Free Republic

As the fallout from Rep. Eric Cantor’s (R-VA) stunning primary loss continues to settle, one of the many entrenched interests feeling suddenly insecure about their position in the American hierarchy is big business. For some, like the aviation giant Boeing, Cantor was a reliable friend. With his loss, that company’s prospects, along with its share price, have crumpled. “Mr. Cantor’s loss is much more than just symbolism,” the Times reported on Saturday. “He has been one of Wall Street’s most reliable benefactors in Congress. And Mr. Brat used that fact to deride the majority leader as someone who has rigged...

Top Jeb Bush adviser Mike Murphy, who did not even pay attention to Dave Brat's campaign like Breitbart News did, has falsely been claiming that Cantor's embrace of amnesty for illegal immigrants was not the reason he lost last Tuesday. Liberal writer Mickey Kaus had enough of Murphy's nonsense and slammed him on Twitter on Friday evening. Kaus became Brat's de facto press secretary and top advocate on Twitter in the last months of the campaign because Kaus, like Brat, opposes amnesty for illegal immigrants because it would hurt American workers. He mentioned to Murphy that talk radio host Laura...

Eric Cantor, next Republican National Committee chairman? Former RNC chair Michael Steele thinks it's a possibility after the House majority leader was defeated Tuesday in a Virginia Republican primary. "With the upcoming presidential election, there's a lot of interest in Eric Cantor serving as national chairman of the RNC," Steele said Saturday on MSNBC's "Up With Steve Kornacki.""In fact I think he'd be interesting because he started dialogues on poverty and some other issues that were sort of outside of what Republicans have traditionally talked about. So he could bring a very interesting voice into that space," he said. (VIDEO-AT-LINK)

Joe Scarborough, the MSNBC host who has transformed into one of his generation's most preeminent Rockefeller Republicans, believes Mitt Romney should run for president again in 2016. Speaking to about 300 guests at "a luxury resort in the Rocky Mountains" with other potential GOP presidential hopefuls like Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Scarborough reportedly urged the establishment donors and insiders to being a “Draft Romney” movement. “This is the only person that can fill the stage,” Scarborough said at a summit hosted by Romney, according to a Washington Post report. Scarborough and other attendees may not...

The Democratic presidential prospect could have demographics on her side.The best news for Hillary Rodham Clinton this week wasn't the mostly positive reviews for her memoir Hard Choices. It was the hard fall taken by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor when he was ousted by a tea-party challenger who denounced him as insufficiently conservative, particularly on immigration. The Virginia Republican's defeat virtually extinguishes the already flickering chances that House Republicans will pass immigration reform before the 2014 election, and even dims the odds that the chamber will take action before 2016. And that significantly improves prospects in the next presidential...

DES MOINES — It’s not often that a Democratic Party top national strategist travels to Iowa to lament an election loss of a prominent conservative Republican leader. But that happened Friday when Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz warned that the defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, a Virginia Republican who is the second most-powerful U.S. House leader, could be a harbinger of deeper political extremism, gridlock and obstructionism....

Now wasn't it the 2010 SOTU Address when Obama was gloating all of the military successes of Iraq?(Along with all of the fake Democrat Applause).Here we are approaching mid-way into 2014 and needless to say,probably worst year ever for a second-term President.And to think they grilled Clinton in 1998 and Nixon in 1972 for matters that were minuscule compared to Obamas?.The 2015 State Of The Union Address will either be cancelled or turn into a comedy hour.If we have another six months of these scandals and unrest in the mid-east,How Will Barry Explain It In The next State Of The...

In the space of less than a week, 23-year-old Zachary Werrell went from unknown to boy wonder to angry toddler, depending on who was talking. Werrell, who graduated last year from Haverford College, was lauded for having engineered Tuesday's shocking political defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. And, as campaign manager of insurgent David Brat, he was criticized Wednesday for scrubbing his Facebook page, which included provocative comments comparing the shooting of Trayvon Martin with abortion. Multiple efforts to reach Werrell were unsuccessful. His teachers at Haverford, the rigorous, liberal-arts-and-Quaker-values institution on the Main Line, described Werrell as a...

The controversy over the trade of five Taliban prisoners for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl continues to grow with allegations that President Barack Obama violated federal law and paid too high a price for the release. However, the biggest problem for the White House may not be the Taliban (including one released prisoner who said he wants to immediately rejoin the fight against America) but what to do with Bergdahl now that we have him back. Bergdahl is facing allegations that he not only deserted in June 2009, but may have collaborated with the enemy. If he faces a military trial,...

If the GOP is unwilling to stand up to radicals, it might as well just rename itself the Committee to Elect Hillary Clinton. Eric Cantor tried to appease Republican radicals. They turned on him anyway. John Boehner has tried to resist them. They just overwhelmed him. Mitt Romney tried to join them—and in doing so fastened onto his party the platform that lost the presidential election of 2012. At some point, Republican leaders must recognize that they have a fight on their hands whether they like it or not. If they refuse to join that fight, they will be devoured...

