“Bad cop” Eric Cantor would have won, “good cop” Eric Cantor lost
To the extent amnesty was part of the reason Cantor lost, it was a symptom, not the disease.
No, I didn’t see it coming.
We didn’t even plan on live coverage of VA-07, instead focusing on whether Lindsey Graham would avoid a runoff (he did).
At some point I started seeing tweets of early VA-07 numbers and thought someone was trolling. Then I checked and it was no joke.
The night of, but particularly the day after, there is much fine punditry as to why Cantor lost. And much political spin.
Looking back, with the complete benefit of hindsight, it seems that something changed along the way for Cantor. I can’t put a precise date on it, but looking back on our posts about Cantor, I’d put the change sometime in late 2011, after Republicans gained control of the House, Cantor became Majority Leader, and he set his sights on even higher positions of power.
Until then, our posts reflect Cantor as a tough fighter, the “bad cop” to John Boehner’s “good cop” in fighting Obamacare and the Democratic agenda. Cantor was the guy designated to take on Obama directly in the final weeks prior to Obamacare being signed into law:
Obama also gave House Minority Whip Eric Cantor a stern talking-to when he noticed that the Virginia Republican had stacked the more than 2,000-page bill in front of him while he griped that patients would not be able to maintain the same level of coverage under the Democrats’ plan.
Obama briefly addressed the coverage point and then turned to the stacked health care bill.
“You know, when we do props like this, you stack it up and you repeat 2,400 pages, et cetera — the truth of the matter is that health care is very complicated. And we can try to pretend that it’s not, but it is,” Obama said. “These are the kind of political things we do that prevent us from actually having a conversation.”
Note also Cantor pointing out that people will not be able to keep their doctors and coverage:
Cantor proudly earned the ire of Obama and the Democrats, and was targeted for his efforts, as this Politico headline from March 10, 2009 declared:
By July 2011, during the debt ceiling talks, Cantor still was doing a very good job as bad cop, as a NY Times article headlined:
Rabbi Shuley Boteach decried The Demonization of Eric Cantor:
Attacks on Eric Cantor are gaining steam. Harry Reid called him childish. Many in the media have portrayed him as the obstinate Republican who will destroy American credit by blocking a deal on raising the debt ceiling. But for those of us who feel constantly ripped off by a government addicted to irresponsible spending, he is a hero.
In the fall of 2011, Cantor was point man against Occupy Wall Street, leading to threats to disrupt his appearances:
Damn, I loved that Eric Cantor.
Here’s what we used to write about Eric Cantor:
- NY Times Takes First Shot At Eric Cantor (February 14, 2009)
- Add Eric Cantor To Obama’s Enemies List (March 10, 2009)
- Some of Our Finest Hours (March 14, 2010)
- “Don’t call my bluff,” the president said to Cantor (July 13, 2011)
- Eric Cantor gets the Bibi Netanyahu treatment (July 13, 2011)
- Is it too early to talk about Eric Cantor for V.P.? (July 14, 2011)
Then we pretty much stopped writing about him. Not completely, but not as a focus.
When Cantor started focusing on becoming Speaker of the House and potentially even higher office, he did lose his focus on his district, as Erick Erickson points out.
But I think it was something more than that.
He started compromising that very quality people liked in him. He became more of the D.C. insider, the power player, the mushy middler who wanted Democrats to like him by toying with amnesty. To the extent amnesty was part of the reason Cantor lost, it was a symptom, not the disease.
When Cantor was the bad cop, he was very good. He should have stayed with what worked.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
The Left attributes the TP/Brat victory to antisemitism is 3.. 2.. 1…
You can never predict the Collective “Onionizing” fast enough…
http://twitchy.com/2014/06/10/left-pivots-from-tea-party-is-dead-to-tea-party-hates-jews-after-cantor-loses/
They keep beating our countdowns. That suggests they are on the run.
They apparently overlooked the strident Tea Party support for Israel. Oh, wait. That ain’t the same anymore, is it.
