Poor Donald Trump. It seems fate has pre-empted the media reviews of his first State Of The Union speech with a story about a Republican trainwreck. That has to have annoyed Trump, one assumes. We all know how much he likes seeing people talk about him on television, so seeing the trainwreck story instead certainly must have put a damper on his victory lap.

Now, I don't mean to belittle the accident. One person is dead and many others injured, although it seems that most of the congressmen and their families are going to be OK. But as with any accident involving death or injury, it really isn't a laughing matter. After the train hit the garbage truck, several Republicans with medical training were reported to have leapt to deliver aid, even though the security officers were cautioning them not to. That is selflessness and should be applauded, without regard to their political leanings.

Still, even having said all of that, the irony is pretty obvious. Trump delivers a speech calling on Congress to take action, the Republicans board a train the next day to travel to a retreat to hear more from Trump, and a trainwreck with a garbage truck ensues. I have not seen the news today, but my guess is that the trainwreck is going to be the lead story ("if it bleeds, it leads," right?), and Trump's speech will be treated as an afterthought. Television news just loves big accidents to report on, and I don't expect this one will be any different.

The other (completely unrelated) political story which caught my attention today was the news that Representative Trey Gowdy will not be running for re-election. He becomes, by one count, the 34th GOP House member to make such an announcement, which is an astonishingly high number. He also becomes either the eighth or ninth (depending on how you count them) Republican committee chair to step down, which is even more notable.

Now, I have no love for Gowdy, because personally I find him obnoxious and extremely hard to watch in an interview. His smug sense of righteousness and general all-around smarminess rivals that of Ted Cruz (which is really saying something). To be perfectly blunt (using an old yardstick for measuring a politician's relative honesty), I would not buy a used car from Trey Gowdy. His politicization of the deaths in Benghazi and use of the same as a political weapon against Hillary Clinton will not soon be forgotten. So I certainly won't be sorry to see him go.

Gowdy, unlike several of his other Republican colleagues, is not stepping down due to worries about whether he'll actually be re-elected or not, I should point out. His district is one of the safest and reddest around, so even with an open seat it'd be almost impossible for the Democrats to pick up. Gowdy simply could not have reasonably been worried about losing the election, in other words.

If we take Gowdy at his word, he's quitting Congress in order to get back to working within the justice system. Maybe he's hoping for a judicial appointment from Trump? But one has to wonder if the prospects for the Republican Party in general in this year's midterms might have had something to do with his decision. Many Republicans currently in the House have never experienced being in the minority party. They simply don't know what it is like to wander that particular political wilderness. Being a member of the minority in the House means almost never having any influence over anything that gets done in Washington, after all. It's not like in the Senate where your vote might be courted to break a filibuster. Your power as a House minority member is almost non-existent.

All those Republicans who made it to the House during Republican rule of the chamber may be in for a bit of a shock, to put this another way. If Democrats do manage to take back the House, then Republicans are going to have to learn to live with their minority status for at least two years. This is the prospect that must be weighing on many right now, as they make the decision about whether to seek re-election or not. Those who actually have been around long enough to remember being in the minority will understand the choice more than the newbies -- either go out on top of your game, or learn to live with having much less political power. Of course, those who (unlike Gowdy) live in districts that are actually within reach of Democrats this year have an extra worry on top of all that -- either go out on your own terms, or face the prospect of ending your political career by losing an election to a Democrat.

This is why political wonks pay so much attention to these announcements. Every politician, in public, expresses optimism about their party's chances in the next election. Perhaps it is merely an attempt at positive spin, and perhaps it is true confidence -- either way, they say pretty much the same things. Signing up for a re-election campaign, however, is real commitment, and can't be discounted as just spin.

Republicans are fast approaching having a full 20 percent of their House caucus decide to sit out the 2018 midterms. We are smack in the middle of "filing season" where candidates for office must publicly file the forms necessary to run. These deadlines are spread out (state by state) over the next few months, so some have longer than others to make up their minds. But it's certainly notable how many Republicans are heading for the exits so early in the process.

Maybe they see a trainwreck coming, or something.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant