“After much contemplation and prayer,” the 13-term congressman said in a statement that he and his wife decided the time was right for him to step aside.

“With my time as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee ending in December 2018,” he said, “this is a natural stepping-off point and an opportunity to begin a new chapter of my career and spend more time with my family, particularly my granddaughters.”

Because of rules imposed by the GOP he would have to leave the committee anyway, so that may be a factor. Earlier in the year, he announced plans to destroy the Office of Congressional Ethics so maybe he took too much heat from that.

But I think there is another reason he and other republican leaders are leaving now. Two closely related reasons, actually, shown in these two graphs:

I take it, from his statement, that his first board of directors appointment will be with a company called “MyGranddaughters Inc”