House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was defeated Tuesday by a little-known economics professor in Virginia’s Republican primary, a stunning upset and major victory for the tea party.
Cantor is the second-most powerful member of the U.S. House and was seen by some as a possible successor to the House speaker.
His loss to Dave Brat, a political novice with little money marks a huge victory for the tea party movement, which supported Cantor just a few years ago.
What can one say but …
I don’t know who the Democratic nominee may be. And of course if the baggers prefer this guy Brat to Cantor, Brat’s got to be downright frightening. Still …
HOO-yah.
What will become of the Young Guns? This is worse than the shoot out at the OK corral. Paulie and Kevin must be devastated. Vaya con Dios, Amigo!
Until very recently, it was assumed that Cantor would easily win his primary and run unopposed in November. The Democrats must have gotten wind that something was up, because they put up a candidate at the last minute. His name is Jack Trammell, and like Brat, he is a professor at Randolph-Macon. Other than that I don’t know anything about him, but he will be hard-pressed to win. Romney won the district by 15 percentage points.
Cantor ran a terrible campaign, flooding the airwaves with commercials claiming Brat was a liberal. Nobody was fooled. In the last Cantor ad I heard, he complained about Brat pushing a conspiracy theory (that families of Congress critters are protected from insider trading laws). Sorry, but I’m not crying for him.
Cantor’s fall happened in the part of the process most vulnerable to small activist groups, the primary. The enthusiasstic TP members certainly did not have too high a hurdle to clear to beat 30,000 or so votes. But I wonder how Brat will run in the fall? It is a Republican area, but will the Democrat call him out for the extremism of the TP, which he may deny allegiance to only at the cost of the very activist base that got him where he is now? I do not read the VA papers, even though I live near the state line surveyed by William Byrd, so don’t have insight.
Cantor is one of the most obnoxious characters in Congress. Won’t miss him.
It’s been awhile since we’ve seen the dancing bananas. They’re as happy as ever and I can understand why. This lastest guy Brat is rumored to have the charm of a Gila Monster and with a bite just as deadly.
I would have hoped that listed among Cantor’s transgressions was the fact that he was a staunch supporter of the government shutdown, but that little fact didn’t seem to be on anybody’s mind when he was handed his walking papers. They took him down for being soft on immigration and not being rabid enough.
If this new bagger is to the right of Cantor.. He must be a real piece of work.
If nothing else this certainly puts teeth into the constant threat that republicans who have been elected are under; vote like a T-bagger or get primaried by a T-bagger. The list of T-bagger orthodoxy is long, immigration reform being the only issue Cantor seemed to even slightly step out of line. I also say good riddance. Anything that shows the republicans for what they really are, a neo-confederate group of rabid racists (who only take off their hoods for the cameras), is fine with me.
The guy who won, Brat is his name, is against immigration reform? He thinks we should round up the between 10-30 million illegals in the country? I can’t even imagine what that would look like. Maybe we’ll have the Immigration Police, the IP’s, which will become as infamous as the SS, who will round up all people without papers and put them on trains heading south. Like most T-baggers, he doesn’t deal with reality, and has no workable solutions to any of our country’s miriad of problems.
Quite frankly, I’m shocked!
Brat will (most probably) be worse than this Cantor, brat!
This is what happens when you campaign more for the Speaker job, than you current Congressional job.
But don’t cry for Cantor.
He’ll get a massively hefty bump in salary working as some lobbying firm, with great perks and benefits..
Then, there will probably be corporate boards he can sit on, and collect a nice salary.
Then, the Wingnut Welfare Rubber-chicken lectures – interesting to see how they handle THIS big a primary loser, though.
ALL, while getting his Congressional pension.
Yeah, suck to be him – he LOST.
Now, begins his “Fall Up!”
“a stunning upset and major victory for the tea party”
I agree with the stunning upset, but this guy Brat is a republican? This whole Tea-Party thing is a goddamn myth. The “tea-party” can never lose. So called tea-party candidates lost most of the congressional primaries yet they claim victory by saying they forced the establishment to the right and the democrats and the media play along. Then if and when they win they claim a major victory? I wonder would the media and GOP let the Democratic Party with say a OWS subset get away with such a charade? Oh and the look on poor little Eric’s wife during the concession speech was priceless, the disappointment was palpable, no more DC insider parties for you, hahahahaha!!!!!!
HuffPo has a headline this morning: “Eric Cantor Was Beaten Tuesday Night by Eric Cantor,” to which I’d have to say, Yep.
From what I hear, this Brat guy is even farther to the right (which seems impossible, I know). And it sounds like the Dem has no chance of beating him.
But then, that’s what they said about Brat and Cantor.
Won’t anyone write a Requiem for Eric Cantor?
It could be called, “A ‘Young Gun,’ Shot-down in Early Middle Age.”
“Don’t Cry for Me Ol’ Virginia! I’M MOVIN’-ON UP, TO K STREET!!!”
After prematurely declaring the death of the Tea Party, imo, this should be the headline for the Cantor story:
DC MSM CW DOA!!!
It’s pretty clear now that the Republican Party IS the Tea Party, and the Tea Party IS the Republican Party.
There’s not much difference between Cantor and Brat – except the people in Cantor’s district either got sick of Cantor’s act, or, because he made some semi-pro-immigration peeps, decided to move the “TEH STOOOOOOPID SOCIOPATH” button up from “11” to “12,” and switch to the other Brat!