Interview with Edwina Rogers, New Executive Director for the Secular Coalition for America

[rug]

May 8, 2012 at 2:00 am Greta Christina

Here, as promised, is a transcript of my interview with Edwina Rogers, the new Executive Director for the Secular Coalition for America.

The recording of the interview can be found in its entirety here. Here is the URL:

http://freethoughtblogs.com/greta/files/2012/05/Edwina-Rogers-interview.mp3

The transcription was done by Kate Donovan, who writes at Teen Skepchick and is the incoming president for the Northwestern SSA. (Many thanks to Donovan for doing this: I absolutely did not have time this week to do it myself.) She has eliminated filler words like “umm,” unless they were particularly long breaks — but as far as I can tell, she has otherwise transcribed the interview verbatim. I haven’t had a chance to check the transcription over to make sure it’s 100% accurate, but the places I have checked look right to me. If anyone spots any transcription errors, please let me know, and I’ll correct them ASAP.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/greta/2012/05/08/transcript-of-interview-with-edwina-rogers/

You can listen to the audio at the link.

[rurallib]

1. she's a Republican?

yeesh!

[rug]

2. Indeed.

"GC: Well, I guess my question is, well, one of the main conversations about you, and about your appointment to this, is that you’re a Republican, and the Republican party has been very adamantly opposed to all these positions for very many years. So I have to ask you a question that very many people want to know the answer to. If you’re pro-gay, pro-choice, you know, pro-separation of church and state, why are you a Republican? And why have you worked to promote the Republican Party for so many years.

"ER: Well, you know I’ve actually worked in the party, and around the party, and I don’t recall seeing a party line position that says that you have to be pr-life. For example, I remember working at the Republican senatorial committee, that would have been in 1994, and I plainly remember seeing data that showed that people who consider themselves Republican consider themselves, were 70% pro-choice.

"Yeah, so that, can’t be a party position. Now there are individual Republicans that have pro-choice positions politically. I have not seen the statistics lately on redshirt republicans with regards to gay rights and with regards to pro life vs pro choice. But I am not aware of it being a blanket party position. I think it lies with each Republican elected official, whether they’re in the Senate or in the House, or at the local level, just like the Democratic party is a big tent party—"

Trainwreck.

[trotsky]

3. I wish you were as obsessed with the leadership of your church...

as you are with the hiring of this lobbyist by a group you don't even support.

[rug]

4. There are plenty here who can do the papal obsession in my place.

[PufPuf23]

5. Read the transcript and replies and quit supporting SCA as it has been co-opted

Edwina Rogers is the wife (or now ex-wife??) of Ed Rogers. Ed Rogers is a founder of Barbour Griffith and Rogers. There has never been a wiki for Ed Rogers despite the fact that Ed rated a chapter and unresolved issues over the funding of Iran-Contra in Kerry's Senate BCCI Report, the prominance of BGR Group, and that he was WH staff under Reagan and GHWB. The couple were part owners of a private medjet company out of Birmingham, AL that also did CIA rendition flights out of the Middle East, Gitmo, etc. She is deep in the belly of the BFEE (as Octafish might say).

See WAPO: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/reliable-source/2010/09/rs-_divorce.html

Another D.C. power couple is calling it quits: Republican lobbyists Ed and Edwina Rogers, who have filed for divorce after 20 years of marriage.

Ed Rogers, an Alabama native in his early 50s, was a young foot soldier in the Reagan revolution who came to prominence as Lee Atwater's top deputy on George H.W. Bush's 1988 campaign. After working in the White House, he founded what became known as the lobbying giant BGR Group with Haley Barbour, now the governor of Mississippi. In 1989, he married Edwina, a fellow University of Alabama alum who worked for the National Republican Senatorial Committee during the GOP takeover in 1994, and later for then-Majority Leader Trent Lott. She, too, transitioned into lobbying, most recently with the Patient Centered Primary Care Collaborative.

They did well for themselves professionally: The tricked-out seven-bedroom mansion they built in McLean several years ago -- site of charitable and political fundraisers -- drew joking comparisons to Versailles. ("In this house, you're never too far from a drink or a TV screen," Ed told our colleague Al Kamen in 2003.) Edwina, now in her mid-40s, turned heads last fall when she was trailed around town by TV cameras filming "Real Housewives of D.C."; though she was said to be in contention for a central role, she's only made guest appearances in the Bravo reality series.........

Edwina Rogers wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwina_Rogers

Edwina Rogers has served in public policy positions in the US Senate, White House, private, and international sectors for over twenty years. She served as the founding Executive Director of the Patient Centered Primary Care Collaborative (PCPCC) from 2006-11, a Washington DC trade association. The PCPCC is responsible for the national patient centered home movement and for implementing the model around the US.

Edwina served as Vice President, Health Policy for the ERISA Industry Committee (ERIC) in Washington, DC from May 2004 to January 2009.[1] ERIC advocates the employee benefits and compensation interests of America’s major employers.

She was an Economic Advisor for President George W. Bush at the White House during 2001 and 2002 at the National Economic Council, focusing on health and social security policy. Ms. Rogers was General Counsel of the National Republican Senatorial Committee during the Republican take-over of the Senate in 1994. She worked for Senator L ott while he was Majority Leader in 1999 and she handled health policy for Senator Sessions in 2003 and 2004. Edwina worked on International Trade matters for former President George H. W. Bush at the Department of Commerce from 1989 to 1991.

Ms. Rogers practiced law in the Washington office of Balch and Bingham from 1991 to 1994. She received her BS in Corporate Finance from the University of Alabama and a JD from Catholic University in Washington DC. Ms. Rogers was a Fellow at the Kennedy School at Harvard during 1996.

Edwina has written a conservative column for The Georgetowner newspaper in Washington, DC and is a regular strategist on cable news television.[2] She served on the Board of Directors of Semco Energy, Inc. (NYSE: SEN) a natural gas distribution company until 2007.

In 2012, she was named Executive Director of the Secular Coalition for America.[3]

[rug]

6. I read it.

Here's a comment.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/05/08/the-crash-test/

[PufPuf23]

7. Edwina lies like a dog and most of the responses seem to indicate thast opinion.

As (I assume) a member of the Democratic Party and sup0porter of Party principals, what is your opinion of Edwina Rogers ' background?

[rug]

8. She worked for Bush and for Lott. Therefore she is a pig. I assume she is still a pig.

[PufPuf23]

9. More on Edwina Rogers as Executive Director of the Secular Association of America (SCA)

I had never even heard of SCA before this thread but I knew about Edwina Rogers because of Ed Rogers.

Train wreck.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/entequilaesverdad/2012/05/15/i-do-not-trust-edwina-rogers-to-represent-our-interests/

I’ve sat out the Edwina Rogers fiasco since the Secular Coalition of America announced they’d chosen her as their new Executive Director, waiting to see if my initial revulsion would pass. It hasn’t. I read the transcript of the interview she did with Greta Christina, and the entirety of her Ask Me Anything on Reddit, hoping she could somehow allay our fears and prove she’s capable of representing us effectively, despite her sordid history in Republican politics. But I didn’t have high hopes. Put it this way: I’ve learnt over the last decade that when one trusts Cons not to kick them in the teeth, they’d best have an excellent oral surgeon on speed dial.

Edwina’s managed to meet expectations: she outright lies, she avoids the hardest questions, she babbles nonsense in reply to most of the questions she deigns respond to without bald-faced lies. She is exactly what I suspected she was when I heard some absolute morons had chosen a Republican operative neck-deep in the Bush administration, yammered on Faux News, and who has donated generously to Rick bleeding Perry, to become executive director of the Secular Coalition of America: an unmitigated disaster.

Not all atheists are liberals, and I suppose it could be a good idea to get some secular conservatives on board at times – if they don’t end up compromising the values held by the vast majority of us. As several people have noted, a Republican lobbyist as part (not head) of the SCA isn’t such a horrible idea. And I rather think it would be nice to give the Rabid Right something to worry about from within its own ranks, so the idea of developing a coalition of secular Republicans and siccing them on the fundies actually tickles me. So no, I have no objection per se to having a Republican working with the SCA.

But surely, surely, the SCA could have chosen a better Executive Director than this Bushie. She can’t reach across the aisle to elected Republicans – the bunch currently in office here, there and everywhere are, overwhelmingly, theocratic freaks frantic to install god as our ruler. They’ve already demonstrated that they’ll abandon their own policies if a liberal expresses approval. And I cannot dismiss the fact that she actively supports some of the worst of them.