Tag: Eric Cantor

The above chart, from Saletan, helps explain Cantor’s loss:

Most respondents in the 2012 national poll volunteered jobs or the economy as their top issue. Only 22 percent of the voters in Cantor’s primary agreed with that priority, even though it was explicitly offered in the questionnaire. Thirty percent of the voters in Virginia’s 7th District named debt and spending, which didn’t even crack double digits in the national polls. And while fewer than 10 percent in the national polls said health care reform was their top issue (pro or con), 25 percent of the voters in Cantor’s district specifically said their top issue was “Stopping Obamacare.” As for immigration, the percentage of people who volunteered it as the most important issue in the 2012 U.S. survey was less than half a percent.

Ezra’s take on Cantor’s defeat:

There is no grand ideological lesson to draw out of those results. They don’t say what Americans want, or what Republicans want, or even what Tea Party conservatives want. They don’t reveal the true politics of immigration reform (particularly on a night when Senator Lindsey Graham easily beat back a primary challenge) or whether the Tea Party is a live wire or a spent force in American politics. There are no grand lessons about the schisms in the Republican Party in those results. As Ben Domenech writes in the Transom, “this race was not about the Tea Party — Dave Brat may have been backed by voters sympathetic to the Tea Party, but not by any significant organization, money, or groups.” It’s not even clear the results say much about Cantor’s relationship with his constituents.

Frank Rich was unsurprised by the news:

If you listen to Mark Levin, Glenn Beck, Laura Ingraham, or other voices of the grass-roots right, the base’s loathing of Cantor and possibly his primary defeat would not have come as a shock. If your sole sampling of Republican opinion is the relatively establishmentarian Fox News, you might have missed it. You certainly would have missed it if you think today’s GOP is represented by the kind of Republicans who swarm around Morning Joe, where Chris Christie and Jeb Bush are touted daily as plausible GOP saviors who might somehow get the nomination.

Ben Domenech believes Cantor lost sight of his constituents:

Graham’s victory and Cantor’s loss provide a good contrast in the crippling danger of complacency in politics. And that’s becoming the real lesson of the 2014 primary season: good candidates win, bad candidates lose – and the difference is often as simple as recognizing who you represent is not the collection of interests inside the beltway but the people who actually pull the lever back at home. While Cantor has been gunning for the speakership now for several years, his ladder-climbing ambition leading him to attempt to position himself as all things to all people, he lost sight of the frustrations back home in his “real Virginia” district.

Trende, a former Cantor constituent, found that Cantor’s office was unresponsive:

In his political science classic, “Home Style: House Members in Their Districts,” Richard Fenno hypothesized that members of Congress have three goals: re-election, power in Washington, and enacting policy preferences. To pursue the second two goals, a member must achieve the first, and to do that, he or she must adopt a style that suits the district. If these images are not consistently reinforced, the incumbent will have trouble. Crucially, Fenno notes that the adoption of an effective home style involves a two-way communication process: Telling the constituents about oneself, but also listening to constituents. With the benefit of hindsight, we can probably apply this model to explain most of the Tea Party wins and losses over the past few years.

I have yet to read anything suggesting that Cantor had a good home style.  His staff is consistently described as aloof, and his constituent service is lacking. This is consistent with my experience.

Douthat tries to look on the bright side:

An alternative takeaway, though, is that Cantor himself didn’t have the credibility required to play a unifying role – that his operator’s persona and K Street-friendly record were all wrong for the part, and that he’d rebranded himself so many times that he came off as an establishment phony trying to play the Tea Partier, rather than as someone who genuinely shared populist concerns. …

If this message’s resonance becomes part of the takeaway from Cantor’s defeat, then the lessons of [Tuesday] night look rather different, and his disaster doesn’t have to be a setback for the effort to reform the G.O.P. Rather, it can be a teachable moment, demonstrating not that a Republican synthesis is unachievable, but that it needs to consist of more than gestures and triangulation: It needs to be both substantive and authentically populist, or it will not be at all.

