Free Republic

Time are EST You could be in for a long wait to know the results of the midterm elections and which party ends up controlling the House and Senate. But polling places close earlier in some states than others — and they could provide a hint of things to come as the night progresses. 6 p.m. Kentucky’s 6th Congressional District: President Trump won this district near Lexington by 15 points. Democrats are fielding retired Marine fighter pilot Amy McGrath against three-term incumbent Andy Barr. The race is rated as a toss-up. A Democratic victory could be an early sign of...

Snip There’s no such narrative around Eric Cantor, the former Republican House majority leader from Richmond who was spectacularly ousted in his 2014 primary by a no-name economics professor. Let’s back up a moment. Remember the summer of 2013, when the “Defund Obamacare Tour” drove the news cycle all through Congress’s August recess? The town halls organized by the political arm of the Heritage Foundation enlivened the base and furthered what had been the GOP’s core message since 2010—that Obamacare was bad and, if Americans helped Republicans hold both chambers, it could be repealed. Cantor helped create that perception. Earlier...

Paul Ryan got what he wanted from the House Budget Committee — but also got a warning shot across the bow as well. The American Health Care Act (AHCA) passed on a narrow vote, but not before Republican conservatives offered some resistance to it. The final vote may have been a managed outcome. Kasie Hunt explains that they expected more debate today in the committee and had counted four Republicans on the panel as against the AHCA or leaning toward a no. Four Republican defections would have resulted in a tie, but a plea from the chair may have made...

Yesterday House Speaker Paul Ryan pushed through a Puerto Rico Rescue bill called PROMESA. The details of the bill are fundamentally challenging to understand in scope, however, the key aspect to remember is the underlying benefactor(s) – Wall Street. While Ryan is severely adverse to PROMESA being called a bailout, that’s exactly what it is – only worse. The plan structurally changes the dynamics of how State debt is repaid, and the considerations for bondholders under the 5th amendment (seizure of private property w/out compensation); which will lead to a guaranteed bondholder bailout. However, beyond the ‘bailout’ aspect there is...

Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Sunday slammed Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.) and the House Freedom Caucus for "holding the House hostage" and blocking Republicans from electing a successor to outgoing Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who wants to resign at the end of the month. Hewitt said on NBC's "Meet The Press" that he hopes Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) — who has said he doesn't want to be Speaker — will change his mind. Hewitt then criticized Brat, who was on the roundtable, and the conservative House Freedom Caucus for giving Ryan a tepid response. "There's like 15 of you...

A question I often am asked is: "Who would you bet on to win the presidency?" Personally, I don't bet on politics, but here's my current take on the 2016 presidential race—with, of course, the caveat that we don't know which campaigns will turn out the best in terms of organization, strategy, tactics, or execution, much less which candidates will step on land mines along the way. The Democratic nomination appears fairly straightforward. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is now the prohibitive favorite. If her early stumbles during her book tour, or remarks like the one she made about...

Whoever runs for the Republican leadership of the U.S. House on Tuesday must communicate on paper how Congress is going to lead on the big issues. The American people elected us to solve trillion-dollar problems, not to kick the can down the road with only symbolic votes. My district expects any leader to clearly outline bold solutions on the major issues of our day, such as: · How he or she will defend the Constitution and challenge President Obama’s repeated illegal overreach into areas of congressional authority, particularly his unconstitutional amnesty by presidential decree; · How he will end Washington’s...

David Brat, the Republican who unseated ex-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in June, cruised to victory Tuesday night, according to multiple news outlets. Brat, who faced off with Democrat Jack Trammell, won the race for Virginia’s 7th congressional district. Despite both teaching at Randolph-Macon College, the two presented a different vision for America’s future while courting voters. Brat rode a wave of tea-party backed support to a stunning upset of Cantor last summer and is favored to win the heavily Republican 7th Congressional District in central Virginia, which includes the Richmond-area suburbs. Brat repeatedly played up his role as an...

U.S. Representative Eric Cantor’s recent primary loss to free market economics professor David Brat has forced academics to take another look at the TEA Party. “They are very suspicious of liberal professors and believe most of academia is dominated by liberal professors,” Harvard sociologist Theda Skocpol claims. “But they would know the difference in their district, and they wouldn’t disrespect somebody just because they were a professor, if they had the appropriate ideas.” david brat “It’s not so much an animosity toward higher education, per se, and more toward a cultural elitism among liberals and concerns about liberal biases,” Ruth...