The Great Dismal Swamp that is DC just naturally TENDS to rot everything that comes into its morass.
Cantor started out a good, strong conservative with a lot to contribute. But the miasma took him.
He lacked the strength of will and character to oppose the culture of DC. He started to behave more like a government master than a public servant and thankfully, the people in his district were smart enough to dump him.
Combine the people who think that anything less than deportation of all 12M illegal immigrants is amnesty, and the Democrats who really want all those illegal aliens voting for Democrats over the next twenty years, and you just might get the result we see.
Cantor barely won to get in (by .6%), ran unopposed for reelection.. I forget.. five times? He only dominated once in a reelection, but that was against a weak opponent right after Canton made majority leader.
We know he lost his compass of principles once in, and now we see he’s not much of a campaigner if pressed at all.
Cantor was assimilated.
Rereading P.J. O’Rourke’s classic Parliament of Whores makes it seem predictable, really.
I have often though that careerism may be an even larger problem than partisanship in our current government.
I keep reading rumors that the Obamas are going to buy a home in the Asheville area, there to live post-presidency while Michelle Obama runs for US Senator from North Carolina.
I am holding you personally responsible for ensuring this does not happen.
This is pretty much the same trajectory Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio took. And an argument can be made that it’s who Romney was. Maybe this Cantor loss will wake the establishment up and send them back to conservative principles. But probably not.
I had a dream…..the pubs had spines and testicles installed and were walking upright again. They had stopped crawling on their bellies and had even given the media the finger. Then I woke up.
But it was nice while it lasted.
Cantor is eye candy. Now that he’s leaving Congress, he can do some eye candy things and perhaps regain the badness that he lost. When people think you’re just eye candy, you have to be bad.
This is a sort of Juba-aside because I can’t remember what was it that tripped the trigger on Cantor back when. When he was proclaiming himself a Young Gun or Young Turk, he was just windbagging; now, it’s caught up with him. Lesson: the longest road has an end.
That first paragraph sounds like a love letter. Are you sweet on Mr. Cantor?
No, but I like attractive men, and Cantor is that. However, if he had been a Conservative attractive man, I would’ve been drooling, Henry.
lol, ok.
I agree. Cantor is a bit of a hottie.
(yeah, I’m a girl, too). 🙂
You too, Jack? Me too! Juba has already been outed.
I named myself after one 15 lb. ball of white lightning that bounces around here so much that it seems like there’re eight of them, not just one.
Luvvit 🙂
That was bad. 🙂
It occurs to me I have assumed JD is male, but I don’t really have any idea.
MICROAGGRESSION.
i am so so sorry.
Happily female, Henry.
One thing I do remember is the first time I began to see him as a tool of the establishment.
That was in the immediate aftermath of the ’08 trouncing of John McCain, late November.
He was in Florida with Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney at some local, informal gathering of Republicans. The topic was education. The three of them were going out, this was their first stop, across the nation to tout the GOP plan to “improve” education, prepare workers for the global economy in the 21st Century: that statist-laden top-down control of education that most of us have come to understand is indoctrination (of our youth) on steroids.
I knew then he was no conservative; and I watched all he did and said from that moment on through the lens of that knowledge about him. Expedience is his middle name.
Whatever the trigger was, HarH, he needed to declare himself a Young Bull/Turk to counter it. By then, I knew he wasn’t cuz I’d begun to rail against him.
Yes Virginia, there is a Cantor loss.
fmc for the win!
“Yes Virginia, there is a Tea Party!”
“And it’s so good for you!”
“It’s Founding Mother Endorsed!”
….but Cantor was never the Dar(jee)ling of the Tea Party.
It was Cantor’s to lose, but it seems he had an exceptional opponent. Maybe it’s because I don’t get around enough, but I seldom hear politicians speak the straight principled talk that I get from Brat.
Free markets. Judeo-Christian tradition. Constitution. Founding Fathers. Rights not begrudgingly occasionally permitted by government but Creator-endowed. Unalienable.
Add Brat’s economics background — obviously Austrian — to see though budget chicanery.
