Another Retirement From The House

Oh...but this one's a Republican.  From South Carolina.

Rep. Henry Brown (R-SC) will reportedly announce today that he is retiring from Congress. The Palmetto Scoop reports that significant factors in the decision were Brown's age -- he is 74 -- and also that he did not want to continue serving as a member of the minority party.

Wait a minute.  You mean there's a Republican in the house who doesn't think the GOP is going to win back the House in 2010?  I thought that was a given at this point among GOP circles.

Brown was first elected in 2000 to a safe Republican seat. (His predecessor was Mark Sanford, who left Congress in order to honor a term-limits pledge. Sanford was of course later elected governor, and has been in the midst of a sex scandal since last spring.) But in 2008 he had an unusually close race, winning by only 52%-48%, at the same time as John McCain carried the district by 56%-42%. He was already facing challenges in the Republican primary from several credible candidates -- who will now effectively be the main GOP bench for the open seat.

You mean ol' Henry, running in Mark Sanford's old seat, is getting Hoffman-ed out of of a GOP seat because he only won by 4 points in 2008?

Seems like he's being told to retire here for heresy against the New Glorious Republican Revolution.  Oh, and the fact that Republicans failed to impeach Gov. Mark "I'm Hiking Her Appalachian Trail" Sanford has nothing to do with the fact that the GOP thought Brown was vulnerable enough to make him retire.  Nope.  Not at all.