Sarah Binder’s two cents:

Cantor’s loss strikes me as less a statement about GOP disagreement about immigration reform and more an illustration of right wing populist dissent within the GOP.  Brat deemed Cantor out of touch with Virginia’s main streets and far too in touch with Wall Street—charging for example that Cantor diluted the STOCK Act limiting lawmakers to do the bidding of allies on K Street and Wall Street.  The fault lines that emerged over the Wall Street bailout in late 2008 continue to roil American politics.

And Brendan Nyhan considers what the loss means for Cantor’s lobbyist buddies:

The shock to the value of these lobbyists can be significant. In a study published in the American Economic Review, the economists Jordi Blanes i Vidal, Mirko Draca and Christian Fons-Rosen found that lobbyists connected to United States senators suffered an average 24 percent decline in revenue when that senator left office; those connected to a House member experienced average revenue declines of 10 percent.

These effects appear to be especially strong for lobbyists connected to members serving on influential committees. Given the power Mr. Cantor wielded as majority leader and his potential ascension to House speaker, ties to him would have probably been similarly valuable before Tuesday night.

The Dish’s full Cantor coverage is here.

I watched Fox News a little compulsively last night. Where else? If you’re really going to understand the groundswell in Virginia, it’s essential viewing. I gleaned a few things. The first is that we shouldn’t under-estimate a story that hasn’t gotten widespread MSM attention, but which was a big event in the conservative media in the last few days. The story was – and is – about a large influx of illegal immigrants under the age of 17 – from Latin American countries other than Mexico – just showing up at the border and seeking refuge. For a non-wingnut version of the story, here’s CNN:

“We are seeing hundreds turning themselves in daily. And I mean hundreds at a time,” said Chris Cabrera, a leader of the local chapter of the National Border Patrol Council, a labor union representing U.S. Border Patrol agents. Many of the immigrants use rafts to cross the Rio Grande, equipped with instructions to follow the river until reaching the Border Patrol site to surrender. “They know that once they get to the station, we are going to give them paperwork and we are going to set them free into the United States,” Cabrera says.

U.S. law prohibits the Department of Homeland Security from immediately deporting the children if they are not from Canada or Mexico. Instead, the children are turned over to Department Health and Human Services supervision “within 72 hours of DHS taking them into custody,” an official said … The numbers are staggering. He estimates that more than 60,000 unaccompanied juveniles will cross in 2014 and that the numbers will rise from there. “You’re talking kids from 17 years old, on down to some that are 5 or 6 years old, traveling by themselves,” Cabrera says.

The number of these undocumented minors has overwhelmed the resources of border states, leading the president to declare an “urgent humanitarian situation”. And the influx seems related to the Obama policy of easing up on the immigration of minors – which Cantor had expressed some sympathy for. Put all that together and you have a news event almost tailor-made to both expose the chaos at the border with respect to immigrant kids and to create a sense of emergency that would boost turnout and intensity in the last few days of the Brat campaign.

And look: this isn’t irrational. It’s perfectly understandable that an immigration loophole that would mean tens of thousands of undocumented children simply walking into the US would galvanize people who believe the border is insecure.

But the story would never have had traction without the relentless focus from the Brat Pack media complex. And who would be members of that Brat Pack? Step forward, as they say, Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter, Mark Levin, and Matt Drudge (with a somewhat more niche version in Mickey Kaus). In ways I really cannot but admire, these anti-amnesty enthusiasts latched onto the Brat campaign, pumped up the hysteria and rhetoric day after day, turned the illegal children crossings into a mini-media firestorm, and, against all those odds, never let go. Mickey has a bit of a slightly stunned post this morning on the great adventure he has just completed:

I would have settled for his challenger, Dave Brat, getting more than 40%. I was all ready to (legitimately) spin that as a warning shot across Cantor’s bow.

