(CNN) Republicans are quitting Washington at a rapid rate these days.
Of the 17 House Republicans who have said they don't plan on running for another term, 13 are simply retiring outright -- without any other office to run for. Which is a historical anomaly -- and best explained by this quote from retiring Republican Michigan Rep. Paul Mitchell to The Washington Post:
"Did any member of this conference expect that their job would start out every morning trying to go through the list of what's happening in tweets of the day? We're not moving forward right now. We are simply thrashing around."
Mitchell doesn't name President Donald Trump there, but he doesn't need to. Trump's Twitter habit is well-known -- and getting worse -- as is his tendency to veer wildly off message with attacks that border on (or more than border on) racism, xenophobia and potential criminality.
The Post story documents Mitchell's frustration with Trump's attacks on the "Squad" -- four Democratic women of color in Congress -- and, in particular, the President's call for the congresswomen to "go back" where they came from. (Three of them -- Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley were born in the United States. The fourth, Rep. Ilhan Omar, was born in Somalia.)
But that episode speaks to the broader frustration that Republican members of Congress have with Trump and his wild unpredictability. There is nothing politicians -- of both parties -- hate more than not knowing what's coming next. They are creatures of preparation and habit.
Trump is the opposite of that. He makes decisions seemingly at random and often in contradiction of what his top aides have signaled he would be saying. He picks fights with anyone and everyone -- a Gold Star family, the Pope, etc. -- and often without any obvious way out. He pushes the boundaries of the presidency to breaking, whether that's in his attempted firing of former special counsel Robert Mueller or, more recently, his decision to invoke former Vice President Joe Biden's name in connection to corruption in Ukraine during a conversation with that country's newly elected president. He doesn't tell the truth and, more than that, seeks to discredit those who do rely on facts.
While Trump and his supporters in and out of the White House believe his, uh, unconventional approach to the presidency is working by freaking out the media and keeping his potential 2020 opponents off-balance, it's also having a profound effect on his own party. And not a good one.
It's simply not fun to be a Republican politician in Trump's Washington. As Mitchell notes, you never know what you are going to get on a day-to-day basis. Second, what you usually do get from Trump is totally self-referential and without any clear tie to a broader Republican agenda. Third, Trump's vision of what the GOP should be -- particularly on debt and deficit -- is wildly at odds with the Republican Party that many of the members of the GOP conference actually believe in. And finally, there is no room to sway or influence this President. (Mitchell details how his attempts to set up a meeting with Trump to voice his concerns was ignored.) If you try to go public with any doubts about a policy or a pronouncement, Trump attacks. And when Trump attacks, the party rank-and-file turn on you. And then, usually, you either A) lose your reelection race or B) retire, to avoid Option A. The whole process amounts to whatever the opposite of a virtuous circle is.
For Republican members of Congress who came to Washington to, you know, do things, Trump's Washington amounts to a sort-of hellscape Groundhog Day. Every day the same question: "What do you think of what the President tweeted?" Every day a remaking of what it means to be a Republican. And every day a lack of any real talk of policies -- or really of anything other than Trump.
Look. Plenty of Republican members will simply keep their heads down and wait it out, believing that they can do more for the country and the party from within elected office than out of it. But make no mistake: The 13 Republicans who are leaving without any other office to run for are the leading edge of a trend within the party to simply walk away from the royal mess the President has made of the party and the nation's capital.