For years, the White House saw House Majority Leader Eric Cantor as a chief driver of Republicans' staunch opposition to nearly all of President Barack Obama's agenda. Now, Cantor's stunning primary loss seems likely to make politics even more difficult for Obama. Rather than opening a pathway for the president, Cantor's defeat could push Republicans more to the right and harden the House GOP's hostility toward the White House, virtually dooming Obama's efforts to pass a legacy-building immigration bill or other major legislation....

Democratic operatives were just as surprised as everyone else by Eric Cantor’s defeat — but now they’re trying to figure out how to make the most of it. The early thinking: Stay out of the GOP’s way. Virginia’s 7th Congressional District probably isn’t going their way, regardless of the Republican candidate switch. But operatives planning for the midterms believe they can turn Tuesday’s surprising tea party resurgence into something much bigger. They see the attention to the defeat as another cut at the House Republicans as extremists, a new way to highlight congressional dysfunction, a chance to pump more GOP...

Let’s face it. It’s tough being in the minority. Any ideas they have for improving the lives of Americans, or improving the performance of government, or improving the economy are ignored by the majority. “I won,” President Obama told Republicans a few days after he took office as they sought to have some input into the developing stimulus package.And that’s the way it’s been since then. During the debate over Obamacare, the president and Democrats continuously told the lie that his plan had to be passed because the Republicans had no ideas of their own. Not only were there...

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's (R-VA) campaign spent more money at one posh steakhouse before his shocking Tuesday primary defeat than his opponent Dave Brat spent on his whole campaign. Cantor's campaign spent $124,177 at Bobby Van'S Grill and Steakhouse and $44,460 at Blt Steak for a total of $168,637. According to Open Secrets, Cantor raised $5.4 million while Brat raised $206,663. While Cantor spent nearly all of his haul ($5.1 million), Brat spent $122,793 for his entire campaign, which was less than what Cantor's campaign spent at Bobby Van's alone ($124,177).[continued]

The No. 2 Republican in the U.S. House is a goner. And amid the ashes of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s shocking defeat Tuesday, comprehensive immigration reform smolders. This is not to say that immigration reform would have passed if the Virginia Republican had not been the first House majority leader to lose since 1899. Immigration reform was already endangered. But Cantor’s defeat to tea partier David Brat was so intertwined with immigration -- “amnesty” and “illegal aliens” – that the few fence-sitters in the GOP-led House are going to flock back to the politically right side of the divide....

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) conceded Tuesday night that “obviously, we came up short” in fending off the Tea Party challenge from economics professor Dave Brat. With 98 percent of precincts reporting, Brat had 55.6 percent to Cantor’s 44.4 percent. “I know there’s a lot of long faces here tonight and it’s disappointing, sure,” Cantor said. “But I believe in this country, I believe there’s opportunity around the next corner for all of us.” “So I look forward to continue to fight with all of you for the things that we believe in for the conservative cause because those...

We are looking at an unprecedented time in our nation’s history. With any nation that has a two-party system of government, it is inevitable that the party out of power will feel some kind of animosity toward the party in power. In fact, it is natural. As the party not in power, it is your goal to convince your nation that the party in power is somehow and some way being detrimental to the country through their policy decisions. These decisions could be related to a nation’s safety and security, a nation’s economy, a nation’s immigration system, and a nation’s...

Americans can still be outraged by lies, but will you tell them the truth?Dear Republican convention delegates, Welcome to Fort Wayne. I hope you have a lot of fun, spend a lot of money and thoroughly debunk real estate company Movoto's new poll listing my hometown among the five most boring cities in the United States. How could the prospect of listening to 2,000 people discuss everything from bureaucratic minutia to gay marriage for two days be anything but scintillating? But before you do anything you or the rest of us may regret, please spend some time thinking about President...

Former reality television star Sarah Palin made her 17th endorsement of the primary season on Tuesday, when the former Alaska governor threw her support and credibility behind Steve Lonegan, a staunchly anti-immigration Tea Partier, who is running in the June 3 primary for the Republican nomination in New Jersey’s competitive 3rd Congressional District. “Steve is the type of conservative leader we need. He believes in the free market principles this country was founded on because he has seen first hand how they can lead to success,” Palin said in a Facebook post. It is unclear how much a Palin endorsement...

The resounding victory that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell scored over "tea party" businessman Matt Bevin this past week has thrown the media into a tizzy. Is the "tea party" dead? Did the GOP establishment kill it? Or did the GOP subsume the tea party, taking its candidates, its issues, and its ideology for the GOP? Nate Silver writes that recent "tea party vs. establishment GOP" stories are inadequate: The term “tea party” is applied very loosely by the political media. Was Missouri Rep. Todd Akin a member of the tea party, for instance? Weigel says no: Most groups associated...