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WASHINGTON (AP) — House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has become both a key player and big pain to more seasoned negotiators in the White House talks over how to keep the government paying its bills after next month. "Eric, don't call my bluff," President Barack Obama warned late Wednesday after a dramatic back-and-forth with the Virginia Republican that made some in Cantor's party wince. "Enough is enough." Not for Cantor, second-in-command to Speaker John Boehner who is widely assumed to aspire to the House's top job. The testy exchange with Obama left Washington bubbling with speculation about whether the self-styled...

“Eric, don’t call my bluff,” the president said, warning Cantor that he would take his case “to the American people.” He told Cantor that no other president — not Ronald Reagan, the president said — would put up with the treatment he was getting from the House majority leader. The latest and sharpest in a series of harsh exchanges between the two leaders heightened concern that markets could crash at any time amid fear of a reduction in the rating on once-ironclad U.S. debt. Cantor accused the president and congressional Democrats of progressively low-balling, over the last several days, the...

.At his press conference on Monday, President Obama made clear that his frustration with House Republicans' intransigence in negotiations to raise the federal borrowing limit did not extend to their leader. "I think Speaker Boehner has been very sincere about trying to do something big," Obama said, one of several compliments in an extended embrace of his negotiating partner. "The politics that swept him into the speakership were good for a midterm election; they're tough for governing." Tough indeed. And a death hug from a polarizing Democratic President doesn't make the task easier for Boehner. From the start of his...

Thank you, Eric Cantor.  Thank you for walking out on useless talks, presided over by Vice President Biden, addressing raising the limit on our nation’s debt. According to press accounts, Republican House Majority Leader Cantor called it quits on talks between Democratic and Republican leaders because Democrats refuse to give in on raising taxes. This, I am sure, is true.  But we also must understand the deeper and broader issue. We are in nothing less than hand to hand combat, fighting for what America is about and what it takes to get this country back on track of growth and...

The GOP is now totally out of budget negotioations and the Democrats are spinning it as them throwing the leadership of Boehner and McConnell under the bus. The conventional wisdom they are trying to establish is that deficit reduction will never happen without hiking taxes and nobody in the GOP wants to be that kamikaze pilot. Cantor specifically is being painted as selfishly putting his power first. Even if we wanted to grant that may be true, it's only 1% of the story. They are ALL putting their power first. This is a crisis that may take the nation to...

While most speakers at the Faith and Freedom Coalition played up conservative themes, Donald Trump delivered a crowd-pleasing reprise of a few old favorite themes. But also in his sights: House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who has called for spending offsets for disaster-relief funds following a tornado in Joplin, a southwest Missouri town, that killed at least 138 people. “Rep. Cantor, who I like, said we don’t want to give money to the tornado victims. And yet in Afghanistan, we’re spending $10 billion a month,” Trump said. “But we don’t want to help the people that got devastated by tornadoes,...

For a political party, the only thing worse than losing an election, is losing an election that that party should have won.  Such was the case in New York's 26th Congressional District on May 24, where the Democratic candidate won a victory that by all rights should have gone to the Republican.But from the ashes of defeat, one can glean something positive.  For in the course of winning a single election, in a single district, the Dems have revealed their strategy for 2012.  They have opened their playbook to reveal both the issue -- Medicare -- they intend to...

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor turned the policy temperature down on austerity this week by rolling out a strong economic-growth agenda. Headlined by a 25 percent top tax rate for individuals and business, the Cantor package includes regulatory relief, free trade, and patent protection for entrepreneurs. It’s job creation and the economy, stupid. Sounds Reaganesque? Well, Eric Cantor has a lot of Reagan blood in him. Back in 1980, while Cantor was still in high school, his father was the Virginia state treasurer of the Ronald Reagan presidential campaign. So the apple never falls far from the tree. In fact,...

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said Monday that he would like to see House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan run for president in 2012 and suggested that any candidate considering a 2012 bid should embrace the Wisconsin Republican’s budget plan to cut trillions over the next ten years. “Sure,” Cantor replied enthusiastically when asked if he would like to see Ryan jump into the race against President Obama. “Paul’s about real leadership. I think that that’s what this public so desperately wants to do right now. They want to see Washington that will lead. They don’t want to see individuals that...

What a difference a half-year makes. Just months after the 2010 mid-term victory for Republicans, they’ve been pushed to the brink of irrelevancy. Here are five reasons that the Republicans should simply concede the upcoming 2012 presidential election and cut their losses now: 1) Obama got his man. Nothing irks Republicans so much as a Democrat they can’t paint as being soft on crime or terrorism. Obama’s hit on Osama Bin Laden will go down as one of the most masterful military operations in American history. No one is shooting this sheriff. 2) The GOP doesn’t have their man. Or...

