Posted on 06/15/2014 2:13:26 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
That's how many people it took to bring down House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, doom immigration reform and leave all but the most tea-sodden Republicans quaking.
No, it wasn't the Democrats who did it. Various complicated analyses of voting patterns confirm what anyone who has ever tried to convince even their own mother to vote "strategically" knows: Voters don't work that way. They may cast their vote to send a message — that happens all the time — but not to execute a strategy that depends on their voting for someone they don't like at all so that someone else they don't like at all won't win.
And it wasn't "low" turnout that did Cantor in, at least compared to normal turnout. No, more people voted in the Republican primary in 2014 than in 2012 — almost 20,000 more. So in 2014, you had just over 65,000 people who voted — and 7,212 more of them voted for a little-known professor over a well-known politician. If half of those people plus one had gone the other way — 3,607 in all — Cantor would have gotten a scare. Another thousand, and no one would be paying attention.
And then there's this: More than 86 percent of the people who were eligible to vote in the primary didn't.
So what you have are a few thousand folks who were clearly angry with their longtime congressman. They obviously weren't thinking about the fact that you're a lot better off, practically speaking, being represented by one of the most powerful people in the House than by a freshman. Nor were they crediting Cantor for all the times he has carried the tea party's water, as it were, playing chicken with the national economy and threatening to take the country over the fiscal cliff.
They didn't give him credit for personally blocking a vote to allow those who serve this country in the military to be eligible for papers.
Have I mentioned that Cantor is not a moderate?
This is what has Washington insiders quaking. If this could happen to Cantor, will anyone dare stand up to the tea party?
In fact, this is the first big tea party win of the season. Up until now, the Romney/Bush-backed candidates had been doing just fine, and the establishment was almost beginning to breathe a sigh of relief. But Cantor is (was) a big deal, and that's why the chances of the current House ever voting on any version of immigration reform just collapsed.
Explain that to one of those kids who was brought to this country as a child, grew up here and didn't even know they were "different" from their sisters or brothers who were born here until it came time to apply to college.
How dare Cantor even suggest — because that's all he really did — that we should be able to come up with some way to offer these young people a path to citizenship?
But I don't blame the tea party for killing immigration reform. They voted — all 36,110 of them — which gave David Brat his 7,212-vote edge. But if 7,213 more people had voted... Or if more than 3,606 of those who did had changed their minds...
It's trite to say one vote makes a difference or every vote counts, because this election wasn't even close. But it was tiny, because most of the people who could have voted and might have changed its outcome didn't bother. You can't blame the people who play politics for winning. But in general elections, the numbers tend to play differently, and as the number of Hispanic voters keeps growing, it's likely that the views of a few thousand voters in Virginia could cost Republicans many, many times that number of votes nationally.
The Tea Party played chicken with the national economy. Really? The Tea Party gave us the trillion dollar stimulus, 17 trillion in debt, ObamaCare, out of control federal regulations, stopped energy production, transport and created billions of dollars out of thin air in the various quantitative easing (legal counterfeiting) programs at the Fed and put tens of millions out of the workforce and onto food stamps and diability.
Yup, that evil Tea Party just is so reckless with the national economy.
How can people be so wrong and not even have a spark of awareness of being so wrong?
If the Republicans don't want to listen, it is time to kill the elephant and dump them like we did the KING's tea. We need a party that put AMERICANS first.
Estrich was born in Lynn, Massachusetts,[1] and grew up in Marblehead on the Massachusetts North Shore, where she attended the Eveleth School.[2]
Estrich graduated from Wellesley College in 1974, and received her J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1977.[3] In 1976, Estrich was elected the first female president/editor-in-chief of the Harvard Law Review.[4]
Estrich served as a law clerk for Judge J. Skelly Wright of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and Justice John Paul Stevens of the U.S. Supreme Court.
In 1988, she was the campaign manager for Michael Dukakis’ 1988 presidential run, even though she had never before managed a political campaign. She was the first female campaign manager of a major presidential campaign, and the first female campaign manager of the modern era.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Estrich
Her Harvard law degree apparently did not prepare her to write a logically coherent argument to support her position.
Can’t wait for it to start.
Cantor’s idea of visiting his district was attending a Saturday night fundraiser at a local country club and then high tailing it back to DC.
If the same number of voters had voted the other way, would she have written a column about Cantor's reelection? I suspect not...and we will never know.
Without evidence, this author is taking a leap making that assumption. I'm inclined to believe that more people voting would have still resulted in the same outcome.
Isn't that how pollsters do polling -- they call on a small portion of likely voters to represent the likely outcome? Doesn't Susan think polls are valid unless they are avorable to her preferences?
Not first tea party win of the season. Big sweep in Texas lege in March. Sasse in Nebraska and Radcliff in Texas runoff.
Back in the 2008 election, Sarah Palin came to Leesburg, VA to speak. One of the guys on the platform with her was a younger middle-aged Hispanic construction business owner from Prince William County, VA -- his speech was solidly conservative.
AMEN
Because they are Democrats and they are stupid....but I repeat myself.
“Plus the poor boy didn’t get to fill his pockets like older members”
Cantor’s net worth went from $ 2 MILLION in 2008 to 13 MILLION in 2014.
I think he was stuffing with both hands.
Only if -- as many people do -- you believe that the duty of a Congressman is to bring home as much bacon as possible.
Thankfully most Conservatives were able to see Rand for what he is. Brat, because he has never voted for/against Conservative values is unknown at this point. Prayers that he stands his ground and follows the path he choose. Rand was always an ‘iffy’ one; just looking at his family should make one wonder. He was given an opportunity, he failed, end of story. Rand at this point seems to be no better, no worse than Cantor or the Rube. Conservatives are paying attention and we are demanding to be heard.
Old Dirty Harry picks up more than that every year, that boy Cantor is a little slow too.
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