He says he’ll admit his mistakes and never lie. I believe him.
Maybe he’s even got a sense of humor– running as he did as “Eric Cantor’s term limit.”
You ought to listen to Governor Palin, Bruno. She says hard things with a smile.
But Palin is not nearly as sharp as Brat, nor as knowledgable. We need fire-breathers like her; but we need the depth of knowledge and articulateness, the unwavering good humor and intelligence of men like Brat even more. If he stands strong and resists the corrosion of the soul that is the special bad-medicine of the Beltway, we’ll have a true statesman on our hands. And not a moment too soon.
Disagree. Sarah just hasn’t really gotten the “camera smooth” part down like Cantor does. Plus she has a near photographic memory which makes it difficult to talk smoothly due to too many mental things flying around at once. So to speak.
You are repeating spin, HarH. Palin is not an economist like Brat, but she is intellectually very sharp, one of the brightest minds out there. Her mode of self-expression is very fluent—she talks like a good writer—and she is remarkably knowledgeable about a lot of things. The difference between Palin of ’08 and Palin of ’14 is she is more media savvy. She does not use language like like the NY and DC types do; some people disparagingly say she has a down home way of speaking, as though that means she’s not bright and knowledgeable. What Palin knows is that the purpose of language is communication and your speech should open up and confirm big ideas as simply as possible. Palin excels at that. Only a fool would consider such a person simplistic.
I think she is fabulous, brave, committed conservative, attractive. I like her where she is — support from the sidelines.
It was really disheartening for me how she handled her last term … I mean 1/2 term … As Alaska governor.
Oh, please, this is beyond moronic.
Which is the wiser and more fiscally prudent course: bankrupt the state and have your legislative agenda stymied just so you can maintain political power OR resign and leave your lieutenant to complete the job you started?
Which is the wiser and more fiscally prudent course: bankrupt your family with legal bills that are greater than all your combined assets OR leave office and set about doing what you can to restore your family of seven to fiscal health? (Even the legal defense fund, modeled after Kerry’s or some Democrat’s, drew fire and scrutiny.)
A politician who sacrifices self, rather than the state and family, is a politician worth supporting.
The quitter meme is so mind-bustingly and mind-numbingly stupid that people ought to be mocked and jeered at for using it.
That Sarah Palin QUIT her governorship is not a “meme.” It is a fact.
Quitting can be the best option one can take in an infinity of circumstances. And it has consequences, particularly for a politician. It shows that one lacks strategic thinking … ability to predict .. ability to marshall resources … to, in Ms. Palin’s case, “…faithfully discharge my duties as governor of the State of Alaska” (oath of office).
Quitting could understandably have been the best choice for her as wife and mother. My understanding is that her family all supported this course.
In my comment I announced my admiration for Ms. Palin’s most laudable qualities. And gratitude for her principled, engaging and often money-where-her-mouth-is support for like-minded office-seekers.
And for me, barring something extraordinary, she has disqualified herself from a future political career. Who’s to say circumstances might repeat so she would QUIT again?
From reading your past comments, I know you are a fierce defender of Ms. Palin. I think you overstep your bounds and damage the possibility of bringing along a future ally by “mocking and jeering” me for my “beyond moronic” and “mind-numbing stupidity.”
Another big factor … this guy Brat sounds like the real deal, from what I heard on Hannity last night. He is fluent in economics, and spoke well on every basic conservative/American value. There was no wild eyed radical there … just an educated man that spoke what “the real tea party” believes.
And I believe the real tea party is the Rick Santorum inspired … “smaller government, stop the bailouts, stop the corruption, lower taxes” crowd that is 70% of the voting public.
They are so vital that the left and even some of the right, have tried to divide them, co-opt them, or demonize them as “extreme. I notice even establishment Republicans have taken up Schumer’s hot mike message of “the word we’re using is ‘extreme’“. Mumbles Mitch McConnell promised to crush us everywhere.
