congressman who conducts himself that way is not a public servant and is unfit to hold office. But the protests, the negative publicity, the confrontations are just beginning unless Roskam hides in his DC bubble for the next 23 months. And he's finding out his wild card is no joker.

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