National Review editor Ramesh Ponnuru, on today’s edition of The Editors, said that an “unrewarding” and even “hellish” environment appears to be contributing to the shrinking House GOP, whose already-narrow majority tightened to 217-213 with the announced retirement of Mike Gallagher.
“This is going to be the first House majority in U.S. history that expires out of a sheer lack of will to live,” said Ponnuru. “A majority can be large or small, and it can be united or fractious. And the Republicans are currently in the one quadrant that doesn’t work: small and fractious.”
Ponnuru said he thinks this “is part of the reason why it has been just so unrewarding and really even kind of hellish, people say, to be serving in this majority.”
“And you can’t really tell yourself if you’re a House Republican who wants to achieve things legislatively, that at least you’re doing a lot of good because it’s not obvious that you are,” he said. “And so it becomes harder and harder to see why you should stick around.”
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