From a certain point of view you may say this doesn't matter, but former Oversight Committee Chairman and notorious chicken fucker Darrel Issa (R-CA) announced this morning that he won't run for reelection in 2018.
WASHINGTON — Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., one of the most prominent and endangered Republicans in Congress, has decided not to run for reelection in November, becoming the latest in a string of vulnerable GOP incumbents to retire ahead of midterm elections expected to favor Democrats. [...]
"Throughout my service, I worked hard and never lost sight of the people our government is supposed to serve," Issa said in a statement. "Yet with the support of my family, I have decided that I will not seek re-election in California's 49th District."
Now, you may say this doesn't matter because Darrell Issa was going to lose anyway. Issa won his last election by less than 1 percent and Hillary Clinton carried his district by over 7 percent.
Issa is getting out while the getting is good, just as many other Republicans are, but other Republicans aren't Darrell Issa.
If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you're probably familiar with Issa. He is one of the biggest asswipes in Congress and he is directly responsible for a significant portion of the dysfunctional behavior we see in Congress today.
Republicans weren't inclined to cooperate with President Obama by their nature, but Darrell Issa made it politically untenable and virtually impossible for them to do so. Issa never met a conspiracy theory he wasn't willing to entertain. From Solyndra, to Fast and Furious, the fake IRS scandal, the Obamacare website and Benghazi, Issa used his position as the chairman of the House Oversight Committee as the chairman of a political action committee (PAC) would. Issa was chiefly responsible for turning President Obama into a toxic figure for members of Congress who may have otherwise considered dialing their opposition down a bit.
There are people today who look at the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and they see a partisan political plot. They're wrong, but one of the reasons why they may see things that way is because Darrell Issa used his tenure to mount a series of partisan witch hunts. Issa's partisanship and incompetence (he never found anything) discredited all future investigations including those run by Republicans.
When Democrats regain control of the powers of oversight, we should expect to hear loud noises from the same crowd that turned congressional oversight into a running joke. We should expect to see beltway columnists and reporters scold Democrats even though they happily published every single selectively-edited transcript or quote leaked to them by Darrel Issa and his predecessors Jason Chaffetz and Trey Gowdy.