On a recent Wednesday afternoon in mid-December, Peter Meijer shuffled around the Speaker’s Lobby in the U.S. Capitol, finding a spot near the crackling fireplace as a cold rain from a winter storm encased Washington. His one similarly stormy term in Congress was coming to a close. He had cleaned out his office back in October but he still had votes to cast, though none of them as consequential as the one that quite probably cost him his seat.
Meijer had been a freshman...