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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCongressional Republicans Left Office In Droves Under Trump. Just How Conservative Are Their Replace
The current 117th Congress is only four months old, but already five Republican senators and six Republican representatives have announced they will not stay in their current jobs.1 Add in a slew of Republican retirements in the 2018 and 2020 election cycles, and a narrative has formed that longtime GOP stalwarts are heading to the exits because they are unhappy with the fanatical turn the party took under former President Donald Trump. We live in an increasingly polarized country where members of both parties are being pushed further to the right and further to the left, and that means too few people who are actively looking to find common ground, Sen. Rob Portman said in January when announcing his retirement. This is a tough time to be in public service.
On the one hand, Portman is right that this is a tough time to be a Republican in Congress. There has been a remarkable amount of turnover among congressional Republicans in the Trump (and post-Trump) era. Of the 293 Republicans who were serving in the Senate or House on Jan. 20, 2017 the day of Trumps inauguration a full 132 (45 percent) are no longer in Congress or have announced their retirement or resignation.
And many of these Republicans lets call them the Ciao Caucus likely did leave due to their disapproval of Trump. Fifty-seven of them retired or are retiring from politics completely including Trump critics like former Sen. Jeff Flake and former Rep. Will Hurd as well as several members of the moderate Tuesday Group. Most obviously, two former Reps. Justin Amash and Paul Mitchell even quit the GOP to become independents before they left Congress. And some representatives among them former Rep. Mark Sanford, who voted with Trump only 71 percent of the time (one of the lowest rates for a Republican) lost to a more hardline primary challenger. (On the other hand, one Republican who lost reelection in the primary did so to a less conservative challenger: Former Rep. Steve King so openly supported white nationalism that the party turned its back on him, throwing its support behind the more moderate Rep. Randy Feenstra.)
Plenty more Republicans have left for reasons having nothing to do with Trump, though. For instance, 21 retired or announced they plan to retire to run for a different office, which they probably wouldnt have done unless they still felt at home in the Republican Party. (Indeed, this list includes some of Trumps staunchest allies, including now-Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Rep. Doug Collins and Rep. Mo Brooks, who is running for Senate with Trumps endorsement.) Another 29 Republicans wanted to stay but only left because they lost in the 2018 or 2020 general elections.2 Whats more, the resignations category which you might think would include some of the most defiant anti-Trumpers of all actually skews toward Trump loyalists because eight of them3 resigned in order to join his administration. And even of the 57 members who retired completely, several probably did so for more mundane reasons than disliking the direction Trump was taking the party in, like being term-limited out of powerful committee chairmanships.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/congressional-republicans-left-office-in-droves-under-trump-just-how-conservative-are-their-replacements/
abqtommy
(14,118 posts)critters have long gone extinct. Other than that this is an interesting op.