Free Republic

In the wake of Eric Cantor's shocking primary election loss to Dave Brat earlier this week, the choice to replace him as House Majority Leader seemed a foregone conclusion, as Pete Sessions (R-TX) decision to bow out appeared to seal the decision and ascend Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to the second highest position in the House. This changed yesterday as Raul Labrador (R-ID) announced he will challenge for the role, a move Dignitas News Service both applauds and has no reservations in providing our endorsement for. Not only would the second-term Representative from Idaho bring solid conservative credentials and voting record...

With just seven little words, the freakout began: “The government holds a monopoly on violence.” These were written by David Brat, a professor of economics at Virginia’s Randolph-Macon College and, now, the Republican party’s nominee for the state’s seventh congressional district. “Unusual” and “eye-opening” was the New York Daily News’s petty verdict. In the Wall Street Journal, Reid Epstein insinuated darkly that the claim cast Brat as a modern-day fascist. And, for his part, Politico’s Ben White suggested that the candidate’s remarks “on Neitzsche and the government monopoly on violence don’t make a whole lot of sense.” As is its...

Ted Cruztook a victory lap of sorts this week after Eric Cantor's primary defeat. And why shouldn't he? The junior senator from Texas helped fuel the anti-establishment furies that devoured the House majority leader. "This election should be a reminder to all in Congress—Republicans and Democrats alike—that the conservative base is alive and well, and the American people will hold us all accountable," said Mr. Cruz. "Each of us needs to do what we said we would do and tell the truth." If this sounds like a threat, that's because it is.Mr. Cruz is wont to criticize Republican politicians who...

Rep. Raul Labrador, a fiery conservative lawmaker from Idaho, will challenge House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy in next Thursday's special election to replace Eric Cantor as majority leader, according to Republican sources. "I want a House Leadership team that reflects the best of our conference," Labrador said in a statement provided to National Journal. He later added: "I am running for Majority Leader because I want to help create a vision of growth and opportunity for everyone and start getting to work for the American people." A sophomore representative from a heavily Republican district, Labrador's election would dramatically alter the...

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....

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...

As Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe engages in an effort to scrap abortion clinic safety standards, two abortion facilities owned by the notorious New Jersey abortionist Steven Chase Brigham are seeking variances that would exempt them from complying with much of the law. Virginia Women’s Wellness in Virginia Beach and Virginia Health Group, also known as American Women’s Center, in Fairfax, Virginia, admit that they are unable to comply with facility standards even though they were allowed two years to come into compliance with a 2012 emergency law that became permanent in 2013. Both have made applications to the Virginia Board...

After Eric Cantor’s stunning defeat to political neophyte and economics college professor Dave Brat in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District, the political and media elite are beside themselves trying to understand how this could happen. How could they, in their all knowledge and insight, not see this coming? How could a nobody, a man who spend less than 200,000 on his campaign, and had zero name recognition or political experience, beat the House Majority Leader, the great (and smug) one himself, incumbent Mr. Cantor? First of all, Eric Cantor is not a conservative, he simply isn’t. It is also fair to...

'Sic Semper Tyrannis' relates to the illustration shown of a  revolutionary citizen defeating a ruling class 'tyrant', and means: 'Always THUS to Tyrants' Fitting in the wake of this week's events in the Commonwealth-  and to the proud patriots of Virginia's 7th District I say THANK YOU  for delivering a message on behalf of all of us to today's tyrannical ruling class when the opportunity presented itself... God Bless and thanks again! Hey stoopid, you're next

Brat has called for slashing Social Security, Medicare, and education spending and says "rich" nations don't have to fear climate change. When tea party challenger David Brat sent Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the House majority leader, to the ash heap on Tuesday night, vanquishing the incumbent by more than 10 points in the primary race, the politerati were stunned. Political journalists scrambled to answer a question: who is this guy? The political pros knew that Brat had mounted a campaign largely based on two issues: bashing Cantor on immigration (that is, excoriating the congressman, who was quite hesitant about immigration...

Don’t sleep. In a district that’s 20 percent black, if they played their cards right, Democrats could turn Rep. Cantor’s primary loss into a general election win. Pundits, prognosticators and backseat-driving know-it-alls are chatting up everything you need to know about House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s (R-Va.) karma-driven primary loss Tuesday night, with politicos scrambling to understand David Brat: a once-puckish Tea Party upstart and Cantor twin with only $200,000 in the bank who managed to unseat the second most powerful cat in the House armed with $5 million plus. But, the Spidey sense should buzz after those third-eye folks...

Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, spent his career denouncing liberals, sucking up to the Tea Party, and doing everything possible to derail President Obama’s agenda. Despite this, Cantor was ousted Tuesday by a Republican challenger in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District. Cantor’s loss follows last week’s Mississippi Republican primary, in which Sen. Thad Cochran, another conservative, was edged out by a Tea Party opponent who’s expected to dispatch Cochran in a runoff. How do right-wingers like Cantor and Cochran lose to challengers even further on the right? The answer lies in the extremism of Republican primary voters. On June 2,...

Tuesday’s defeat of the sitting House majority leader, Eric Cantor, apparently sent a series of “messages,” which we in the pundit world who missed all of the signs that The Shock Heard ’Round the Campaign World was coming, are beginning to interpret. Among the strongest messages: Incumbents beware. To hear some tell it, this message is bipartisan. Because Democrats apparently are unfamiliar with the phenomenon of low turnout midterm elections in districts drawn to be more partisan than they were, which would be an interesting observation if it were actually true. The reality is that in most states, the rates...

Radio talk show host and Fox News contributor Laura Ingraham called out national tea party groups for allegedly “not helping” David Brat, the college professor who derailed U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s congressional career in the Republican primary for Virginia’s 7th Congressional District. Brat has been reported as a “tea party-backed candidate” but Ingraham disagrees with giving credit to the national tea party groups for his victory Tuesday night. “People say this is a big tea party victory. So people understand this — the national Tea Party Network, Tea Party Patriots, Freedom Works — I don’t believe any of...

Steny Hoyer, the number two Democrat in the House, said Eric Cantor's Republican primary defeat shows the Republican party to "deeply divided and dysfunctional." First off, probably 98% of Republican incumbents have won their primaries this year, many with challengers, so not sure how one, possibly two, GOP incumbents losing their primaries indicates "deep division." Frankly it's been surprising how conservative/Tea Party and more moderate Republicans have been coalescing around the same candidates for the most part which has come as a surprise to most political analysts. But let's leave that part of Hoyer's statement be and focus on Hoyer...

Eric Cantor's reelection campaign spent more at steak houses than opponent Dave Brat spent on his entire campaign. In a stunning upset, the second-highest ranking Republican in the House lost his primary challenge to tea party-backed economics professor Brat, who became the GOP nominee for Virginia’s 7th congressional district. Sign up for breaking news alerts from NBC News According to FEC campaign finance data, Cantor's campaign spent $168,637 in 17 payments to both Bobby Van's Steak House and BLT Steak up until May 21. Brat's campaign had spent a total of $122,793 in that same amount of time.

Late Tuesday evening, conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham savored David Brat's historic upset victory over House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) in Virginia's 7th Congressional District Republican primary. "This was a cataclysmic upending of the old Republican Guard. A strong, substantive, passionate, earnest conservative flattened an arrogant, out of touch, two-faced, moderate Eric Cantor," Ingraham told Breitbart News shortly after the Associated Press declared Brat the victor. Brat, who was not expected to win more than 40 percent of the vote, thumped Cantor by an astounding 55 percent to 44 percent margin. He won going away in a race...

In no particular order. Winners: 1) Dave Brat, the college professor and political novice who pulled off the first primary upset of a House majority leader since 1899. 2) Tea-party activists nationwide, whose efforts to move Republican-party leaders to the right received a morale boost and a fundraising hook. 3) Conservative talk-radio host Laura Ingraham, who supported Brat when most political types assumed Cantor would roll to another victory. 5) Representative Jeb Hensarling (R., Texas), whose chances of succeeding House speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) just got a whole lot better. 6) Representative Peter Roskam (R., Kan.), who has a...

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's loss to his little-known primary rival Tuesday night was made all the more surprising by Cantor's own pollster's confident predictions on the race. Less than a week before Cantor's upset loss, the pollster, John McLaughlin, released a survey indicating Cantor had a 62% to 28% lead over his Republican opponent, Dave Brat. Brat would go on to win by 11% — a huge, 45-point shift that was far outside the poll's margin of error.