Free Republic

After his speech, Cantor received a standing ovation from members of both parties and shared a hug with the No. 2 House Democrat, Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland.....

Pick a job, any job. Outgoing House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s career in Congress might be over, but he’s got plenty of suitors on Wall Street and in the National Republican Committee. Cantor was recently spotted at an exclusive Hamptons party, rubbing elbows with Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfien and billionaire investor Carl Icahn, according to Politico, and seemed to be pining for a finance job in New York. The seven-term congressman from Virginia lost his primary last month to Tea Party favorite Dave Brat. Cantor will step down from his leadership role at the end of July, but will...

UPDATE: Congressman Goodlatte’s office responded to this post: “Congressman Goodlatte requested this meeting with SVTPP in May, well before the June 10th primary, as part of his continued outreach to groups throughout the Sixth District. The headline of your post is quite misleading, making it look like the meeting was requested in response to Eric Cantor’s loss, which is not the case.” The Shenandoah Valley Tea Party Patriots (SVTPP) reported in their June 29 newsletter that they were asked by Congressman Bob Goodlatte (R-6th) to meet to air their concerns, an hour-long event that took place on June 17, just...

Christopher Hitchens got a chance to analyze the Tea Party in 2011, the same year cancer took his life. In a Vanity Fair article titled "Tea'd Off," the great polemicist explains that populist movements like the Tea Party are a reaction to social and political change. Hitchens writes that before the Revolutionary War costumes, America had seen a somewhat similar phenomenon with the John Birch Society: The John Birch Society possessed such a mainstream message--the existence of a Communist world system with tentacles in the United States--that it had a potent influence over whole sections of the Republican Party. It...

Kansas Congressman Mike Pompeo and his challenger in the Aug. 5 Republican primary will participate next month in a political forum hosted by the Wichita Crime Commission. Pompeo is running for a third term in Kansas' 4th Congressional District.

After the skin-crawling exploitation of black voters in Mississippi, the GOP’s current leadership wing gives a second demonstration, this time in Virginia, of just how committed they are to “a big tent,” or to the GOP’s vitality in general. The Senate majority matters, the House majority matters. But this party’s leadership is infested with the same disregard for Washington’s intended purpose as any Clintonian. Third parties fail. But what cost does remaining aligned with this generation of GOP leadership take from the cause of liberty and transparency? Recall, last week Eric Cantor said: “Of course I’ll vote for David Brat...

It’s a scene straight out of fiction. Refugees from North Africa, packed like sardines in small boats are streaming in droves across the Med to Italy. “According to Italian interior ministry figures given to the Guardian, 59,880 migrants and refugees have landed on the country’s coast this year – almost as many as in the whole of 2011, which holds the record. The situation is unprecedented. Sicily, which has received more than 53,000 of the new arrivals, is bearing the brunt and struggling to cope. And summer – historically the peak time for boat landings – has only just begun.”...

When news broke that Eric Cantor had lost his primary, Ed Gillespie, the Republican nominee for the Virginia Senate seat, immediately tweeted congratulations to David Brat. The rest of the Republican party establishment, the non-sentimental lot that it is, fell into line and pledged to support the winner. Cantor had been defeated. There was no talk of starting a third party or sitting the election out. Sure, there was some anger and disappointment, but rank and file Republicans moved on. Contrast with the news of what happened last night. Long before it became clear that Thad Cochran, a long-time Republican...

The latest interstate voter cross check tallied 6,951,484 overlapping voter registrations, and they’re just the tip of the iceberg. The cross-check program involves only 28 states and does not include the three largest: California, Texas and Florida. “Duplicate registration is an open invitation to voting fraud,” said Clara Belle Wheeler, a member of the Election Board in Albemarle County, Va. “This ability to vote more than once dilutes the legal votes and changes the results of elections.”

WEST CHESTER, Pa—Expecting House Majority Leader Eric Cantor to win his GOP primary in Virginia, I spent Election Day in Pennsylvania—interviewing angry Republicans, Democrats, and independents about the rise of political populism. I was in the wrong state, but I had the right topic. Cantor's defeat has less to do with immigration reform than it does with an uneven movement that should frighten conservative and liberal political elites to their shallow cores. Americans see a grim future for themselves, their children and their country. They believe their political leaders are selfish, greedy, and short-sighted—unable and/or unwilling to shield most people...