But this Brat guy stuck right to the central issues. He’s apparently a Yale Divinity School Christian too, but he won’t be easily “Palinized” as he has obviously worked his belief system in with his economic views of the world.
So despite the Cantor problems … give this Brat guy a lot of the credit. He inspires … he may be The Won we’ve been waiting for … bring on the halos and Oprah like hosannas. HA … no … he seems well tempered though. We need more candidates like this.
I believe his divinity degree is from Princeton.
I agree with what you say and how you put it. He could be the real deal.
thanks, just went from memory, I meant to go back and check that. 🙂
O Rhino, Looking further into this. Brat’s masters is from Princeton Theological Seminary which is not a part of Princeton University but is associated with the Presbyterian Church.
Here is 15 minutes of Brat speaking with Hannity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26imuwF1upk
“the grassroots is mocked in the press, I don’t understand that”
Thanks for the link. I really want to see this.
Excellent piece over at PJMedia by David Steinberg: “Dave Brat defeats Eric Cantor and writes new conservative play book.”
(Paraphrasing) if you can win in Cantortown, you can win anywhere … Cantor – the most inside of insiders. Best financed. Slayer of Tea Party representatives … etc.
(Sorry no link. I’m using iPad and don’t know how to access it.)
Go to the browser, put your finger on the address and hold. It will give you the select or copy option. If you are on drudge-type site, just put your finger on the article title and hold. You will get a drop down menu that includes copy.
Thanks Juba!
Yes; I read it too. Here’s the link: http://pjmedia.com/davidsteinberg/anatomy-of-victory-why-no-one-is-getting-brats-story-exactly-right-yet/
🙂
The grass roots – what O’Reilly calls ‘the folks’ – are disdained inside the Beltway. We arrive there with these silly notions endemic to We The People and want to talk about honesty, having a say in our governance and preserving our rights and freedoms. We show up with right hands extended to greet, not palm-up to take. We want a ‘fair shake’ not a hand-out. All we get is glad-handed and sent along with a parochial pat on the head and a Teflon smile.
The people who are welcomed in the offices of those very same politicians are the loud, screechy, professional victims groups and lobbyists with huge chunks of cash that are either yours or will go to someone who wants your jobs. If you ain’t a mover and/or a shaker, don’t bother our Ruling Class. If you don’t have juice, don’t waste their time.
I’m fervently waiting for some honest man or woman to bodily throw a lobbyist, a victims’ pimp or other NGO sh*bag out of his or her office and proclaim that, “My door is open to the PEOPLE not influence peddlers or leeches.”
Rick Santorum is NOT a “smaller government” guy.
PUHLEEZE look at his votes during his term in the Senate.
Voted FOR EVERY BIG GOVERNMENT EXPANSION program that the REPUBLICANS put forth.
Rick Santorum is one of the reasons there is a tea party movement: The way the Republicans acted when they owned DC from 2000 to 2006. Santorum was a WILLING and ACTIVE participant in that era.
In case you haven’t noticed, since 2010, the tea party movement has been systematically trying to remove that crop of Republicans who were in charge from 2000 to 2006.
Santorum was ousted early in 2006 by Rahm Emmanuel’s Democrat thumping. By 18%. Because Santorum couldn’t get his GOP base out to vote for the Big Spender.
I totally agree.
Sanctorum (as I call him) like Hucksterbee has no problem with using BIG GOVERNMENT to impose his vision of morality.
Thanks, but that is not my idea of “conservative”.
“And I believe the real tea party is the Rick Santorum inspired … “smaller government, stop the bailouts, stop the corruption, lower taxes” crowd that is 70% of the voting public.”
I’ve held these principles since becoming an adult in the mid-70s. Most people who hold these principles have since early adulthood. Nothing against Rick Santorum – I think he’s a fine man – but these principles go back much further than Santorum’s era. They go back a couple centuries (which I know you know, of course).
Were it not tagged specifically to Rick Santorum, I agree 100%.
