His resignation earns him the benefit of the doubt in my book. Completely full of shit is every other Republican, who might offer gentle concerns about the strategic wisdom of saying that out loud, while actively empowering and enabling The Rump at every turn.
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It’s never been about holding the House. It’s always been about the assessment of whether it helps or hurts Trump’s reelection prospects given the inevitability of Senate acquittal.
And the thing Nancy knows that the Internet doesn’t is that there’s zero advantage, and much political downside, if it happens before next year, preferably mid-year.
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I respect your first-hand knowledge of Hurd and your belief that he actually wants to get things done. However, I would like to think a principled public servant would do more than retire. If he truly believes that the current GOP is treasonous/fatally compromised, some would consider it his duty as an American and as a member of Congress to do something about it. Right now, while he’s still on the national stage. Publicly join with Amash and warn the American people about what’s as stake. His announcement and intentions sound a lot like a guy trying to preserve his career within the party.
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That’s fair and I wouldn’t disagree. Just one coda, however: I think that, in the age of Trump, just as everyone from past Presidents (Obama) to current legislative leaders (Pelosi, Schiff) to law enforcement professionals (Mueller) to members of Congress are grappling with an existential threat, and trying to figure out how to respond when the stakes seem massive. I wouldn’t expect all of them to respond either consistently, or in ways that make sense. And Hurd’s announcement is less than 24 hours old–let’s see where it and he go, perhaps?
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It’s heartening to read people who have knowledge of him. (@dr_coyote , @cervantes …thanks!) A comment on an earlier story about GOP retirements (I would tag you if I could find the story!) mentioned that these folks were probably tired of the angry constituents and awkward conversations. I wonder if those with any integrity at all are getting out. This will make the party as a whole more despicable, but hopefully they won’t be able to replace those people with worse. Dems in those districts need to get busy.
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He did manage to explicitly repudiate Adam Schiff, though.
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Hurd barely won this last election.
Which is why @noonm raised this question:
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I am generally pleased when I hear that a Republican is retiring, but not in this case. I’ve heard this guy on NPR interviews, and he actually sounds sane on any number of issues, unlike virtually all his party colleagues. The only other House Republican who sounded remotely sane and decent was Charlie Dent, and he retired last cycle.
The overwhelming mass of his colleagues are like Ratcliffe or Gaetz or Duncan Hunter Jr, who don’t even resemble human beings. They are cyborgs who have been programmed in the Luntz-Rove-Ailes political lab so that higher-order concepts like principles and human decency simply don’t compute for them.
Looking ahead beyond the existential Trump crisis, Democrats obviously have to start consistently winning elections at the federal AND state levels to shut the GOP out of power for an extended period. But that will only be a band-aid solution if a vengeful fascist political party is simply waiting in the wings to seize power at the first opportunity. A constitutional democracy needs at least two sane, viable parties that play by the rules of democracy. In the long term, the country needs the GOP to have more people like Will Hurd, not fewer.
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I know 
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I don’t think that’s accurate, in the sense that some people (not you) have raised that specter.
He vowed to “stay involved in politics to grow a Republican Party that looks like America.”
News flash for Hurd. It will never look like America. The Republican party will never want people like you save for being their token black in a sea of white racists. I apologize for being blunt, but that’s the cold hard fact.
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Part of that was personal but, yes, it certainly was not the high point of Hurd’s career.
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From Morning Digest at Daily Kos:
Hurd’s district, Texas’ 23rd, runs along the state’s southern border with Mexico and is heavily Latino. It favored Clinton by a 50-46 margin in 2016, making the incumbent one of the most vulnerable Republicans in the entire House. Last year, Hurd barely survived a challenge from Democrat Gina Ortiz Jones, prevailing by just 926 votes, and in the Senate race, Democrat Beto O’Rourke beat Sen. Ted Cruz 52-47. Ortiz Jones was seeking a rematch, and Hurd was already at the very top of Democratic target lists.
Handwriting. Wall. Still hard to understand why, in the age of Trump, any black American is a republican.
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Everyone who is worried that russia is going to be able to rig 2020, this trend is the big “tell” that that ain’t gonna happen…
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Or an LGBT American. Or a woman. Or anyone that is not pasty white. Or…
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Or, at least, that there are fewer fatally-compromised congresscritters in the House than in the Senate. At this point, we are so deep into what we might formerly have believed black-helicopters territory (voter-roll hacking, voting machine hacking, social media hacking, Putin wet work, #kompromat, bribery, Russian bikers training Christian Dominionist militias, etc etc ad nauseum) that I’d believe that every single GOP Senator who denies Russian involvement and embraces Trump is him/herself, essentially, an unindicted felon and traitor.
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So much to unpack in his statement. So little time.
Better to walk away a winner than go out a loser.
Build a Republican Party that looks more like America? Good luck with that pipe dream.
Dropping like the turd flies they are.
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The sheer pace at which the Party deteriorated into an authoritarian personality cult has caught some of them by surprise, I think.
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