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 Demoncraps picked their candidate by committee, before the primary. They already had their nominee, so rats were free to crossover.
Ah, I see.
Well, it wouldn't be fun stomping on just the Greens and the Libertarians... So Brat can beat the Democrat, too!
Brat is an attractive politician. As a novice, you always have to be wary that he might step in it, but he speaks well and has popular positions. I think he will do just fine in November.
Not really, if taken with the other considerations in my post.
I bet Cantor was pretty confident going into the primary too. Look how that turned out.
Run a solid race, avoid making novice gaffes and don’t fark it up.
Please double check your math - I think it was far less than $100/vote.
Does anyone know the final voter tally?
The campaign dollar figures are stunning at 2.5 mil vs 40k - that’s over 60:1!!!
Also check out the NPR error.
“Cantor, the No. 2 Republican in the House, had argued that Cantor was not conservative enough “and accused the seven-term incumbent of betraying conservative values on spending , the national debt and immigration,” Reuters says.”
The important thing is that the liberal republican majority leader of the house got fired.
My mission in life is to see all liberal republican candidates politically destroyed, if not in the primary, then in the general election.
/johnny
Last number I saw had Cantor getting 28,631 votes after having spent $2.5 Million. That comes out to $87.32 per vote.
My previous information had Cantor only getting approximately 25,000 votes. But I was in the ballpark.
$87.32 is a lot to pay per vote.
Anytime any victory occurs, you are right up there to point out how it is really a defeat.
Just because you two are losers doesn't mean that the rest of the conservative movement is also.
I think you might want to try out DU.
Fair enough.
But don’t be surprised if, by doing so, more Democrats are elected effectively defeating your purpose of electing more Conservatives.
The democrats know the right is split and are actively taking advantage of it. The Tea Party has created litmus tests for support. Problem is, everyone has a different litmus test. Palin conservatives don’t agree with Huckabee conservatives who don’t agree with Santorum conservatives.
You beginning to see the problem? For want of the “ideal” the opponent wins.
Just don’t ignore who your real opponent is
Conservatives win elections. Liberal republicans lose elections.
The 'lesser evil' days are over. If the GOP-E realizes that, they may survive.
I don't care if they survive or not. I'm a conservative, not a republican.
/johnny
Guess you didn’t see the Brat interview on Fox last night. Actually two, first on the phone, then live.
Brat is as good as Reagan on his feet (though without his humor), speaks not from notes or talking points, but from the heart. Incredibly articulate, clear, and a great communicator. He will slaughter anyone who tries to debate with him.
My bet he is going places........
The GOP-E can't even run candidates that match their own party platform. Get back to me when they can do that.
/johnny
We are trying to build a movement, here.
We are trying to undo a century of Progressive drift.
The way you do that is nominate the best Conservative you can find. Run him in the general, and win the races you can.
That way we frame the debate as Progressive vs. Conservative, instead of Progressive vs. Slightly Less Progressive. We cannot win converts to the cause if we never promote our own position.
If we can’t win converts, then we lose. But if that is the case, we lose anyway. If we are to lose the ideological battle and decend into another century of Progressive drift toward full-blown Socialism, I don’t really care if the folks in Washington have a (D) or an (R) behind their names.
No. It’s just that some of us have traveled this road before.
Ask yourself, “why were so many Democrats voting in this primary?” Because they liked Brat? Seriously?
I will support Brat, but don’t fool yourself about what’s going on. Don’t be the useful idiot they want you to be.
/johnny
When there are a half-dozen good candidates it is a lot harder for voters to get behind one of the challengers.
Compromising with bad policy is like adding just a little sewage to your drinking water.
Even in the Cantor-Brat race, the ‘establishment’ GOP had mixed messages. Criticism of Cantor (Wednesday morning quarterbacking) is his changing stands on some issues, so the voters lost trust in him standing for anything.
That is a problem most of the GOP-elites have — they don’t stand for anything other than keeping their power positions for their own self interests.
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