Most people enjoyed “The Office” most for the antics of boss Michael Scott, or the touching relationship between paper salesman Jim Halpert and erstwhile receptionist Pam Beesly.All GOP Rep. Steve LaTourrette had to do to win a 10th term from his northeastern Ohio district was to show up for his swearing-in.
He won his party’s primary. He won re-election in 2010 with 65 percent of the vote. In November, he faced a Democrat he easily defeated twice before. LaTourette was that rare creature – a moderate Rust Belt Republican. And now he’s leaving Congress, one of a growing breed of dispirited lawmakers choosing to retire: 43 Republican and Democratic House members so far this cycle. The Hill newspaper said LaTourette “presented himself as the latest casualty of a toxic political environment that has driven other centrist members out of the Capitol in recent years.”
He found himself increasingly isolated as his party shifted farther and farther to the right. He said he was “horribly disappointed” by the transportation bill after conservatives finished with it. That bill went nowhere on the House floor, and the House was forced to settle for a two-year measure enacted by the Senate, a default position that LaTourrette called “an embarrassment to the House of Representatives.”
The irony is that LaTourrette came to Congress with the radical Republican takeover of the House in 1994 and has now seen himself bypassed by even more radical Republicans.
American politics have traditionally been settled in the middle. But with the departure of centrist legislators like LaTourette, the middle is shrinking and that can’t be good for politics or the country.