But Mickey is a minor media figure here. The key figures behind this upset are Ingraham, Levin, Drudge and Coulter. Their constant championing of Brat, their genius at always backing the upstarts and the rebels, their swagger against the Republican Establishment and their dominance of the Republican base debate were all indispensable to Brat’s victory. And that’s why I think the amazement at the money imbalance in the race misses something important. The kind of media exposure Brat got for free was almost certainly worth far more than the brutal ads Cantor flooded his district with. Brat got endorsements from the men and women who truly have credibility with the Tea Party base. And that media universe has much more power with the grassroots than anything the establishment could hope for.

For a long time, I’ve argued that one of the critical flaws in the current GOP is that its massive and lucrative media-industrial complex has effectively supplanted its legislative-governing identity. And so absolutist principles, and high-flown rhetoric – laced with readings from sacred secular texts and references to the philosophy of the Founding Fathers – carry enormous clout. In this world of jaw-jaw, there is a premium on sticking to “principles” as the ultimate mark of devotion to the conservative cause, and certainly utter disdain for any kind of compromise in a messy, multifaceted, multicultural and multiracial society. That’s why its typical representative is now a university professor, marinated in ideology, and uninterested in governance. This is now a party not of pragmatic, reality-based governors and legislators, but a church with an increasingly rigid theology.

And that’s why, even as the Hannity and Kelly enthusiasm for this grass-roots insurrection was palpable and infectious last night, there was a slight anxiety around the edges. From time to time, they referred rather defensively to an alternative “left” version of last night, which could portray this revolt in defense of constitutional government as a lurch to the loony right. They showed both contempt for this narrative and also fear of it. I don’t think they have yet resolved that tension – or will for quite some time.

(Photo: Conservative radio host and commentator Laura Ingraham addresses a health care reform protest on December 15, 2009 in Washington, DC. By John Moore/Getty Images.)

https://twitter.com/DaveBratVA7th/statuses/473261119986229248

John Avlon points to turnout:

[D]on’t give the TeaVangelist team too much credit for strategic genius. The key factor in this upset is a 12% voter turnout—meaning that 6.1% of the local electorate could make a majority. This is a paradise for activists and ideologues—Main Street voters, not so much.

No one seriously doubts whether Cantor could have won a general election in his Virginia district. This is purely a numbers game. An unrepresentative turnout makes for an unrepresentative result. And for Republicans, it is perhaps the most pointed reminder of the dangerous game they’ve been playing by stoking the fires of furious conservative populism. Golem ultimately turns on its creator.

Sure. But Cantor won massively in previous primaries where the turnout was actually lower. Morrissey rightly calls Avlon’s logic absurd:

First, Cantor himself got elected through the same supposedly unrepresentative process of the primary system. … Also, it should be noted that turnout in this primary was actually higher than those earlier primaries that nominated Cantor (almost 20,000 more than in 2012) and were supposedly more representative — and that Cantor got fewer votes this time than in his last primary.

Morrissey also declares that, “that immigration wasn’t the only reason Cantor lost, but it’s absurd to think it didn’t play any role.” I’m with Morrissey. Why? Because immigration was easily the hottest issue as the race came down to the wire. Look at that tweet above. But Jamie Weinstein thinks the emphasis on immigration is misguided:

[T]he truth is that most polls show that a majority of Republicans support a type of legalization proposal similar to what Graham helped write and pass through the Senate and, to a much more limited extent, Cantor supported in the House. There is even a poll of self-identified tea party sympathizers that shows that 70 percent support an immigration bill that would provide some type of pathway to legalization for illegal aliens in the country if certain conditions are met.

Perhaps these polls are all wrong. Perhaps the political class has overlooked the potency of the immigration issue for voters. But it is also possible that we are exaggerating the importance of one House primary, however shocking its result. What if all Cantor’s supporters stayed home because they thought their man was safe and everyone who opposed immigration reform showed up? Maybe Cantor was tossed out because voters thought he cared more about rising the House leadership ranks than representing them?

