Big upset in Virginia: Brat beats Cantor
Wow, I didn’t see this coming. Not that I was paying close attention, because my impression was that Brat didn’t have a chance:
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor lost in his Republican primary election Tuesday to a little-known economics professor, a stunning upset for the GOP’s No. 2 in the House and a major victory for the tea party.
Cantor, viewed as a possible successor to House Speaker John Boehner, was taken down by a political novice with little money named Dave Brat. His win marked the biggest triumph this year for tea party supporters who until a few years ago backed Cantor, a former state legislator who rose to Majority Leader in 2011.
Since immigration and amnesty were huge issues in this race, I wonder how much the story that just broke the other day—about the masses of illegal immigrant children overwhelming Arizona and Texas, and being released into the community—affected the results in Cantor’s district. My sense is that it had to have had a pretty big effect, and maybe even made the difference in the race. Cantor has been a less than strong presence in Congress as a leader, too Mr. Nice Guy and not perceived as a fighter. Right now I think the mood is for a fighter.
What is a little odd is that Brat actually has a mild-mannered professorial demeanor, like Cantor (and in fact, he is a professor—of economics) and even slightly resembles Cantor physically:
Take a look:
In other news, Lindsay Graham has won his primary in South Carolina. So it’s hard to see any patterns in the whole thing.
The commentators on Fox have all been saying this means amnesty is dead in the House. I’m not sure, but they’re also saying it probably doesn’t matter because President Obama has made it pretty clear that if Congress doesn’t give him what he wants re immigration he’ll do it himself. What a guy! If he does that, it will one of the very worst things he has done in terms of domestic policy and Constitutional overreach (and that’s saying a lot). It would make it more clear than ever that he is assuming dictatorial powers. No doubt he considers it worth it, though, because getting all those new Democratic voters into the country takes top priority. Never mind if he starts a civil war in the process.
I really, really hope the prognosticators who say Obama will now go the phone/pen route are wrong. But I think it much more likely that they are right. Remember how everyone (including me) was celebrating Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts in early 2010 because they thought it meant the end of Obamacare in the Senate? Turns out it only meant that Obama and the Democrats would have to be more creative about getting what they wanted.
[ADDENDUM: If Brat does get elected, he sounds as though he’ll be one of the most interesting and unique members of the House. Here’s part of his resume:
Dave Brat presents a major problem for liberals who try to continue increased government spending by discrediting conservatives and claiming the budget is “too complicated” for conservatives to understand….
A product of the rural Midwest, he learned the value of faith, family, and a strong work ethic at a young age. Dave was determined to get an education that would empower him to help others reach their economic dreams.
Dave’s journey led him to Princeton where he obtained a Masters in Divinity and on to American University where he earned a Ph.D. in Economics. That education has led him to a career serving the Commonwealth.
In 1996, Dave and Laura moved to Henrico and he began teaching Economics and Ethics at Randolph-Macon College, and he chaired the Economics and Business department for the past 6 years.
That’s quite a combination.]
[ADDENDUM II: Looking at Brat, I think another reason Brat won was because,unlike many such challengers, he’s a good candidate: smart, not wacky, an appealing person who comes across as honest and sincere. That said, he couldn’t scare up even much Tea Party support prior to tonight.
For those conservatives who turned their backs on Ann Coulter during the 2012 election as an “establishment Republican” because she championed the supposed RINO [sic] Romney, note that she was one of the few big names who supported Brat in this race.]
[ADDENDUM III: A list of Brat’s scholarly publications.]
Sweet, sweet, sweet! Guess the $25 I sent Brat put him over the top. Will this send a message to the Stupid Party? Who knows.
Apparently, just last week, a poll had Cantor winning by 13 points, and Cantor’s internal polling had him up 34 points.
So, I think you’re probably right, Neo, about the illegal immigrant children story having a huge effect here.
If the RINO establishment is Detroit, today is 1967!
Huffington says Eric got 3 million and Brat had 200k.
That’s pretty funny, if true.
Supposedly the guy from Brat’s college is the Democrat nomination too.
Listened to Brat for about 15 minutes or so tonight during his post election interviews. The guy makes so much sense. I hope he does not get co-opted when he gets to the snake pit.
I know the Democrats and maybe the GOP establishment will go after him tooth and nail; based on what I heard it will be very difficult to paint him as a fringe nut.
Good for you KLSmith. He will be on my very short contribution list going into the general election.
I am cautiously optimistic that he might start a trend.
A glimmer of good news from the Old Dominion after several years of frustration.
