Yesterday, House Majority Eric Cantor (R‑Va.) received a solid thumping by Tea Party-supported Dave Brat in Virginia’s Republican Party primary.
That bounce in my step today? Not schadenfreude.
Americans have always loved the underdog, and certainly Brat qualified as one: Cantor was expected to crush his underfunded challenger. Slate’s Dave Weigel reported that the Cantor campaign “spent nearly $1 million in the final weeks, while Brat struggled to spend six figures.”
Brat, a Randolph Macon College economics professor, says he’s “a free-market guy,” and proudly admits, “I do want to scale down Washington, DC.” He also signed the U.S. Term Limits pledge and dubbed himself “Cantor’s term-limit.”
By a dozen percentage points, no less.
Brat hammered Cantor on the immigration issue — on which I side with neither Brat nor Cantor — but the defeat of this major congressional leader was about far more than that single issue. It was about leadership and trust … or the lack thereof.
Our so-called leaders aren’t leading.
And the Republican grassroots refuse to blindly follow.
Well-known conservative activist Brent Bozell, head of ForAmerica, a group that attacked Cantor, called the upset “an apocalyptic moment for the GOP establishment,” adding, “The grassroots is in revolt and marching.”
Several TV talking heads spoke about the fear the Republican congressional leadership has of its own party’s rank-and-file. Great! I hope Republicans will keep GOP politicians scared. And Democrats will do the same with theirs. And Libertarians and Greens will help stir the caldron.
This is the biggest upset since those crazy term limits folks took out House Speaker Tom Foley back in 1994.
And I feel fine.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
11 replies on “Brat Beats Cantor”
Shades of Goldwater.
Jeez i hope not. Didn’t Goldwater want to nuke Viet Nam? I like him although not close enough to the race to be that knowledgable. I did see this today. He actually knows the difference between Keynesianism & Austrian economics:
http://www.businessinsider.com/david-brat-economics-professor-2014 – 6
Another example of the P2P Jitney is the Tesla issue where dealer networks lobby to keep Tesla from selling direct to customers. They are mostly winning due to protected status in local legislatures.
I like it as it appears the voters are responding to issues here, not just personalities and incumbency.
Hopefully that will hold true in the rest of the primaries and in November.
Dear Paul, We have a hole to dig the country out of so the first thing to do is stop the diggers and this is a great first step!
I love the fact that someone who has spent 22 years in the House is going home. & I do love that voters voted the issues & the person & didn’t just pull the lever (punch the hole) for the most recognizable name. Maybe the mid-term election won’t be business as usual. And maybe, just maybe some of these entrenched, out of touch lifers will realize they actually have to work for us.
Also, too bad we can’t get rid of that weasel, Harry Reid!
2 things:
i heard him interviewed on cnbc this am and he is dealing with all the issues i care about, namely the big banks, competition, cronyism and status quo, etc.
but also i heard that the democrats voted him in as a weaker opponent for the fall.
Karen’s point is well taken. Getting rid of a 22 year incumbent is a big step in the right direction all by itself.
OT: NSA “Too Big to Comply”
06/10/2014
NSA
By Patrick C. Toomey, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project at 9:52am
In an era of too-big-to-fail banks, we should have known it was coming: An intelligence agency too big to rein in — and brazen enough to say so.
In a remarkable legal filing on Friday afternoon, the NSA told a federal court that its spying operations are too massive and technically complex to comply with an order to preserve evidence. The NSA, in other words, now says that it cannot comply with the rules that apply to any other party before a court — the very rules that ensure legal accountability — because it is too big.
The filing came in a long-running lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation challenging the NSA’s warrantless collection of Americans’ private data. Recently, the plaintiffs in that case have fought to ensure that the NSA is preserving relevant evidence — a standard obligation in any lawsuit — and not destroying the very data that would show the agency spied on the plaintiffs’ communications. Yet, as in so many other instances, the NSA appears to believe it is exempt from the normal rules.
In its filing on Friday, the NSA told the court:
[A]ttempts to fully comply with the Court’s June 5 Order would be a massive and uncertain endeavor because the NSA may have to shut down all databases and systems that contain Section 702 information in an effort to comply.
For an agency whose motto is “Collect It All,” the NSA’s claim that its mission could be endangered by a court order to preserve evidence is a remarkable one. That is especially true given the immense amount of data the NSA is known to process and warehouse for its own future use.……
https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/too-big-comply-nsa-says-its-too-large-complex-comply-court-order
Rick — Democrats painted Goldwater as wanting to use nuclear weapons. He didn’t advocate their use though he did discuss them. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/goldwater-suggests-using-atomic-weapons
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Goldwater
Regarding Brat, it appears that there are libertarian/Tea Party positions which many Democrats like: no bailouts, no government picking winners/losers in commerce, legal pot, no NSA spying, and no amnesty for illegals (though an exit poll showed voters from both parties strongly in support of immigration reform, with Republicans preferring reform whereby illegals can become citizens after paying a fine and keeping a clean record for 13 years rather than one that provides citizenship without a fine).
This is contrary to the GOP establishment and Democratic messaging that the GOP should be nominating Democrat lite RINOs, who are supposedly the “most electible.” The reality, is that RINOs are for more government, and have nothing to offer fiscal conservatives. As Bush’s term showed. The “most electible” is just a ruse to keep statists in power. If you examine the list is issues above, they are all for more freedom, unlike what our reps in Congress support.
Like Mr. Jacob, I have a sping in my step and feel fine. And I look forward to the elections. As Bret Bozell said on TV, everyone is running on Tea Party positions. Unfortunately, most of them are liars, like Obama/Cantor/Boehner/etc. Thankfully, the voters are starting to see the difference.
[…] a few days ago, GOP establishmentarians felt that they had finally quelled the Tea Party notion that Republicans […]