Another week of retirements for House Republicans...this time, it included Rep. Will Hurd (R-TX). We begin with David Graham’s analysis at The Atlantic:
With Representative Will Hurd’s announcement last night that he won’t run for reelection, it seems as if there’s no room for anyone but white men in the Republican Party.
The GOP’s stats were miserable even before the past few weeks, which have seen retirement announcements from several Republicans, including Representative Martha Roby of Alabama, one of 13 women in the House GOP caucus. Representative Susan Brooks, another one of them and the head of recruitment for the caucus, has also opted not to run.
Julie Hirschfeld Davis at The New York Times:
Democrats have plenty of money to press their advantage; the party’s House campaign arm has been crushing fund-raising records, and the most vulnerable Democrats are flush with cash to wage their re-election battles.
But those are not the only reasons that some Republicans are concluding it is not worth even trying. A toxic environment for Republicans in the House, where partisanship reigns and they are judged as much for their segments on Fox News as any policy effort, has taken a toll on lawmakers who are interested in pursuing legislative compromises.
Here’s Eric Lutz’s take at Vanity Fair on the significance of Hurd’s retirement:
Hurd didn’t directly mention Donald Trump in his tweets or statement announcing his abrupt retirement, but his decision comes just weeks after he joined House Democrats to condemn the president’s racist attacks on a group of nonwhite progressive congresswomen who have been critical of his administration, especially over its immigration policies. “I think those tweets are racist and xenophobic,” Hurd told CNN of Trump’s attacks on the Squad, in which the president called on the lawmakers to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” Hurd noted at the time that the tweets about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar were “inaccurate” and drive minorities away from the G.O.P. “This makes it harder in order to take our ideas, and our platform, to communities that don’t necessarily identify with the Republican party,” he said. Those July remarks echoed the conclusions of an election post-mortem the G.O.P commissioned after losing again to Barack Obama in 2012, which found Republicans would have to broaden their appeal to women and minorities if they hoped to be viable in the future. “Public perception of our party is at record lows,” Sally Bradshaw, the former Republican strategist who co-chaired the study, wrote in 2013. “When someone rolls their eyes at us they aren’t likely to open their ears to us.”
On the topic of taxation, Stephen Prince begs Republican to tax wealthy people like him more:
When rich people get an extra pot of cash, we don't spend it like working families do. We simply pass it over to our wealth management people to stash in places most working people don't even know exist, let alone have access to.
That was the plan all along, truth be told. Grassley and his friends have used their power quite successfully to reconstruct the tax code for the benefit of themselves and their donors. It isn't a mere coincidence that the vast majority of the savings vehicles available in today's arcane tax code are used only by the people at the top—the code was custom-made for us.
On a final note, Dana Milbank at The Washington Post reviews Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s approach to Russia:
Citing Senate lobbying disclosures, Politico reported Wednesday that two former McConnell staffers had signed on as lobbyists for the Braidy Industries mill, which is 40 percent owned by Russian aluminum giant Rusal. That company has long been controlled by Oleg Deripaska, an oligarch who, the United States alleges, has said “he does not separate himself from the Russian state.” Braidy also hired a PR firm founded by yet another former McConnell aide, the outlet reported Friday. [...]
McConnell was a Russia hawk for decades. But that hasn’t been so clear lately, with the Deripaska sanctions, the Russia-tied political contributions, the tepid support for investigating Russia (“case closed,” he pronounced, before the Intelligence Committee finished its investigation), and his allergy to aggressive action to protect U.S. elections.