——————————————————–
It is a needed thing that more of the American public at large understand that Tea Party principles are neither new nor radical, but simply the basic fundamental principles that got America from 1776 to 2014, and further, that there are currently no good reasons to move to the left or right away from them.
Just remember…
we are NOT the “right fringe”.
We are the beating heart of America.
Say it with me, loud and proud…!!!
Aaaaaaaaaaa-MEN, mah brutha! HALLELUJAH!
Sounds as though you are in your Right Mind.
oh, and I meant Rick Santelli … sheesh sorry. Better proof twice.
“the silent majority” Santelli’s famous rant
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEZB4taSEoA
Santelli did not invent the tea party or that majority view, but I view this as a seminal event, in that he pierced major media, and caused a stir. His host tried to pigeon hole him (putty in your hands) … but he was having none of it.
Refreshing to listen to it again.
I spent a couple years in 98-99 in another potential “meltdown”, trying to day trade (using hard earned sole proprietorship blue collar labor earnings) “Let them fail” was again subverted and “bail out the crooks” took precedent. Learned a lot about some of the manipulation … only later started to dip into the political side … and I think we are in for a war. The sleeping giant tea party is still waking up.
Why, I oughta….
Ironically, I really liked Cantor’s ability to explain budgets and as a policy wonk. He was outstanding on his comprehension of Obamacare and his public waylaying of the President in that regards should have made his political career.
I’m really hoping he takes the opportunity to reassess where he took a wrong turn and brings those skills back to work for a more conservative caucus.
Money can no longer buy an election. George Soros, Peter Lewis and the Sandlers spent several hundred million in a failed attempt to buy John Kerry the presidency in 2004. Sheldon Adelson spent $150 million to try to buy Romney the presidency in 2012. Meg Whitman outspent Jerry Brown something like 6:1 in her losing bid to be governor of CA – spending like $180 million to his $30 million. Carly Fiorina outspent Barbara Boxer in her losing campaign.
As Dave Brat said of his microscopic money raise the money doesn’t get a vote.
I think that Cantor’s ambition got the best of him. He believes that he needs big money to make it to the next level, and to get the big money he had to moderate his positions. That was true in the 20th century, but maybe in this era of ubiquitous communication technology it is no longer true that enormous amounts of money are the prerequisite to electoral success? Joni Ernst made her Senate candidacy viable with an internet video probably produced for a few thousand dollars at most. Same with Dr. Wehby.
Look at how effective Sarah Palin has proven to be in endorsing candidates with a free Facebook account. The high priced political consultant class of grifters in both parties may need to re-think their careers.
Ericson’s reasoning of why Mr. Cantor lost seems like one good explanation among several.
I have a cousin in law who is in the landscaping biz in Chesterfield county, part of VA-07. He’s an interested observer and participant in local politics and is pretty much a Tea Party kind of guy. He despised Cantor for one simple reason — according to my cousin, the guy was never around. You couldn’t talk to him. You couldn’t get services from his office. Cantor was so busy with Washington he pretty much forgot where Richmond was.
Add to that a very lackluster campaign, few appearances, no meet and greets, no town halls, and a series of very negative TV ads that merely served to introduce Mr. Brat to a larger audience, and well, it’s (now) easy to see why Mr. Cantor lost.
One of the people we Pubs love to dislike is Ted Kennedy. Teddie was Mr. Insider in DC of course, but he never, EVER forgot to take care of the people back home. Apparently his constituent services program was considered by many to be “best in class”. He always made time for the meet and greets and local appearances. He always appealed to the voters for their vote. He was busy with Washington but he remembered were Boston, and Springfield, and all the other towns in MA were.
I think that’s a big, big lesson. Why did Lindsey Graham, a guy many Pubs like to dislike, crush his opposition yesterday? Sure, the opposition was divided (there’s a lesson there), but Mr. Graham remembers the central rule: take care of your constituents if you want their votes. He apparently does that very, very well.
Another pol with a Hall-Of-Fame rep for constituent services was US Senator Jesse Helms(R)-NC. His instate power base was the eastern third of NC, but across the state his home offices and services were prompt and thorough. The people here loved him for it. The “Senator No” stuff was just gravy.
