Free Republic

DES MOINES — It’s not often that a Democratic Party top national strategist travels to Iowa to lament an election loss of a prominent conservative Republican leader. But that happened Friday when Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz warned that the defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, a Virginia Republican who is the second most-powerful U.S. House leader, could be a harbinger of deeper political extremism, gridlock and obstructionism....

The Spin: Eric Cantor's Loss (Vanity) The Democrats and the Media (really, are they different?) have been climbing all over themselves to convince us that Amnesty was NOT the reason that Eric Cantor lost to Dave Brat on Tuesday (there are even a few trolls on this site saying the same). They even have a poll showing 72% of the people in the district actually support of Amnesty. They are desperate to get Amnesty through this term, and for good reason - it will be a long time before they ever get another chance for such a country-killing (or transforming,...

Second-term Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, plans to challenge Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., for the second most powerful House leadership position. Labrador just released a statement announcing his bid for House majority leader, saying he believes Majority Leader Eric Cantor's primary loss on Tuesday shows, “Americans are looking for a change in the status quo.” The leadership election is scheduled for June 19. Labrador made the announcement a half-day after it appeared McCarthy had the job locked up with no opponents. Sign Up for the Politics Today newsletter! Now, a Labrador aide said, the contest is up in the air. “The...

ERIC CANTOR wasn’t the only person at a loss for words on Tuesday night. His pollster, McLaughlin & Associates, found itself trying to explain the impossible — how a projected 34 percent lead for the House majority leader 12 days before the election could end up an 11-point loss on Election Day to David Brat of the Tea Party in the Virginia Republican primary. We’ve all been there. There isn’t a pollster alive — me included — who hasn’t had to take the walk of shame, hat in hand, to explain to an angry client why a predicted outcome simply...

Gets "B" for 2011-2014. Gets "A-minus" for Congressional career.

INTERVIEWER: What happened in Virginia the other day, does that concern you for your chances here in this run-off? COCHRAN: I don't know what you're talking about. What happened in Virginia? INTERVIEWER: With Eric Cantor losing his seat. COCHRAN: Well, I haven't followed that campaign very closely at all. INTERVIEWER: Really? Later, the interviewer says, "Well, Eric Cantor lost his seat as the Majority Leader." To which Cochran replies, "Well, it happens. Some win, some lose."

One day after the GOP’s Lee Terry opened the door to closing off compromises on Capitol Hill, Democrat Brad Ashford tells Nebraska Watchdog that Terry’s talk is “ridiculous, it’s disappointing.” Following Eric Cantor’s tea party ambush on Tuesday, Terry, an 8-term incumbent, told CNN, “Do we compromise? How do we work together? All of this is now in question.” Ashford says the “Cantor lesson” is just the opposite. “You can’t find solutions without working together,” says Ashford. Terry, of course, is coming off his own Cantor-like primary—just last month Terry survived a threat from his right wing, defeating Republican Dan...

In the space of less than a week, 23-year-old Zachary Werrell went from unknown to boy wonder to angry toddler, depending on who was talking. Werrell, who graduated last year from Haverford College, was lauded for having engineered Tuesday's shocking political defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. And, as campaign manager of insurgent David Brat, he was criticized Wednesday for scrubbing his Facebook page, which included provocative comments comparing the shooting of Trayvon Martin with abortion. Multiple efforts to reach Werrell were unsuccessful. His teachers at Haverford, the rigorous, liberal-arts-and-Quaker-values institution on the Main Line, described Werrell as a...

Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Tex.) has dropped out of the race for House majority leader, leaving current Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as the only candidate in the race. Sessions has released a statement announcing his exit, and his spokeswoman, Torrie Miller, confirmed his departure to the Post. “After thoughtful consideration and discussion with my colleagues, I have made the decision to not continue my run for House majority leader," Sessions said. "Today, it became obvious to me that the measures necessary to run a successful campaign would have created unnecessary and painful division within our party." Sessions had also been...

Asked at his weekly news conference whether the prospects of an overhaul were dead in light of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s primary loss on Tuesday, Boehner responded: “The issue of immigration reform has not changed.”

