Tea Party Defeats GOP House Majority Leader Eric Cantor
Reports of the demise of the Tea Party have been greatly exaggerated. Today, the Tea Party successfully primaried GOP House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. This was an unmistakable rejection of Cantor, not an elevation of his little-known opponent, Professor David Brat. Cantor raised more than 50x the money that Brat did. Cantor spent money on both advertising and Get Out The Vote. But he could only muster 28,385 votes and lost by 11%. It was not even close.
Why did Virginia's GOP primary electorate turn against Eric Cantor? My bet is that the polls will show that Cantor was perceived as too cozy with the DC power structure. This "sin" was thrown into stark relief during the spring, when Cantor participated in getting the Medicare "Doc Fix" passed on a voice vote. In this episode, Medicare re-imbursement rates for doctors were scheduled to decrease by 24% unless Congress affirmatively voted to keep them at current levels. Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Cantor could not get a majority of the Republican caucus to support the increase. So instead of bringing the bill up for a roll call vote, which would have made targets of the GOP congresspeople who voted with the Democrats to increase spending, Cantor arranged for the measure to be passed in an unrecorded voice vote. Afterwards, Cantor defended his action as being the "least bad of the bad options." That comment was like waving a red flag in front of Tea Party activists. As they like to say, the lesser of two evils is still evil.
Cantor was also attacked for being open to immigration reform. Brat campaigned as being 100% against amnesty. Cantor responded with direct mail pieces stating that he had kept amnesty from passing.
Cantor's loss was both surprising and historic. Cantor had released a poll showing that he held a 34 point lead over Brat. Brat's campaign had been depicted in the press as underfunded and disorganized. The last time a House Majority Leader lost in a primary was 1899.
Bottom line: Like the shark in Jaws, the Tea Party still has the ability to administer a sudden, deadly thrashing on an unsuspecting victim. GOP incumbents ignore the anti-establishment wing of their party at their peril.