When it comes to a possible run for the presidency by Donald Trump, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is apparently not among those in the real-estate tycoon's camp, citing Trump's push to make sure President Obama is constitutionally eligible for the job. During an interview on CNN's "American Morning" today, Cantor was asked, "Would you support a Donald Trump candidacy, especially with all this birther talk?" The Republican from Virginia said, "No, I don't think he is really serious when we launch a – see a campaign launched on the birther issue." CNN host Kiran Chetry then asked, "But don't...

In a sign that Donald Trump’s self-promotion tour and possible run for president continues to make the Republican establishment nervous, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor on Wednesday minimized the wealthy developer’s run because he was focusing on President Obama’s birthplace. “I don't think he is really serious when we … see a campaign launched on the birther issue,” said Cantor (R- Va.) speaking on CNN’s “American Morning.”Trump has become almost a fixture on cable television shows in recent weeks as he has resurrected the issue of where the president was born. The Obama campaign long ago released documents showing Obama...

(CNSNews.com) - House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said on Monday that the new continuing resolution (CR) the House will consider this week to keep the federal government funded will permit the Obama administration to spend money on the implementation of Obamacare. Last Thursday, Reps. Steve King (R.-Iowa) and Michele Bachmann (R.-Minn.) sent a letter to Cantor, House Speaker John Boehner (R.-Ohio) and Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers asking them to include language in any future CR that would prohibit the administration from spending any money to implement Obamacare. King and Bachmann vowed not to vote for any CR that permitted...

Virginia Tea Party activists this weekend turned up the pressure on House Majority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) over the speed at which the GOP-led Congress is looking to cut spending.  Leaders of the Virginia Tea Party Patriot Federation issued a tough statement on Sunday, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, calling on Cantor to make deeper cuts to the budget at a faster pace. "We are extremely disappointed in Eric Cantor, but not surprised," Mark K. Lloyd, the group's chairman, said in a release. "The will of the American people was pretty clear in November — cut, cut, cut spending. Apparently,...

On Friday, 92 Republicans, including House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, joined all of the Democrats to defeat an amendment offered up by Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn to ensure the GOP lived up to its “$100 billion in cuts” pledge. This was a failure of leadership, particularly by Eric Cantor. Blackburn’s amendment, by its own description, would have “reduce[d] spending by 5.5% in 8 non-securiy spending subsections of the bill and reduce[d] Legislative Branch appropriations by 11%.” In other words, just as Republicans pledged to bring spending down to 2008 levels, Congresswoman Blackburn’s amendment would have...

It’s the story that won’t die – possibly because MSNBC doesn’t want it to, since it seems that it could delegitimize the Republican Party and conservatives: Taking “fringe notions” and portraying them to be mainstream, including the issue of President Barack Obama’s citizenship. On Tuesday’s “Hardball,” host Chris Matthews led off his program and scrutinized the reasons why Speaker of the House John Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor won’t condemn Republican members that question the president’s citizenship. His conclusion? Boehner and Cantor are collaborators, using the myth for political gain. “OK, you know what I want to do...

The race for the 2012 Republican nomination for President is becoming more concrete. GOP candidates made their pitches to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington on Feb. 10-12 and a straw poll of attendees was taken. The Washington Post reports Rep. Ron Paul of Texas won the poll, with about 30 percent of the 3,742 ballots cast. The poll doesn't say much as not one candidate received more votes than the other. Some of the biggest news from the weekend came from former vice presidential running mate Sarah Palin and she didn't even attend the conference. Palin hired...

<p>The new Republican House majority leader says he doesn't think questions about President Barack Obama's citizenship should play a role in the discussion of policy matters.</p> <p>Two years into the Obama administration, so-called birthers continue to argue that Obama isn't a natural-born citizen and that he hasn't proved he's constitutionally qualified to be president. Birth records in Hawaii haven't dissuaded them.</p>

It’s been a while for me, so I’m no longer sure of the protocols of dog dares, but this seems like a jump right to a triple. Harry Reid has insisted that any attempt to pass a full repeal of ObamaCare in the House would be doomed in the Senate and therefore a waste of time. In response, Eric Cantor told Reid to put it up for a vote if he feels that confident in the results: House Majority Leader Eric Cantor isn’t one to hold his feelings back — especially when it comes to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.On...

Last week was the week when the idea that Sarah Palin is going to run for president began to sink in properly. As I explained, she is an immensely viable candidate for the 2012 Republican nomination. Frank Rich, in the New York Times, argues that she is a shoo-in for Republicans because time is ripe for her populist stance, and because her defects are no greater than George W Bush’s when he jumped into the 2000 primary race. I am not so sure. The debates would prove a stiff test of her grasp of detail, and if she found the...