Conservative Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) is headed to Cantor’s (R-Va.) hometown of Richmond for a special town-hall meeting on immigration reform. While the event is actually taking place in the district of Democratic Rep. Bobby Scott, NumbersUSA Virginia noted in an alert to activists that Richmond “neighbors the district of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who will play a major role in the fate of any amnesty bill in the House." King was chastised by Cantor and other Republican leaders last month for controversial comments about young illegal immigrants.

If the GOP is unwilling to stand up to radicals, it might as well just rename itself the Committee to Elect Hillary Clinton. Eric Cantor tried to appease Republican radicals. They turned on him anyway. John Boehner has tried to resist them. They just overwhelmed him. Mitt Romney tried to join them—and in doing so fastened onto his party the platform that lost the presidential election of 2012. At some point, Republican leaders must recognize that they have a fight on their hands whether they like it or not. If they refuse to join that fight, they will be devoured...

You knew Majority Leader Eric Cantor was vulnerable–the press had already reported a non-trivial Anybody But Cantor vote in his district. But I would have settled for his challenger, Dave Brat, getting more than 40%. I was all ready to (legitimately) spin that as a warning shot across Cantor’s bow. Instead, Brat went and actually beat Cantor–decisively, by 10 points, 55% to 45%. He and his campaign manager Zachary Werrell obviously ran a very effective race with minimal resources–against Cantor’s millions. Independent anti-Cantor actors like the We Deserve Better group — and various local conspiracies we don’t even know about...

Former vice presidential candidate discusses the state of the GOP

For years, the White House saw House Majority Leader Eric Cantor as a chief driver of Republicans' staunch opposition to nearly all of President Barack Obama's agenda. Now, Cantor's stunning primary loss seems likely to make politics even more difficult for Obama. Rather than opening a pathway for the president, Cantor's defeat could push Republicans more to the right and harden the House GOP's hostility toward the White House, virtually dooming Obama's efforts to pass a legacy-building immigration bill or other major legislation....

Democratic operatives were just as surprised as everyone else by Eric Cantor’s defeat — but now they’re trying to figure out how to make the most of it. The early thinking: Stay out of the GOP’s way. Virginia’s 7th Congressional District probably isn’t going their way, regardless of the Republican candidate switch. But operatives planning for the midterms believe they can turn Tuesday’s surprising tea party resurgence into something much bigger. They see the attention to the defeat as another cut at the House Republicans as extremists, a new way to highlight congressional dysfunction, a chance to pump more GOP...

Editors at MSNBC.com trimmed down Republican congressional nominee Dave Brat's June 11 phone interview with MSNBC's Chuck Todd in order to paint him as dodging questions from the Daily Rundown host. But a review of the full interview [listen to the mp3 audio here] shows that Brat had already and seemingly quite gladly answered a few policy questions on such hot issues as the minimum wage, immigration reform, and his stance on Wall Street's influence on the business wing of the GOP. "Brat dodges Chuck Todd's questions," blared a teaser headline. "Brat: I just wanted to talk about the victory,"...

“All of the investment banks, up in New York and D.C., they should have gone to jail.”That isn’t a quote from an Occupy Wall Street protester or Senator Elizabeth Warren. That’s a common campaign slogan repeated by Dave Brat, the Virginia college professor who scored one of the biggest political upsets in over a century by defeating Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the Republican primary last night.The national media is buzzing about Brat’s victory, but for all of the wrong reasons.Did the Tea Party swoop in and help Brat, as many in the Democratic Party are suggesting? Actually, the Wall Street...

"Tuesday night, David Brat, an economics professor at Randolph-Macon College, right outside Richmond, accomplished something stunning: defeating the House Majority Leader, Eric Cantor, something never done before in American history.""Some are trying to pigeonhole Mr. Brat as a Tea Party candidate, but the truth is that, while he appeals to the Tea Party constituency, he is what a bread-and-butter Republican is supposed to be: a believer in free markets, limited government, strong defense, and a morality based in our Judeo-Christian ethos."

Wall Street has many friends in Washington, but House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was a well-placed one who understood how the industry worked and was not afraid to help the financial-services sector, even when he had to take on other members of his own party. Cantor’s loss in Tuesday’s Republican primary puts a big hole in Wall Street’s Washington Rolodex. Since he was first elected to Congress, Cantor, a Virginia Republican, has been Wall Street’s go-to guy on issues big and small. His first committee assignment was on Financial Services Committee where he became steeped in policy matters that affected...