House Majority Leader-elect Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) blamed crossover votes by Democrats for Eric Cantor’s (R-VA) surprise primary defeat at the hands of David Brat in an interview on Sean Hannity’s radio show on Monday. He stated that was surprised by Cantor’s defeat, and did say that “all politics are local” when asked why he thought Cantor lost. McCarthy added that he had “read five different analyses” and one theory he came across was “Democrats voted 30 percent in [that race].”

Truth is one of the most powerful forces on earth. And perhaps the force most feared by compromised politicians. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's crushing defeat came at the hands of a virtual unknown college professor, one who overcame a 26 to 1 funding disadvantage in which 377 Political Action Committees (PACs) contributed to Cantor’s 2014 campaign vs. 0 (zero) PAC contributions into Brat's 2014 campaign. It's been borderline hilarious watching so many media talking heads, politicians and campaign consultants grasp at explanatory straws. It reminds me of Mark Twain's quote, "If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If...

If anyone doubted that the Republican Party would become more conservative after the ousting of Eric Cantor, his successor put those doubts to rest over the weekend. In an interview with Fox News, incoming House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) revealed leadership's first significant policy shift: opposition to reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank when its current charter expires on Sept. 30, a move that would shutter the credit agency. "One of the problems with government is it's going to take hard earned money so others do things that the private sector can do. That's what Ex-Im Bank does," he said. "I...

If character is doing the right thing when nobody’s looking, World War II Gen. Dwight Eisenhower radiated it on D-Day’s eve, writing that “any blame … is mine alone” in never-delivered remarks known as “In Case of Failure.” In making one of history’s toughest and most consequential decisions — unlike those chronicled in Hillary Clinton’s new memoir “Hard Choices” — Eisenhower prepared for the worst as 150,000 men readied for a veritable suicide mission 70 years ago this month. Willing to shoulder failure’s blame, even without knowing its reason, Eisenhower publicly attributed the anticipated victory to liberty’s cause and the...

With barely five days to go before New York's June 24 primary, speculation is mounting as to whether Rep. Richard Hanna is going to the next Republican U.S. House member after Virginia's Eric Cantor to lose renomination. While House Majority Leader Cantor's loss was fueled largely by his support on immigration reform and extending the debt ceiling — both issues that angered tea party Republicans — two-termer Hanna has many more positions hostile to conservatives. More significantly, Cantor was defeated by an obscure college educator, David Brat, while Hanna, 63, faces a well-known conservative figure in State Assemblywoman Claudia Tenney.

Yesterday’s “Burgers with Bill,” held in the normally sleepy days following the end of primaries, the end of school, and pre-Independence day, has gotten folks to thinking. Why? Because the GOP is in complete transition. And it’s time to just openly accept it.(SNIP) So, when many of the former leaders gathered last night for “Burgers with Bill,” which used to be a much sought after fundraising ticket, but is now an event that is paid for by Bolling’s PAC, it seemed a bit like a nod to the past and a reflection on the current state of the party. McDonnell...

News Corp Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch Rupert Murdoch said his "heart sank" after he learned of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's stunning Republican primary loss last week, because he believes Congress needs to tackle the issue of immigration reform this year. Murdoch, the chair of News Corp., has an op-ed in Thursday's Wall Street Journal in which he argued immigration reform "can't wait." After Cantor's loss, immigration reform was almost universally pronounced dead as a possibility this year, as it was perceived to be one of the issues on which Cantor lost favor with his Republican constituents. But Murdoch,...

In the first major press conference since his stunning primary victory over House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) on June 10, Virginia's 7th Congressional District Republican nominee Dave Brat focused on the unifying "mainstream American principles we all believe in." Speaking outside his Glenn Allen headquarters in suburban Richmond Thursday morning, Brat noted that his supporters, volunteers, and campaign staffers "are coming from all corners of the Republican party and beyond. We've got long-time Republicans of all stripes. We have Tea Partiers, independents, and libertarians on board." "This is precisely what this campaign is all about from the beginning. We're...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Former Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer chose an interesting path and offered puzzling critiques since he tossed his name in the hat for a potential presidential run in 2016. But comments the Democrat made about Rep. Eric Cantor and Sen. Dianne Feinstein in a lengthy profile published by National Journal have probably knocked him off that path. In the piece, Schweitzer shared his perceptions on Cantor's sexuality while discussing the Virginia Republican's shocking loss last week against an unknown primary candidate. “If you were just a regular person, you turned on the TV, and you saw Eric Cantor talking, I would...

Headline only