In a stunning defeat that pundits and politicians across
America are still trying to reconcile, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA)
was ousted in the Republican primaries by little known economics professor,
Dave Brat, who lambasted the GOP leader for his “soft” stance on immigration
reform throughout the campaign (NYT).
To put the loss in context, Cantor’s pollsters had him up by between 25 and 32
points, he outspent his opponent by 20 to 1 and he was the first incumbent
majority leader to lose their seat in Congress since 1899, when the post was
first created! The stunning defeat should be contextual though, recognizing
that it was based on the decision of 65,000 registered voters (12 percent of
the total in Virginia’s 7th district) in a non-Presidential election cycle. Yet
the historic victory does demand some early analysis of what it might mean.
Some thoughts (culled after reading a number of articles including this
excellent one from Bill
Moyers):
1.
Little guys can win elections against Fat Cat politicians, if
the circumstances are ripe for change – meaning money doesn’t always bring
victory (though it does MOST OF THE TIME). On the other hand, this appears to
be a victory for anti-immigrant reactionaries who wanted the district to go
even further right and were angry at Cantor for a number of real and perceived
slights.
2.
As with the Romney campaign two years ago, GOP pollsters are
not terribly good at their jobs these days. Many in the Romney camp woke up on
Election Day almost certain of victory, only to find that their numbers were
way off in the most important swing states.
3.
Cantor paid for his dismissive approach to GOP activists. Ben
Jacobs at the Daily
Beast explained, “One Virginia Republican familiar with the race suggested
that Cantor’s loss was due to “a perfect storm” brought about by the fact that
Cantor seemed to be schooled in “the George Armstrong Custer school of tactics
as opposed to Sung Tzu school.” The Republican suggested that while immigration
was a factor, the bigger issues were internal party politics. As opposed to
other Virginia Republicans in Congress, Cantor didn’t show the most basic
respect to Tea Partiers in his district. It wasn’t about Cantor’s votes but
rather that he didn’t even show up to explain himself and get yelled at…Cantor
also exacerbated things by failing at attempts to play internal politics within
the Republican Party of Virginia. In May, his candidate to run the
congressional convention in his district, Linwood Cobb, was defeated solely because
he was supported by Cantor. Grassroots Republicans resented that the House
majority leader was trying to “launch a boneheaded frontal assault” on the
state party to take control of it. The result meant was that “run of the mill
Paul Ryan Republicans” were just as furious with Cantor as Tea Partiers were.
In a straw poll taken at that the convention, Brat was the favorite of
attendees, but so was the establishment choice for the Senate nomination, Ed
Gillespie.”
4.
On the question of Immigration Reform, while the cause of
death might be exaggerated here, it does appear to indicate that it is a poison
chalice that any sensible Republican will avoid like the plague. While, Seung
Min Kim reported for Politico that a new poll by Public Policy
Polling found that registered Republicans in the 7th District favored
comprehensive immigration reform by a 70-27 margin, the pollsters claim that
immigration didn’t tilt the race toward Brat. In fact, the PPP poll explained
the provisions of comprehensive reform before asking the question, and that
always generates higher support than surveys which simply ask people’s views of
“immigration reform.” On the other hand, Lindsey Graham (R-SC) – a long-time
target of the Tea Party, won handily.
5.
Too Negative Can Hurt: as Romney learned, and Karl Rove is
reinforcing along with the Cantor people, going negative on the edges of The
National Inquire and Weekly World News is not necessarily the way to win
elections. David Marx at Politix believed that it wasn’t Cantor’s
position on the issue as much as it was his messaging that cost him the
election: “Cantor’s defeat offers another lesson — how not to run a negative
campaign. In trying to stave off Brat’s challenge from the right, Cantor’s
campaign threw out a bunch of ludicrous charges that only backfired.” Rare Editor
Jeremy Lott – one of the few political analysts to detect the majority’s
leader’s electoral troubles in advance — wrote before the votes were counted
about desperate tactics by Cantor’s minions that were likely to backfire:
“Cantor and allies have run anti-Brat television ads, sent out fliers,
blanketed the radio waves. The Cantorites have called the tea party-favored
Brat a ‘liberal college professor’ and accused him, falsely, of backing amnesty
for illegal immigrants. (Which, given Cantor’s slipperiness on the subject,
takes chutzpah.)” That broke a cardinal rule of negative campaigning — make
your charges credible. One of Brat’s main issues was opposing the type of
immigration reform sought by House Democrats.