Maybe. PPP’s polling (pdf) backs that analysis up:

Cantor has a only a 30% approval rating in his district, with 63% of voters disapproving. The Republican leadership in the House is even more unpopular, with just 26% of voters approving of it to 67% who disapprove. Among GOP voters Cantor’s approval is a 43/49 spread and the House leadership’s is 41/50. Those approval numbers track pretty closely with Cantor’s share of the vote last night.

72% of voters in Cantor’s district support the bipartisan immigration reform legislation on the table in Washington right now to only 23% who are opposed. And this is an issue voters want to see action on. 84%  think it’s important for the US to fix its immigration system this year, including 57% who say it’s ‘very’  important. Even among Republicans 58% say it’s ‘very’ important, suggesting that some of the backlash against  Cantor could be for a lack of action on the issue.

I’m really unconvinced by PPP’s take. It seems really strange when you look at the dynamics of the race. And a poll of all the voters in Cantor’s district is not the same as the actual poll of the minority who showed up. So yes, don’t over-extrapolate from the immigration issue. But don’t deny its potency either. Larison’s take:

The backlash over immigration shows something else, which is the extent to which Republican voters have come to distrust their party leaders and the reason for that distrust. Cantor predictably said that he was against an immigration amnesty bill, but the problem for him was that large numbers of his constituents simply didn’t think he would do what he said. It is understandable that Republican voters would be especially wary of the promises from their leaders on immigration. Party leaders have repeatedly tried to ignore what the voters want on this issue, and many of them have made no secret of their desire to take immigration “off the table” before the next election, and in practical terms that means giving in to at least some of what the administration wants. Add to this Cantor’s focus on his own political aspirations and his perceived neglect of his constituents, and you have a recipe for electoral defeat.

Waldman doesn’t see the loss as a major blow to immigration reform:

It’s true that other Republican members of Congress are going to look at Cantor’s defeat as a cautionary tale. After all, if you’re a backbencher who just saw the Majority Leader get crushed by some nobody in substantial part because of immigration, it’s not exactly going to give you a lot of enthusiasm for sticking your neck out for the good of the national party when it might cost you your seat. But it wasn’t as though there was much of a chance for immigration reform to pass even before this. To put some rather arbitrary numbers on it, the odds went from 20-1, or maybe 50-1, to 100-1. In other words, immigration reform probably wasn’t going to happen before, and it probably isn’t going to happen now.

Judis observes that “Brat’s case against immigration reform was directed at big business as much as it was directed at the immigrants themselves”:

If he is elected in November, Brat may, of course, jettison the anti-Wall Street and anti-big business side of his politics. His actual economic views appear to be close to those of the Cato Institute and Ayn Rand. His solutions for America’s flagging economy consist in flattening the tax code and cutting spending – positions that will certainly not alienate the Chamber of Commerce or Business Roundtable. But in defeating Cantor, Brat echoed the age-old, darker, and more complicated themes of right-wing populism. These themes will continue to resonate, even if Brat abandons them.

Jia Lynn Yang considers the implications for big business:

Brat’s win signals that it’s not just the lawmakers supported by the BRT and the Chamber that are under threat. The business lobby groups themselves have increasingly become political targets–and they could start hearing their names mentioned unflatteringly in many more stump speeches to come.

Kilgore feels Cantor needed to play more to the base:

Interestingly enough, a Republican incumbent initially considered far more vulnerable than Cantor, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, romped to victory yesterday without a runoff over a field of six opponents trying to exploit his RINO reputation. Graham had the same kind of financial advantage as Cantor enjoyed, but also made himself a chief purveyor of red meat to “the base” in his abrasive exploitation of the Benghazi! “scandal,” and more recently, his suggestion that Barack Obama was courting impeachment by his handling of the Bergdahl exchange.

