Politics & Power Quote by Cathy McMorris

America-as-open-door is the safest melody in U.S. politics because it flatters nearly every listener: immigrants hear recognition, natives hear vindication, business hears “mobility,” and government hears a mission statement. Cathy McMorris Rodgers leans into that broad, comforting register, framing greatness not as a fixed inheritance but as a system of “opportunities given to everyone.” The verb matters. “Given” suggests a country generous by design, a national character rooted in access rather than accident. It sidesteps the messier truth that opportunity is also fought for, restricted, and unevenly distributed.

The subtext is coalition-building. By pairing “freedom” with “choice,” she taps the language of conservative individualism; by invoking “families” and the immigrant journey, she borrows the moral authority of the American story as told by newcomers. It’s aspiration packaged as consensus: if we agree America is great because it offers ladders, then policy debates can be framed as protecting ladders rather than arguing over who gets to climb them.

Context sharpens the intent. Rodgers has operated in an era when “opportunity” is a partisan proxy: invoked to defend market-driven solutions, to argue against expansive welfare states, or to recast immigration as compatible with security and order. The quote functions less as history than as a rhetorical shield, anchoring contemporary disputes in founding-era imagery. It’s not trying to win an argument with data; it’s trying to win the emotional premise before the argument begins: America is good because it lets people remake themselves, and any policy worth passing should be judged by whether it preserves that feeling.