Washington • The late Steve LaTourette came into Congress as part of Newt Gingrich’s 1994 conservative revolution. The Ohio Republican was a party loyalist but not an ideologue. He thought that government ought to do such revolutionary things as build roads and bridges. So when I asked him why he decided to quit Congress in 2012, he had a ready answer: “Because we couldn’t even pass a highway bill anymore.”
LaTourette, who died in 2016, was part of an informal group sometimes known as “Building Trades Republicans,” a band that believed constructing stuff and paying construction workers well were good ideas.