Eric Cantor lost his primary? Pigs are flying. The deed was done by a first time candidate, an economics professor who pretty much ran on immigration (he’s not for it). He had lottsa support from . . . wait for it . . . the Tea Party. (Actually, he may not be ‘of’ them, but was popular with them for what it’s worth.)
An amateur took down the (presumed) next Speaker of the House. Holy hobbyhorselobby!
I’m hearing that the challenger didn’t even have a victory speech prepared. Even better, there was a little bit of a tussle between Eric Cantor supporters and pro-immigration protesters at Cantor’s headquarters…what can I say, this is the kind of juicy excitement I like to get out of an election night 😉
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Betcha, brat! If elections can no longer provide decent government, at least this one came through with some entertainment value.
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Cantor broke faith and was expelled. That is the way that our political system is supposed to work.
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Not saying it was illegitimate jonolan. Just juicy. The morning’s conventional wisdom is that Cantor lost touch with the district and didn’t even visit anymore. Maybe. But when, what, 45K? voters can throw out the Congress’s Majority Leader, just wow.
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45K(?) voters threw out their Congressman. That he happened to be the Majority Leader is collateral and largely immaterial to the process.
And therein lies the rub. Cantor apparently forgot or ignored the fact that his job was being those 45K(?) voters’ Representative in favor of being Majority Leader and gunning for the Speaker’s seat. That might work in the Senate, where it sort of should be that way, but it doesn’t work in the House and wasn’t designed to either.
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True . . .just heard that he spent the whole morning of election day at a DC Starbucks with lobbyists. Hubris took him down.
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As I commented elsewhere,
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Well, Jim, you covered all the bases… 😆
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Jim – since I”m in an optimistic mood today (doesn’t happen often) I’ll take your Door #2 but with a caveat. A ‘throw the bums out’ movement could very well be coming, but it’s possible that it will not be a partisan phenomenon. The Tea Party may have started it but (like I said in a later post) it’s pretty inspiring to everyone when – SCOTUS be damned – $200K wins over $5million.
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You inadvertently brought up an interesting point. Brat’s victory takes some of the wind (hot air) out of the detractors of Citizens United’s sails.
Of course, the SCOTUS decision on that case was right and proper under all interpretations of case law and didn’t say anything close to what its detractors claimed it did.
Oddly, their own hysterical and rather spurious claims colored the discussion to such an extent that they themselves may be responsible for later district and appellate rulings that DID in fact codify exactly what the detractors were railing about.
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