"...WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, West Virginia—For their annual retreat, House Republicans traveled to the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia this week to rally around a message to defend their House majority and to settle on a path forward to fund the government.
There was just one problem: Less than half of the GOP conference even bothered to show up.
Six years ago, when Republicans last held their retreat at the Greenbrier, the gathering inauspiciously started with the train transporting members to West Virginia crashing into a truck. While there were no train wrecks this time, the most convenient metaphor might have been the images of a ghost town around White Sulphur Springs—where less than 100 of the rooms reserved for lawmakers were occupied and many of the seats in the palatial conference rooms were empty.
Of the Republicans who did dutifully attend the conference, many were left disappointed, directionless, and downright bored.
As one GOP member who complained to The Daily Beast put it, “They should have opened the casino.”..."