PS
I do believe that the invasion by the parentless children focused attention on the out of control southern border. I suspect that this development has alamrmed a fair number of people. Me included.
However, listening to Brat, that certainly was not his only appeal.
As he said several times he ran on Republican and Constitutional principles. What a novel idea.
Interesting that the talking heads on FNC are trying to make it a Tea Party issue. The large TP organizations did not give him anything in the way of support. I like the TP principles, but am not sold on the TP organizations. I hope he keeps is distance from them.
Most TP organizations are grass roots based and thus only support local candidates. The national TP level orgs were destroyed by the IRS, because they couldn’t get funded.
I don’t think anyone could genuinely predict this as it is the first time it’s happened. A black swan event.
Assuming he can win in the general election this could be the start of something big, or as Joe Biden said “this is a big f*cking deal”.
Virginia has open primaries. Many Democrats may have voted for Brat, theorizing he would be easier to beat in November. Such a strategy helps reinforce the MSM line that the GOP is becoming more extreme.
The entire election system is broken, open primaries are merely one crack the Left uses.
This is a Republican district, Brat should be able to win in Nov. So long Eric, don’t let the door hit you in the butt on the way out.
Brat told Hannity after his victory: “God acted through people on my behalf”. The Dems are going to jump all over that.
Tea Party nuts, we’ve had a few
but so their party’s ended!
So they said with their shrewd
and many grinning bastards.
All along the spitting throngs
of the barbecues of the rich
and the famous master bations:
They failed to make us hell;
We did it our way.
A lot of people who would like to come here have picked up on the fact that Obama is not enforcing the laws on immigration.
And what can we do? What if the numbers we see now are just the beginning?
When Castro opened up his jails and allowed thousands of criminals to head Norte we ended up keeping most if not all of them. Those were criminals.
What if a couple of million basically decent people just enter the country and refuse to leave?
Obama is refusing to deport almost a million that had run their legal options out and were ordered to leave.
So in two years plus a few months he leaves the presidency and leaves us with 20 million additional people here illegally in addition to those who have well established roots. Perhaps 20 million is an exaggeration? But really if he just refuses to enforce the laws how many might come?
I remember a story about Hussein releasing and pardoning US prisoners and authorizing asylum for AQ fighters in Syria or Libya, to come to the US.
So I would suspect in the short term, more people will be killed or raped by those, than by illegal Mexicans. But in the long term, it’ll be like France not being able to send their police into Muslim enclaves. And Sweden’s all you can rape rule for Muslims on white girls, platinum or blond.
Folks: this has got to have the Usual Suspects, er, clinching.
Margin of victory? 56 to 44. TWELVE POINTS.
Cantor outspent Brat by TEN to ONE. And still — twelve points!
Holy Cow.
Re Lindsay Graham — he’s a wily old dog, and a formidably gifted campaigner. I saw him speak at a New York meeting, and was prepared to detest him, but he won me over (on foreign policy, where he’s admittedly strongest).
Won me over in the sense that I found myself enjoying listening to him even though I’m dead-set against many of his positions. Such a man is a tough, tough guy to beat.
On the good side — his talents are rare even among politicians, so his survival may be an outlier. (He doesn’t come across well on tv, however.)
I think there’s a big groundswell building across the nation over a LOT of things. A lesbian friend of mine from South Carolina, who I’m pretty sure has been a Democrat, and who never posts political stuff on Faceplant, put this up:
“Could you imagine FDR giving 5 high-ranking German officers back to Hitler? No, neither can I. Could you see Truman giving 5 high-ranking Japanese officers back to Japan? No, neither can I. Could you imagine Johnson giving 5 Vietnamese officers back to North Vietnam? No, neither can I. Could you imagine our current leader giving 5 high-ranking terrorists back to the Taliban…oh, wait…he already did. Unbelievable!”
And she got 17 likes, even in the fast-paced late night Facebook world.
Tonight was a good night. I wish that snake Miss Lindsay had been defeated too, but I guess I can’t have everything.
So. Now we get to see whether the GOP establishment lines up in support of the voters’ choice, Dave Brat, or if they stab him in the back like they did with Christine O’Donnell.
Won me over in the sense that I found myself enjoying listening to him even though I’m dead-set against many of his positions. Such a man is a tough, tough guy to beat.
Should get your propaganda vaccines updated.
That’s one of the 4 reactions to propaganda, disagree but like the material.
It doesn’t actually affect a person’s judgment, so the vaccine isn’t necessary but when people aren’t conscious of this effect, it can produce some drastic alignments down the road.