6.
Ambition Doesn’t Always Play Well: Cantor clearly had bigger
ambitions that his Congressional seat for the future and some constituents see
that along the same lines as those following a local band that hits it big. “In
other words, if that guy is looking out for number one, who the hell is looking
out for me?” Jeff Shapiro of the Richmond
Times-Dispath arued that there was “a perception within the Republican
cricles that Cantor, in his determination to succeed John Boehner as Speaker,
seemed more interested in positioning for the next phase of the nonstop news
cycle than embracing a district agenda.”
7.
Tea Party Back in Play? After the last election cycle, many
on the right complained about the negative impact of right-wing candidates
taking the place of more viable alternatives in a number of key Senatorial
races. Since then, the backlash has continued, though not unchallenged by the
far right. But a victory like this is galvanizing the Tea Party to dream again
of influencing national politics in a serious way, at least according to the Washington
Post. And it certainly didn’t hurt Brat that he had Tea Party champions
Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter on his side. Jim Newell at Salon
points out that most of the Tea Baggers now celebrating were nowhere to be
found when Brat ran his campaign, but taking credit for a victory you had
nothing to no with is part of the American Dream, isn’t it?
8.
It appears economic populism played a much bigger role than
the mainstream media has reported (what a surprise!). At Republic Report, Lee Fang wrote, “Brat told Internet
radio host Flint Engelman that the “number one plank” in his campaign is ‘free
markets.’ Brat went on to explain, ‘Eric Cantor and the Republican leadership
do not know what a free market is at all, and the clearest evidence of that is
the financial crisis … When I say free markets, I mean no favoritism to K
Street lobbyists.’ Banks like Goldman Sachs were not fined for their role in
the financial crisis — rather, they were rewarded with bailouts, Brat has said.
Brat…spent much of the campaign slamming both parties for being in the pocket
of “Wall Street crooks” and D.C. insiders. The folks who caused the financial
crisis, Brat says, ‘went onto Obama’s rolodex, the Republican leadership,
Eric’s rolodex.’ During several campaign appearances, Brat says what upset him
the most about Cantor was his role in gutting the last attempt at congressional
ethics reform.”
9.
GOP Can’t Control Their Fringe: many claim that
Brat was simply running to make a point, but some of his positions beyond his
anti-immigration stance should be combed over. For example, he wrote in 2011
that Hitler’s rise “could all happen again, quite easily.” With GOP candidates
and representatives claiming that rape is sometimes justified, that evolution
is just a theory, that global warming is a scam, that teachers should carry
guns in class, that they are selling
votes for money, and a host of other outlandish claims, the more serious
members of the party will have to tow the careful line between alienating these
wing nuts and sounding like lunatic themselves. This leads to the final
takeaway …
10. Flip-Flopping is
Still Verboten in American Politics: Slate's
generally excellent political analyst, Jacob Weisberg, makes this very point
arguing that the real reason Cantor lost is because he tried to pander to the
Tea Party and its discontents at the same time. That sort of Janus-faced
approach just doesn’t play well in American politics – except among
conservatives who soften once they win their primaries (though even this has
been a difficult road to navigate in recent elections). The reality is that I
would prefer representatives who flip-flop on issues as circumstances or
popular opinion changes, thus representing our interests, but the American
public appears to have an undying faith in fundamentalist adherence to one’s
ideologies and policy perspectives, no matter what.
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