Cantor has been a conspicuous sponsor of the “conservative reform” band of intellectuals encouraging Republicans to think more deeply about a positive governing agenda. He might have done better by emulating Graham and finding some decidedly non-intellectual buttons to push among right-wing activists. That’s a lesson that won’t be lost on Cantor’s soon-to-be-former colleagues in Congress, and on the emerging Republican field for president in 2016.

Beutler downplays the immigration angle:

For more than a year now, Cantor’s stable of influential operatives and former operatives have done battle with the purity obsessed hardliners and opportunists who tried to seize control of the party’s legislative strategy. Many of them sought retribution by taking aim at Cantor in his district.

In the end the right’s beef with him—as with McConnell—was about more than just affect. It was about his willingness to use power politics and procedural hijinks to cut conservatives out of the tangle when expedient. The lesson of his defeat isn’t that immigration reform is particularly poisonous, but that the right expects its leaders to understand they can’t subsume the movement’s energy for tactical purposes, then grant it only selective influence over big decisions.

Jason Zengerle focuses on Cantor’s shape-shifting:

During his 14 years in Washington, Cantor reinvented himself so many times that I ultimately lost count somewhere around Cantor 6.0. And that was ultimately the reason for Cantor’s downfall. The serial reinventions left Cantor with few allies and myriad enemies. He was the worst thing a politician could be: someone who inspired great passion, but only negative ones. As we’ve seen this year with Boehner and with Senator Mitch McConnell, Establishment Republicans can withstand Tea Party primary challengers. But Cantor couldn’t because, unlike Boehner and McConnell—who despite their opposition to Obama never entirely cozied up to the Tea Party—he attempted to be something he was not.

Robert Tracinski, a constituent, thinks Cantor’s downfall was a failure of principle:

Here’s my favorite Eric Cantor story. At the Republican Convention in 2008, I approached Cantor after an event, introduced myself as a constituent, and told him where I lived. It’s a tiny place, more of a wide spot in the road than an actual town, so this was partly a test to see how well Cantor knew his own district. I turns out that he did recognize the town, and to prove it, he started to tell me about how he had worked on getting us an earmark for a local Civil War battlefield park. An earmark, mind you, just after Republicans had officially renounced earmarks in an attempt to appease small-government types. Cantor suddenly realized this and literally stopped himself in mid-sentence. Then he hastily added: “But we don’t do that any more.”

That, ladies and gentlemen, was Eric Cantor: the soul of an establishment machine politician, with the “messaging” of the small-government conservatives grafted uneasily on top of it.

So yes, you can now tear up all those articles pronouncing the death of the Tea Party movement, because this is the essence of what the Tea Party is about: letting the establishment know that they have to do more than offer lip service to a small-government agenda, that we expect them to actually mean it. Or as Dave Brat put it in one of his frenzied post-victory interviews, “the problem with the Republican principles is that nobody follows them.”

It was pretty damn conservative:

Using DW-NOMINATE Common Space scores (which measure the ideological positions of Members of Congress based on the entirety of their roll call voting records), we find that Cantor is more conservative than 61% of Republicans in the (current) 113th House and more conservative than 76% of Republicans in the 113th Senate. Though already a sound conservative in the current Congress, Rep. Cantor would have been among the most conservative Republicans (more conservative than 83% of Republicans) 20 years ago in the 104th House.

But Derek Willis adds that, as “a member of leadership, Mr. Cantor has had to take votes that angered conservatives”:

Since becoming leader in 2011, Mr. Cantor has overseen eight votes in which a bill passed without a majority of Republicans supporting it, angering some rank-and-file lawmakers.

Even so, there are few current House Republicans who have disagreed with Mr. Cantor on even one in five votes in the current Congress: The small group that did consists of the libertarian-leaning Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Justin Amash of Michigan, and the relatively moderate Chris Gibson of New York and Walter B. Jones of North Carolina, a wild card among the G.O.P. for his antiwar positions. The same was true in the 112th Congress.

Mr. Cantor’s voting record is also very similar to that of other top House Republicans, including Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy of California, Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and Jeb Hensarling of Texas.