Lindsay is a good ole boy; Cantor is a Conservative Jew, which is anything but conservative; in other words, a social justice “Republican.” That has to mean something.
Lindsay knows everybody of importance in South Carolina; Cantor, despite a solid conservative record, didn’t “know” many.
Cantor and Lindsay were definitely not Tea Party. But the Tea Party doesn’t trust Jews that are not Orthodox. Why should they?
saw this:
“I live in this district. We were sitting on the porch and heard people screaming and cheering. Came inside to find out that Brat has defeated Cantor!!!! Richmond is happy tonight!”
Yep, quite a night. I already donated $50 to Brat, just for the entertainment value.
-Also, it doesn’t matter if the Tea Party was responsible or not for Brat, as long as the establishment believes it was.
-And even if they don’t believe that, it demonstrates the use of running a primary opponent. Who knows what could happen?
-Unconfirmed, but someone said that VA has a “sore-loser” law, prohibiting a primary runner from running again in the general. If true, we won’t have to worry about a Cantor write-in campaign like Murkowski.
-Finally, VA-07 is a fairly solid red district. Romney won there 57-42, McCain 53-46. VA does have open primaries.
If Dems voted for Brat thinking he’ll be easier than Cantor, they still will have their work cut out for them. They probably should’ve voted for Cantor, since he’s more likely to give them amnesty than Brat.
More on what George said up thread at 11:30 pm last night about the possibility that Democrats voted for Brat: From June 5: Cooter Has A Plan To Unseat Eric Cantor. It’s So Crazy It Just Might Work
Great victory, great post and great comments in thread.
BO has instilled a deep sense of alarm in part of the population.
Will be interesting to see how big that part is.
waitforit: Cantor and Lindsay were definitely not Tea Party. But the Tea Party doesn’t trust Jews that are not Orthodox. Why should they?
Having thoroughly enjoyed your many previous comments, I am hopefully assuming you got tongue tied.
Brat’s victory is so fascinating.
Apparently Cantor’s blatant lying and concomitant disrespect for Republican voters may have had an effect.
http://americanthinker.com/2014/06/political_earthquake_as_david_brat_handily_defeats_eric_cantor_in_primary.html
Folks know that respect for the truth is rarely found in politics, but maybe sometimes the lying is too outrageous and has consequences, especially when a sufficient numbers of voters understands they are being treated like they are idiots.
Cantor as Liar and Thug, a possible factor influencing the election:
http://pjmedia.com/davidsteinberg/dave-brat-defeats-eric-cantor/
If we are going to have a chance at saving America, we need as many writers like David Steinberg as we can get.
I looked up Brat’s Democrat opponent. He is a “Sociology Professor”. His platform is “greater access to higher education and student loan reform” (he will have 6 of his 7 kids in college simultaneously). I think Brat can handle him.
Now if only Republicans can vote in Reid’s primary and oust him. That would be delicious irony.
One problem for Brat – he has no money. Look for the Democrats to pour money into this race. Will the GOP establishment respond or leave Brat to his own meager resources?
Meanwhile, Democrats are gloating over Cantor’s defeat.
http://neveryetmelted.com/2014/06/11/crossover-voting-democrats-not-the-tea-party-beat-eric-cantor/
This blogger, who is as much a libertarian as he is a Republican, suggests Cantor run as an independent. Of course that would only split the GOP vote and send Trammell to Washington.
Those aren’t really scholarly publications. Many don’t appear to be published at all, and most of those that are published are in “proceedings” volumes which means they weren’t peer reviewed. The only pieces that might have been peer reviewed are ones in the Virginia Economic Journal, which is a journal I had never heard of until this moment. IDEAS, which is a commonly-accepted ranking of journal impact, doesn’t list it among its top 1300+ most influential economics journals:
http://ideas.repec.org/top/top.journals.simple.html
Please let’s stop calling GOP districts “Red”. The Red v. Blue thing came from the video media, which is just a tad biased as we all know. Red has been the color of socialists and communists the world over forever, and selecting that for GOP areas is no accident.
Alex (From whom we have not previously heard): Rubbish. See “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences”.
While we’re at it, I solicit identification of politically conservative American Jews in responsible positions. Cantor is not one. I’m not being anti- anything here, but do they exist?
Good question, George. I have no doubt the Republican establishment will actively seek to defeat Brat.
Brat. I don’t think he even calls himself tea party; he seems to be a “moderate tea partier.”
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2014/06/11/Brat-GOP-Needs-More-Focus-on-Main-Street-Over-Wall-Street
I live in VA07 and voted for Brat. I figured Cantor would win with around 52% of the vote. Around 7:45, I checked in on the AOSHQDD and saw that they had called it for Brat before the alphabet soup networks did. I was flabbergasted, but really, really happy.
