LaTourette Syndrome

Rep. Steve LaTourette

Yes­ter­day, nine-​​term Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Steve LaTourette (R-​​Bainbridge Town­ship, OH) announced that he will not be seek­ing another term in Con­gress. LaTourette marks the lat­est in an ever-​​growing list of politi­cians who are choos­ing to leave due to the rapid increase in extreme par­ti­san­ship in the Capitol.

Yet LaTourette is a mod­er­ate only when com­pared to the cur­rent crop of Repub­li­cans. His DW-​​NOMINATE score of +0.394 is well to the left of the 111^th Congress’s Repub­li­can mean of +0.623 (a mean which is cer­tain to be more to the left of the cur­rent Con­gress), but also to the right of the Reagan-​​era Repub­li­can mean of +0.298. He is almost pre­cisely at the +0.384 mean of all mod­ern House Repub­li­cans dat­ing back to the Nixon administration.

As a point of com­par­i­son, the 111^th Congress’s Demo­c­ra­tic mean was –0.362, just slightly more lib­eral than the –0.334 mean of mod­ern House Democ­rats (again, going back to the Nixon years). House Democ­rats are, in fact, more con­ser­v­a­tive than at any time since Bill Clin­ton was elected Pres­i­dent, bar­ring a sig­nif­i­cant jump to the left in the 112^th Congress.

Why does this mat­ter? Because the extreme par­ti­san­ship of the past two decades has come entirely from Repub­li­cans becom­ing more con­ser­v­a­tive. Com­pare the his­tograms of the House in the 111^th Con­gress of 2009 to that of the 102^nd Con­gress of 1991.

Note how the two par­ties have a slight over­lap in 1991, with Democ­rats rang­ing from –0.8 to +0.1, with a peak at –0.4. In 2009, Democ­rats still had a range of –0.8 to +0.1, and still had a peak at –0.4. Yet Repub­li­cans of 1991 ranged from 0 to +0.8 with a peak at +0.4, while today they range from +0.2 to +1.3, with a peak at +0.6.

Sim­ply put, Democ­rats have remained rel­a­tively unchanged, but Repub­li­cans have been mov­ing sharply and con­sis­tently to the right.

And it is this shift­ing that leaves peo­ple like LaTourette, who would have been a main­stream Repub­li­can when Clin­ton was elected, to feel that he must leave Con­gress due to being mar­gin­al­ized as a lefty liberal.

We used to be able to get things done in Con­gress because com­pro­mise was pos­si­ble. LaTourette’s depar­ture is another nail in the cof­fin of suc­cess­ful action.

Related arti­cles

• Was Steven LaTourette About to Be Left Out in the Cold? (roll​call​.com)
• GOP Sources: Ohio Rep. Steve LaTourette to Retire (fox8​.com)
• The mis­ery of the mod­er­ate Repub­li­can (salon​.com)
• What Will LaTourette Say? (polit​i​cal​wire​.com)
• Port­man State­ment on Rep. Steve LaTourette’s Retire­ment (port​man​.sen​ate​.gov)
• Repub­li­can Rep. Steve LaTourette unex­pect­edly retires (dai​lykos​.com)
• Ohio Repub­li­can Rep. LaTourette retires cit­ing acri­mony in Wash­ing­ton (news​.yahoo​.com)
• LaTourette retir­ing from Con­gress (politico​.com)
• Retir­ing GOP rep laments lack of com­pro­mise (con​tent​.usato​day​.com)
• Mod­er­ate GOP Rep. LaTourette announces retire­ment (firstread​.msnbc​.msn​.com)