Our local congressperson, Heather Wilson, is not a bad person, despite her rather consistent Republican behavior. She does what she has to do, votes the party line most of the time, and ingratiates herself with all the special interests that Republicans depend on for campaign funds, although she does make an occasional gesture toward reasonable legislative behavior, presumably because she is aware that she does not represent a hard-right congressional district. So she’s not quite all bad.

But she’s got to go. She’s got to go because control of the congress is essential if the disastrous direction if which our country is headed is to be reversed. The War in Iraq must be ended; Reckless tax-cutting for the benefit of the rich and rapacious must stop. Republicans in congress are under immense pressure to vote for George Bush’s program, even if they know that it is misguided and wrong. The leaders of the Republican caucus in the House of Representatives, led by Tom “the hammer” Delay are ruthless in their treatment of apostates who refuse to vote the party line. There is some reason to believe that Wilson has voted for legislation about which she had serious doubts, out of fear that her failure to do so would result in the loss of campaign funds, choice committee assignments, and other perquisites of office.

The congresswoman has been enabled to fly under the radar in her support of various important issues because of the abject failure of local media—especially The Albuquerque Journal – to provide in-depth coverage of her congressional record. To take three important issues: Wilson has been an unremitting supporter of the Iraq War; she was a major contributor to the formulation of the misbegotten Medicare drug legislation, whose major benefits seem to be designed to flow to the pharmaceutical industry; she has waffled on Bush’s social security initiative (although in one of her early statements after taking office in her first term she advocated major “reforms” in the program); and there is no reason to believe that she is not a supporter of the administration’s intense and ideologically extremist moral conservatism. If she has made a statement about the current “creationism” controversy, for example, it has been kept under wraps by the local media. To her credit she voted with the House majority to amend the President’s policy of limiting stem cell research.

But her half-steps toward moderation are beside the point. Heather Wilson’s vote with the majority in the organization of the House of Representatives helps grease the way for the repellent policies of the Bush administration. That’s reason enough. The search for a replacement should begin now.

How about Attorney General, Patricia Madrid?