Now let’s see if the GOP will support Brat, or if they’ll do their normal tantrum and either a) run a write-in campaign for Cantor or b) endorse the Democrat. If Cantor does either, he’s politically dead, but he may not care. We’ll see. If he comes out for Brat and plays the good soldier, he might be able to rehabilitate his image. There is precedent: Clinton was kicked out of the AR governor’s mansion, but was able to get reelected later.
Brat is on the Glenn Beck show now.
http://www.iheart.com/live/The-Patriot-KEIB-AM-1150-197/
Don Carlos Says:
June 11th, 2014 at 10:29 am
I agree completely, and I never use that color scheme myself. It’s yet another example of allowing the Left to set the terms of debate. We really ought to know better by now.
The David Steinberg article (see Tonawanda’s link), I think, hits it right on. It was Cantor’s “tacking.” Graham, at least, was honest about his amnesty. I hope Cantor’s being a Jew didn’t have anything to do with his defeat. I hope it was his lack of principle and his $128K spent at steakhouses.
Brat spoke really well on the Glenn Beck show. He quickly put down any idea that the GOP would not get behind him. If there is anybody who represents a possibility to get some transfer between the TP and the GOP, it is him and his idea that principles unite all Republicans.
The irony of that red-blue party color identification is that prior to the 2000 election, the Dems were shown as red. I guess there was too much truth in that color designation for the Democrat Party hacks to handle. So the media (Russert) did the ol’ flip flop switcheroo and ‘hoped nobody noticed the change’.
Alex:
I meant to designate them as “scholarly and connected with his work as a professor at Randolph-Macon” as opposed to “political and connected with his campaign.” I wasn’t meaning to judge the articles on their scholarly worth, the status of the journals in which they were published, or the usefulness of their content. The idea of linking to them was to give a picture of what he’s been doing as a professor in terms of scholarly (i.e. connected with academia and economics/ethics) publications.
I don’t think anyone’s suggesting that the guy’s a giant in economics. I’m certainly not. But he most definitely has a background that’s pretty unusual and unusually strong in that arena for a mere Congressman. Also interestingly eclectic: MA in divinity studies from Princeton (doesn’t sound like a dummy, does he?) and PhD in economics from American University. American’s not a prestigious program, I would wager, but I’d also wager it’s respectable. And professor at Randolph-Macon in economics and ethics (and chair of its economics and business department) is very respectable too.
Not that any of that has much to do with what he’ll do if elected. I’m not suggesting we send a group of professors to populate Congress. By the way, his Democratic opponent Jack Trammel is a professor (variously described as “assistant” or “associate”) at Randolph-Macon, too! His field is sociology, specializes in disability issues in education. Small world, eh?
When I was in college Randolph Macon College was a very well regarded women-only school. I see that they’re now co-ed.
“That said, he couldn’t scare up even much Tea Party support prior to tonight.”
You mean the ‘official’ tea party groups? The tea party is like AA. There are no dues or fees for membership. It is a voluntary ‘fellowship.’ What does it mean to have tea party support? To me, it means having the support of this fellowship not an organization. Does the GOP establishment have a problem with this fellowship? You bet.
physics geek: thank-you for voting! So many people stay at home thinking their vote won’t make a difference.
Steve: exactly.
I don’t see why the Republican establishment would not support Brat if he doesn’t come across as a nut or a witch. I’ve seen comments elsewhere that are even drawing Karl Rove into this discussion. I wish such people would think instead of emote and stamp their feet. We have a real chance with someone like Brat to present alternative views with some strength in a way that doesn’t support the Dems’ portayal of all conservatives as racist biggoted gun nuts. We need to use the opportunity.
People outside the South can not understand how we can say that someone “looks Southern.” Cantor, who might “look Jewish” to someone in New York, looked very Southern in this quadrant of the country. So does Brat. In that sense, they sort of look alike. The whole “Look Southern/Look Jewish” thing is sort of an inside joke among many Jewish and Gentile friends, both Demagogue and Republican. I’ve been in a committee meeting when the subject was touched, and the Jewish Republican woman and I dared not look at each other, for fear that we’d burst out laughing and disrupt an otherwise serious meeting. I’ve known Louise and her Demagogue mother since Louise was a child, and we went out for a burger afterward, picking up my wife along the way, and nearly choked on our fries.
May be, they look alike, but when their faces are put against each other there is no question who looks more like intellectual and who more stupid and mediocre.