Bob Woodward came close. Oh so close to discerning how much of the mainstream media were blindsided by the stunning defeat of former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in his congressional primary in Virginia. In fact, Woodward came so close that your humble correspondent thought he was going to say it out loud today while being interviewed by CNN's Candy Crowley on State of the Union. Instead Woodward skipped the real reason and gave the secondary reason for neglect of this story. Woodward did mention that too many reporters don't like to do the hard footwork to investigate stories in...

The Eric Cantor debacle in Virginia last week demanded a storyline, which was no heavy lifting. In the GOP primary a political newbie had wiped the floor with the majority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives. Bring on the analysts to find the narrative in the rebuke administered, a rather remote if hard-working political power broker linked more frequently -- here comes the dichotomy -- with Wall Street than Main Street. Cantor, on these terms, updated Cardinal Wolsey's Shakespearean lament from "Henry VIII": "Had I but served my district with half the zeal/I served the Chamber of Commerce...

The big political news from last week was David Brat’s upset win over Eric Cantor for Congress. Brat is an economics professor at Randolph Macon and from his research it’s clear that he has strong political views embedded in his economics. It’s perfectly fine to be a political economist, but when it leads to an obviously flawed understanding and presentation of reality then it becomes a real problem in my opinion. For instance, in his website Brat says the following: “Our national debt has skyrocketed, reaching over $17 trillion dollars. What our leaders in Washington fail to mention is...

The Beltway hates it when Tea Party pols speak the truth. So when David Brat blamed the recession on Washington, it of course set up an intellectual firing squad to stop him. But it's shooting the same old blanks. In upsetting House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in Virginia's GOP primary, Brat never wavered from his position that government caused the financial crisis and has stunted the recovery with more of the same bad policies. And he's not backing away from it, despite media bashing. Here's how the economics professor turned politician explained it in a post-victory interview: "The American people...

The primary election defeat of House majority leader Eric Cantor by the little-known Tea Party conservative David Brat has shocked business and financial elites as well as politicians and pundits. Conservative intellectuals such as Tim Carney have been arguing for a while that the right should adopt a new populism that targets “crony capitalism” and the collaboration of public and private elites at the expense of workers and small businesses. Brat is the first conservative candidate to have achieved a major electoral success by taking this line. He denounced Cantor for being too close to Wall Street and K Street,...

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...

On Sept. 20, 2005, Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honoré, answered reporters' questions during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Honoré focused on steps being taken to prevent future storms. Reporters kept drawing him back to planning prior to Hurricane Katrina hitting. "You're asking last storm questions for people who are concerned about the future storm. Don't get stuck on stupid, reporters," Honoré said, coining a phrase. The General concluded, "You are part of the public message. So help us get the message straight. And if you don't understand, maybe you'll confuse it to the people." Republicans in Washington are confused...

The Republican primary race in Virginia’s 7th district was a David and Goliath story from the beginning. [snip] Brat’s spiritual life has long been as central to his identity, even though it has also been difficult to pigeonhole. He currently attends a Catholic church, but he also identifies as a Calvinist, and he lists four churches as affiliations on his resume: St. Michael’s Catholic, Christ Church Episcopal, Third Presbyterian, and Shady Grove Methodist. He earned his bachelors from Hope College, a Christian liberal arts college in Holland, Mich., which is historically affiliated with the Reformed Church in America, a Protestant...

Eric Cantor's loss in the Republican primary Tuesday night sent shockwaves through the establishments of both parties. The previously dominant "Tea Party is dead" narrative has been unceremoniously dumped. Some in the media seem to be pursuing two new storylines: “Support for immigration reform dooms Republicans” and “the Tea Party is actually dominant in the Republican Party.” But both of these explanations run into problems. Lindsey Graham is one of the faces of immigration reform, and he won his primary handily. The “inmates running the asylum” narrative runs into the very real establishment wins from earlier in the cycle --...

Listening to David Brat on election night, following his upset win over Eric Cantor in Virginia’s seventh congressional district, I heard a principled, free-market, pro-growth individual who is going to make an excellent Republican House member. Mr. Brat, the Randolph-Macon economics professor, talked about pro-growth tax reform, spending limits, and entitlement reform. He wants to end the congressional bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and return them to the private sector. He opposes corporate cronyism in Washington. He’ll have no more special favors for the K Street crowd. He emphasizes the importance of the rule of law and property...

... what will the new narrative from the MSM be? Before the first GOP primaries this year, we heard from the MSM the long-held narrative: A.) "There is a huge war within the GOP. The GOP needs to do something with these "extremists" (Tea Party)!" Then when Boehner and some others won their primaries, the MSM narrative quickly shifted (as in goal-posts): B.) "The GOP has absorbed the Tea Party!" Now with Eric Cantor losing to David Brat (and that was a huge loss), the MSM won't go back on their narrative, even though they logically would have to admit...