He was also the first one to raise the plight of the people of Darfur in Congress.
Considering that Cantor’s district is only a 100 miles drive down I-95 from DC it took a rare talent for him to get that out of touch with the voters back home.
I don’t remember anything like that from Kennedy, and I was only twenty miles from the Kennedy Compound. The only Washington politico who really pounded the local pavement was Gerry Studds, in the House. (Obviously, he had a smaller area to cover than Kennedy.) Studds would appear for an afternoon talk/Q&A session maybe twice a year, in various towns around his district, so a voter didn’t have to travel further than the next town to see him regularly. He had a regular newsletter, too, though I don’t remember how often it was mailed out. News about his votes, committee activities, upcoming crises, etc. He took his job as a “representative” pretty seriously.
And I don’t recall ever hearing Kennedy’s name mentioned as any kind of influential mover & shaker. The only Washington type who came up in local news was Tip O’Neil, and it was always about something trivial – what to name a park bench, stuff on that order.
My dream U.S. Congressman:
Originates bills to dismantle the Leviathan State;
Communicates Constution-based supporting principles with wit and clarity;
Media savvy;
Pursuasive with colleagues to earn support;
Painfully honest;
Not self-important;
A scholar and a gentleman/woman;
Holds some predictably scheduled town halls ;
Maintains a suggestion box;
Undoes union stranglehold on education so his constituents don’t need so much help with their forms;
Small staff spends time with the truly needy;
Sees and shares the humor in the absurd.
Then your dream politician is Governor Sarah Palin.
Fantastic constituent service contributed to the length of Strom Thurmond’s political career. Everyone I have every talked to from South Carolina seemed to have a story about Strom helping a relative.
Cultivation of constituent neediness is not a good thing. Why do all those relatives need help from the federal government?
The population needs to be gifted liberty and self-reliance.
Especially constituents in units small (“Uncle Joes”) to large (e.g. unions and corporations) who are looking for a handout or unconstitutional influence.
The fedgov imposes itself into people’s lives, often using threats and coercive enforcement actions. In addition, the various federal alphabet bureaucracies are often vast abysses filled with mediocre and less-than-mediocre functionaries who couldn’t care less about their job performance because they have no personal ethic and their employer won’t do anything about it, especially if it’s a black employee.
Because the fedgov rules this one-way street, citizens being put upon by the fedgov often find themselves with nowhere to turn except to their elected representatives.
It certainly doesn’t mean these people are looking for a handout, and perhaps may be seeking just the opposite – to get the bastards out of their lives or to accomplish something the fedgov is demanding they do but they can’t because of the bureaucracy and its lousy functionaries.
Wow — this Cantor post is turning into a girls’ cage fight! (You, me, Juba.)
I get your viewpoint. And your passion. If you reread my comment, you might mix in a bit of “yes, and…” in your response.
I address the “CULTIVATION of constituent NEEDINESS …[those] who are LOOKING for a handout or unconstitutional influence.”
Now that you mention it, this is another benefit to incumbents who aid and abet the growth of the Leviathan State: in this system the constituents NEED the pols to navigate the devouring bureaucracy.
It would be great if the citizens who “find themselves with nowhere to turn except to their elected representatives” saw through the con and elected not petty fixers but system overhaulers.
Man oh man.
http://rootedcosmopolitan.wordpress.com/2014/06/10/politics-and-personality-threatened-cantor-a-profligate-campaign-doomed-him/
The congressman works for us. As competent employers, we must help him prioritize and not tie him up with petty business.
I have read that it was an open primary, and that Cantor may have been voted out not only by Republicans but also by Democrats. Good luck to Brat in the general election.
According to what I’m hearing, the Deemocrat precincts had very low turn-out.
So, likely not a big factor.
On the subject of ‘pub primaries, IT’S A CRYING SHAME BOEHNER WON HIS PRIMARY.
I wanted him out more than I wanted Cantor out, by a long shot.