{"id":14913,"date":"2008-03-16T13:30:35","date_gmt":"2008-03-16T17:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/14913.html"},"modified":"2008-03-16T13:30:35","modified_gmt":"2008-03-16T17:30:35","slug":"retirement-can-apparently-be-liberating-for-congressional-republicans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/retirement-can-apparently-be-liberating-for-congressional-republicans\/","title":{"rendered":"Retirement can apparently be liberating for congressional Republicans"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a rule, Rep. Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican, has generally been considered a “team player” in his party. He hasn’t always been quite as conservative as some of his rank-and-file colleagues, but on the big issues, Davis has always stood toe to toe with his Republican caucus. It’s why he was rewarded a few cycles ago with the chairmanship of the NRCC.<\/p>\n

Davis was preparing a Senate run, right up until he realized he’d lose to former Gov. Mark Warner (D), and he’s now preparing to leave elected office altogether. Apparently, it’s had a liberating effect.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, Davis acknowledged<\/a>, \u201cThe House Republican brand is so bad right now that if it were a dog food, they\u2019d take it off the shelf.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, he went a little further<\/a> in describing his party’s troubles.<\/p>\n

“It’s no mystery,” said Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.). “You have a very unhappy electorate, which is no surprise, with oil at $108 a barrel, stocks down a few thousand points, a war in Iraq with no end in sight and a president who is still very, very unpopular. He’s just killed the Republican brand.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I mention this, not only because it’s an interesting quote, but because I wonder how many Republicans who aren’t<\/i> retiring from Congress feel the exact same way.<\/p>\n

My hunch is, quite a few.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a rule, Rep. Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican, has generally been considered a “team player” in his party. He hasn’t always been quite as conservative as some of his rank-and-file colleagues, but on the big issues, Davis has always stood toe to toe with his Republican caucus. It’s why he was rewarded a few […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14913\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}