Lucky for the people in Eastern Washington they live in a state that has extended Medicaid to working poor and consistently raised its minimum wage. This would not happen if Republicans governed as they preach.

So, McMorris Rodgers clearly votes against the welfare of her constituents — no surprise there. That’s the “What’s the Matter With Kansas” premise, based on the Thomas Frank book documenting how poor whites choose cultural and social issues over economic ones at the ballot box.

What doesn’t make sense is how McMorris Rodgers is so full of animus toward the leading employer of her county, government. Yes, she protects the Air Force base here, as if it’s not really government, and payments to wealthy wheat farmers. But every other form of federal outlay is demonized.

It gets stranger still when looking at her career. On Tuesday night, she proudly mentioned working in an orchard and a fruit stand as a girl. But since then, she has spent most her adult life in — you guessed it — government. She’s been on a state or federal payroll since graduating from Pensacola Christian College, in the early 1990s.

As for the substance of the Republican alternative, there was none. Her speech was soft-focus theater and platitudes. The message was: We’re not all angry white guys. “Sometimes, Republicans think just putting a woman up front means somehow that women are going to feel good about the party,” Christine Whitman, the former New Jersey governor, and a Republican, told The Los Angeles Times. “It’s not about the messenger. It’s about the message.”

And the message was mush. For those struggling, the congresswoman said, “we have plans,” at least four times, and then mentioned no plans. It was the same market-tested ether about “empowering you” and “trusting people, not government.”

Reducing dependence and giving people a way to step up the class ladder are fine goals. And no doubt, broken families and single parents — as the Republican Party has long pointed out — keep many people in poverty. But one way to strengthen families is to help them with the kind of medical debt that forces people onto food stamps or prompts a woman to work two jobs, with no time for her kids.

The reason that large numbers of people here in the home district of Cathy McMorris Rodgers are signing up for the first chance in their lives to get affordable, or even free, health care is because they know something their member of Congress doesn’t. The girl who once picked apples in Kettle Falls can’t see what they see, because she’s committed to a party that won’t allow it.