Quitting Time

Traditional Republicans are ditching Congress—with one curious exception.

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Rep. Mike Gallagher walks through the House side of the U.S. Capitol towards the House Chamber in Washington, D.C., on February 6, 2024. (Kent Nishimura for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

To follow politics in 2024 is to find oneself forever confronted with startling new facts about America’s gerontocracy. A fun one I stumbled across recently: Joe Biden’s birthdate is closer in time to Abraham Lincoln’s second inauguration than it is to Biden’s own inauguration.

Over the weekend, we added another to the canon. Sen. Chuck Grassley will probably outlast Rep. Mike Gallagher in Congress.

I say “probably” because we shouldn’t assume too much about the vitality of a man who’ll turn 91 in September. But if Grassley remains in good health for another 11 months, he’ll be there when the next term gavels in on January 3, 2025. Gallagher will not.

“Congress is no place to grow old,” the congressman from Wisconsin declared in a statement on Saturday announcing his retirement at the end of this year. Practically everyone else in the House and Senate, Chuck Grassley especially, politely disagrees. What makes the sentiment even stranger coming from Gallagher, though, is that he arguably hasn’t even reached middle age yet, let alone the precipice of being “old.” He won’t turn 40 for a few more weeks.

On the day he was born in 1984, Chuck Grassley was already halfway through his first term in the Senate.

Gallagher isn’t the only House Republican to have called it quits during what should be the prime of their legislative careers. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, who’s 54, announced her own retirement on Thursday. Forty-eight-year-old Rep. Patrick McHenry did the same in December. It’s not unusual for young members to quit the chamber in order to run for Senate in their home state, but neither Gallagher, Rodgers, nor McHenry is running for anything this year. In fact, Gallagher declined the GOP’s invitation to challenge incumbent Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin.

Sometimes young backbenchers grow frustrated with their lack of influence in the House and opt to retire for that reason, but that’s not true in this case either. Each of the three I’ve mentioned wields unusual power in the current majority. Gallagher chairs the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party. Rodgers chairs the powerful House Committee on Energy and Commerce. And McHenry not only chairs the House Financial Services Committee, he briefly filled in as speaker after Kevin McCarthy was ousted in October. He’s respected enough by his colleagues to have once been touted as a future speaker himself someday.

Instead he, Rodgers, and Gallagher have decided they have better things to do with their lives than help craft the laws that will govern the world’s most powerful country—even though their party stands a fair chance of controlling both chambers plus the White House next year, presenting a rare opportunity to move paradigm-shifting legislation.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    I disagree with some of Gallaghers votes, including his failure to impeach Trump. However, I have forgiven him for it, because he was otherwise a good congressman. His committee on China was the single best and most professional committee. Left-wing journalists (Ben Smith) have said it was the best functioning and that he did a good job keeping it from being a clown show. We need more good legislators. Yes, politicians will always disappoint you, but if a couple of bad votes means you get to keep your seat for two more years - two more years in which you do some obvious good - that’s understandable.

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    Ben Connelly

    ““I am running for the United States Senate not to serve one party but to stand up to both parties,” he said frankly in announcing his candidacy.”

    A majority of Americans say that’s what they want.

    My theory on Hogan: he figures even if he doesn’t have a shot he should try to do the right thing. We need people like him to get in, otherwise the only politicians are the extreme ones everyone hates. We need good people to try to get elected. Heck, I would hate being in Congress and I would despise running for office, but I’d even consider it under the theory that if you say, “Somebody ought to do something,” and you don’t see anyone doing something, it’s your responsibility to then say, “and that somebody is me,” even if you really don’t want to.

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  3. Sai Ayila

    The dispatch is very bad at doing research or selectively does research. Please Google the names Linda lingle, Phil bredesan and Steve daines own state mate Steve Bullock. Tell me what do these three people have in common.

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    1. Avatar photo
      Ben Connelly

      Nick is writing a series of short blogs he sticks into a newsletter. It’s essentially one long list of hot takes. He explained at the beginning of his time here that’s what he was doing, so while he can be frustrating (to me at least) he’s also not trying to be taken totally seriously.

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  4. Wsampson

    hogan is too old already. you have a line about how the GOP is in line for the president and both houses. I suppose, but who actually votes MAGA other than MAGA? Republicans I guess. What is wrong with people?

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    1. Avatar photo
      Ben Connelly

      I’ve never voted for Trump and I never will, but he’s beating Biden in the polls (his polling is better now than in 2020) and he’s up among swing voters and the working class and even strong among young voters and nonwhite voters. I really hope he doesn’t win. But you should read or listen to Ruy Texeira on this subject (he was on the Remnant recently but also has a great newsletter). He’s trying to get Democrats to win, and to do that he’s willing to tell hard truths. One of those is that it isn’t just MAGA Republicans who vote Republican. Democrats are turning away voters they could win if they tried harder.

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  5. Avatar photo
    Tim

    Show horses? More like Slow horses

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    1. Avatar photo
      J.R.

      Excellent show.

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  6. Avatar photo
    William Skiba

    "... On the day he was born in 1984, Chuck Grassley was already halfway through his first term in the Senate..."
    Now that's quite a remarkable claim. Fact check anyone?

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    1. Avatar photo
      Seth B

      Oh, it's common knowledge that Chuck Grassley was elected to the Senate two years before he was conceived. 😉

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    2. Avatar photo
      squarooticus

      English requires the use of some common sense to resolve pronouns and appositions.

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    3. Avatar photo
      JohnF

      Grassley was first elected to the Senate in 1980.

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  7. Cpbogdan

    Eight years of Obama are why the democrats don’t have a deep bench of talent and needed the reanimated Biden to pull their sorry hides from the fire in 2020. This should be a halcyon time, with nothing but GOP victories as far as the eye can see but, Trump being Trump, he’s actively burning it to the ground just because.

    Gallagher, from what I can tell, is happy and well-adjusted. I don’t blame him one bit for getting out while he can.

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    1. PROMETHEUS

      Not true.
      You all keep talking about Obama this and that and how today he controls Biden.

      But Obama was always an outlier for the Democratic leadership. who took advantage of his charisma, but was weary of him. And Obama himself was, and is, a person unto himself; not one to create any kind of legacy, or dynasty. A comet who came and is gone.

      No, it was the Clintons who dominated the party, and after Obama they ran Hillary because it was (again) HER time. Obviously wrong.

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  8. Avatar photo
    Vlad.Nicolaescu

    Mike Gallagher is a poster boy for the deep disfunction of the Republican party. Too cowardly to take a decisive stand but too sane to just join the heaving throngs of Trump worshipers. He straddled the line offering other straddles comfort. When the time came for him to take a stand he choked, and now he is slinking away further compounding his cowardliness.

    But it isn't too late for Mike it never is. Even now he still has a chance to do something good. He needs to round up enough GOP votes in congress to help move a discharge petition to move the Ukraine funding bill to a floor vote. If he can fight for that then there might still be hope for him. He knows it is important, and now he has nothing left to lose. But, I'm not holding my breath on this.

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  9. Avatar photo
    Chris

    With Gallagher leaving and Sasse gone, perhaps Hogan could step in to take the most illustrious of titles: the sole politician in Congress I can stand.

    The hollowing out of the party just as Abortion has come back into play is infuriating. We have no ability to save lives and set the starting point for policy in the foreseeable future because of the spineless morons who apparently think nothing is more important than running cons. As much as I'd like to support no labels, I highly doubt they're gonna be even close to acceptable on abortion.

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