Free Republic

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....

One day after the GOP’s Lee Terry opened the door to closing off compromises on Capitol Hill, Democrat Brad Ashford tells Nebraska Watchdog that Terry’s talk is “ridiculous, it’s disappointing.” Following Eric Cantor’s tea party ambush on Tuesday, Terry, an 8-term incumbent, told CNN, “Do we compromise? How do we work together? All of this is now in question.” Ashford says the “Cantor lesson” is just the opposite. “You can’t find solutions without working together,” says Ashford. Terry, of course, is coming off his own Cantor-like primary—just last month Terry survived a threat from his right wing, defeating Republican Dan...

On Sept. 20, 2005, Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honoré, answered reporters' questions during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Honoré focused on steps being taken to prevent future storms. Reporters kept drawing him back to planning prior to Hurricane Katrina hitting. "You're asking last storm questions for people who are concerned about the future storm. Don't get stuck on stupid, reporters," Honoré said, coining a phrase. The General concluded, "You are part of the public message. So help us get the message straight. And if you don't understand, maybe you'll confuse it to the people." Republicans in Washington are confused...

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Or worse. Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California now stands to inherit the position of Majority Leader in the House of Representatives, as Reps. Hensarling and Sessions have withdrawn from contention.  The plain fact is that the GOP House delegation is far less conservative than its base. My colleague Rick Moran estimates that tea Party-aligned House members number 80 or so votes out of the caucus, so this was probably inevitable. On the upside, it avoids a divisive intraparty battle as the election looms. On the downside, it sends a message to...

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...

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...

Full Title: SHOCKING VIDEOS: PETE SESSIONS SUPPORTS AMNESTY TO ‘ACCOMMODATE’ ILLEGAL ALIENS FOR ‘RIGHT REASONS A series of videos from several town halls in 2013 have surfaced showing that Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) supports amnesty for illegal aliens, despite claims from his re-election campaign that he is against allowing illegal aliens stay in America. In the videos, Sessions frames his support for amnesty as granting legal status to illegal aliens who are not violent criminals—but somehow not citizenship, even though anyone who obtains a green card is allowed to eventually apply for citizenship. Sessions described such an amnesty as aiming...

Former vice presidential candidate discusses the state of the GOP

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....

After Eric Cantor’s stunning defeat to political neophyte and economics college professor Dave Brat in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District, the political and media elite are beside themselves trying to understand how this could happen. How could they, in their all knowledge and insight, not see this coming? How could a nobody, a man who spend less than 200,000 on his campaign, and had zero name recognition or political experience, beat the House Majority Leader, the great (and smug) one himself, incumbent Mr. Cantor? First of all, Eric Cantor is not a conservative, he simply isn’t. It is also fair to...

Eric Cantor's loss in the Republican primary Tuesday night sent shockwaves through the establishments of both parties. The previously dominant "Tea Party is dead" narrative has been unceremoniously dumped. Some in the media seem to be pursuing two new storylines: “Support for immigration reform dooms Republicans” and “the Tea Party is actually dominant in the Republican Party.” But both of these explanations run into problems. Lindsey Graham is one of the faces of immigration reform, and he won his primary handily. The “inmates running the asylum” narrative runs into the very real establishment wins from earlier in the cycle --...

Less than twenty-four hours after the shockwaves of Eric Cantor’s defeat, the House Republican Party has decided to ignore the results as a meaningless anomaly. They will expedite a leadership election to affirm the status quo with Cantor’s right hand, Kevin McCarthy, picked as Majority Leader. McCarthy is squishy on a host of issues, bad on immigration, and not a friend of conservatives. House Republicans looked on the biggest electoral surprise of the year and are giving it the middle finger.

Brat has called for slashing Social Security, Medicare, and education spending and says "rich" nations don't have to fear climate change. When tea party challenger David Brat sent Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the House majority leader, to the ash heap on Tuesday night, vanquishing the incumbent by more than 10 points in the primary race, the politerati were stunned. Political journalists scrambled to answer a question: who is this guy? The political pros knew that Brat had mounted a campaign largely based on two issues: bashing Cantor on immigration (that is, excoriating the congressman, who was quite hesitant about immigration...

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]

Don’t sleep. In a district that’s 20 percent black, if they played their cards right, Democrats could turn Rep. Cantor’s primary loss into a general election win. Pundits, prognosticators and backseat-driving know-it-alls are chatting up everything you need to know about House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s (R-Va.) karma-driven primary loss Tuesday night, with politicos scrambling to understand David Brat: a once-puckish Tea Party upstart and Cantor twin with only $200,000 in the bank who managed to unseat the second most powerful cat in the House armed with $5 million plus. But, the Spidey sense should buzz after those third-eye folks...

Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, spent his career denouncing liberals, sucking up to the Tea Party, and doing everything possible to derail President Obama’s agenda. Despite this, Cantor was ousted Tuesday by a Republican challenger in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District. Cantor’s loss follows last week’s Mississippi Republican primary, in which Sen. Thad Cochran, another conservative, was edged out by a Tea Party opponent who’s expected to dispatch Cochran in a runoff. How do right-wingers like Cantor and Cochran lose to challengers even further on the right? The answer lies in the extremism of Republican primary voters. On June 2,...

... what will the new narrative from the MSM be? Before the first GOP primaries this year, we heard from the MSM the long-held narrative: A.) "There is a huge war within the GOP. The GOP needs to do something with these "extremists" (Tea Party)!" Then when Boehner and some others won their primaries, the MSM narrative quickly shifted (as in goal-posts): B.) "The GOP has absorbed the Tea Party!" Now with Eric Cantor losing to David Brat (and that was a huge loss), the MSM won't go back on their narrative, even though they logically would have to admit...

Sniff! With the stunning Eric Cantor congressional primary loss yesterday, the Republicans are now less willing to "compromise" on such programs as immigration "reform" and other Democrat inspired legislation according to  Dana Bash of CNN who  thinks that's sad. So sad. Bash dropped even  the slight pretense of non-bias this morning during a CNN New Day report on Cantor's historic loss. She declared it "sad" that the election result now makes it unlikely for  Republicans to act like Democrats. Break out the violins and play an appropriately mournful tune as Bash indulges her sadness:

Concerned that DC Republicans might begin listening to voters rather than Karl Rove, an always sympathetic White House told stunned GOP leaders that “Cantor’s problem wasn’t his position on immigration reform, it was his lack of a position.” That is, Cantor wasn’t too liberal and he had not offended the conservative, Republican base with his promise of passing amnesty or his contemptuous decision to headline an April conference hosted by George Soros and organized labor. In fact if anything, the now defunct Virginia congressman had been TOO conservative! After all, hadn’t Cantor’s campaign sent out direct-mail pieces just before last...

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's pollster is blaming Democrats for meddling in Cantor's race and pushing Tea Party-affiliated opponent Dave Brat to victory. He's wrong, according to political observers and interpretations drawn from turnout results. John McLaughlin, Cantor's pollster, released a survey days before the primary indicating Cantor had the election in the bag. The poll showed Cantor leading Brat by 34 points. Since Brat ended up winning by 11 points, that's a 45-point miss. This is not the first time McLaughlin's data has been off in recent elections, but he took advantage of comments from "Dukes of Hazard" actor...