Posted on 06/11/2014 2:49:04 AM PDT by Servant of the Cross
Eric Cantor’s loss is historic. No sitting House majority leader has lost an election since the office was created in 1899. While Cantor’s loss was a stunning surprise, the warning signals were around for a while:
1. Cantor managed to muddle his message on immigration. His direct-mail pieces claimed he was foursquare against amnesty. But the newspapers covering Washington, D.C., quoted him as saying he was seeking a compromise with President Obama on immigration. Voters resolved the seeming contradiction by deciding to vote out their establishment congressman. Cantor’s loss destroys any chance of a comprehensive immigration bill passing the House this year.
2. The majority leader outspent his opponent, David Brat, by $2.5 million to $40,000. Much of that money went to negative ads against Brat that turned off voters and were so vitriolic as not to be credible.
3. Cantor was also hurt by a subterranean campaign by Democrats to convince their supporters to vote in the Republican primary against Cantor. Apparently, some of them did.
4. Many constituents of Eric Cantor felt he had ignored them for years, rarely returning home and often ignoring them on key issues ranging from expanding Medicare prescription-drug benefits to TARP bank bailouts. The frustration boiled over at a May party meeting in his district, where Cantor was booed and his ally was ousted from his post as local party chair by a tea-party insurgent. “He did one thing in Washington and then tried to confuse us as to what he did when he came back to his district,” one Republican primary voter told me.
And, looking forward:
5. In theory, Cantor could run as a write-in candidate in the November election, but that is highly unlikely. A divided GOP vote could elect a Democrat in a district where President Obama won 43 percent of the vote in 2012.
6. The House Republican Caucus has experienced an earthquake. Regardless of John Boehner’s decision on whether to remaining speaker, there will now be a new majority leader. Early contenders for the post are House Financial Services Committee chairman Jeb Hensarling and House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan. Both men are more conservative at their core than Cantor, who often made colleagues think he was a conservative of convenience rather than conviction.
Primaries are often criticized for low voter turnout. But they are also expressions of the grassroots sentiments of political parties. The lesson tonight is that establishment candidates ignore their most ardent voters at their peril. As political analyst Stuart Rothenberg put it tonight: “The GOP establishment’s problem isn’t with the Tea Party. It’s with Republican voters.”
The district is a solid GOP one, the Democrats are not going to pick it up.
There is no proof whatsoever that dems voted in this primary. The turn out was low and that alone puts that notion to rest.
Steve Forbes was saying this morning that this idea that Brat won because of dems voting is ridiculous and that the GOP ignores this at their peril.
Hey get with the program and toe the line. Brat is the Republican candidate. Sit down, shut up, vote for Brat and eat your shit sandwich. Enjoy the peanuts.
After all hasn’t this been the battle cry from the Rino(e) since the Rockefeller wing took over?
Graham got those votes for many reasons...
1) The 17th amendment - outside money
2) Incumbency
3) many primary challengers splitting the vote
4) Open primary - dems help to pick your candidate
Knocking off a sitting Senator in a primary is NEARLY impossible even as awful as Graham is...
Nowadays, a political campaign is a long hard slog. You can't underestimate the necessary GOTV activities and having a huge network of supporters "canvassing extensively". A House seat has such a smaller area to canvass than a statewide Senate race.
Obama took 43% of the vote in 2012. Very plausible for Dem pickup.
As far as your prediction (and something Cantor is very aware of right now), I’ll leave you with this:
“pride goeth before the fall”
Don’t be too confident.
Lesson for Republicans: Stop turning into Democrats when you get to D.C.
Nevertheless, the Cantor defeat is a victory because other would be Rinos are in the position of the Soviets about Star Wars, they could not be sure that it would not work and Rino Republicans cannot be sure they will not be dealt out of the game like Cantor.
The point is to build momentum toward seeing the light.
Obama took 43% in a presidential election. He got out the base vote from Richmond. Different turnout, different demo, different candidate. In an off year election which is mode overwhelmingly Republican, the unknown Dem has no chance.
Or, to look at it another way, a sitting Senator lost 44% of the vote in a primary. The opposition was fractured, but they all voted against Graham.
Graham is a good retail politician. His GOTV effort was a thing to behold. But he needed to pull out all the stops to get just over 50% of the vote in a Republican Primary.
Senator Wins Renomination - Dog Bites Man
House Majority Leader Loses Renomination - Man Bites Dog
We're not going to win them all. But if the Republicans don't get religion on protecting the border and stemming the tide of illegal immigration, we are going to win more than our fair share.
The Democrats are not even going to have a candidate on the ballot.
In November it will be Brat vs. a Green and a Libertarian.
In SC the problem was too many candidates. I think there were something like 9. When it was just Mace or Bright, the prospects looked much better but it ended up with the other 8 trying to marginalize each other rather than focusing on Graham.
They will learn from this and if the Senate goes much stronger to the conservative side, you will see the RINO’s start to tact to which way the wind is blowing.
The one positive thing here is that this defeat will have a definite effect on the rest of the primaries.
Quit trying to please all the people all the time RINOs. Have a spine. Stand up for what is right.
Well, bye.
I guess you could say we have reached a tipping point in American Politics, kind of like the Island of Guam
I read there were 20K more voters in this race than last time, that’s not subjectively low voter turnout
Establishment dribble.
Cantor didn’t “muddle his message” on illegal immigration—he acted straight out for amnesty than ran baldfaced campaign ads claiming the contrary.
All of the current GOPe leadership is compromised on illegal immigration, though Ryan is more so than Hensarling.
And how remote from VA can a man in DC be? Voters weren’t just throwing a hissy fit because they felt ignored by the traitor.
And Graham isn’t repulsive?
Wrong....Jack Trammell is the Dem candidate. Carr is the Libertarian and Mike Dickinson is the write in.
Read on McDuff.
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