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Outgoing Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor told ABC's Jonathan Karl that he was "absolutely" shocked by his primary loss this week to Tea Party challenger David Brat, a defeat that has sent shockwaves through Washington as the man seen as a possible heir to Speaker John Boehner was dethroned. "Absolutely…I don't think anybody in the country thought that the outcome would be what it was. And, you know, I just am a believer, as I said that night, and subsequently, that there are some things that happen for a reason and we may not be able to really discern...

From school board races to Senate primaries, the education reform package known as Common Core is proving uncommonly divisive this campaign season, popping up as an issue in primary elections all over the country. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a Republican, cites opposition to Common Core as a key reason for her endorsement of state Rep. Chris McDaniel over incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran in Mississippi’s hotly contested Republican Senate primary. Former Oklahoma state House Speaker T.W. Shannon, a Republican, says Obama administration pressure on states to adopt Common Core “is a prime example of why I’m running for the Senate.”

U.S. officials are in discussions to temporarily shelter unaccompanied immigrant children on the campus of shuttered Saint Paul’s College in Lawrenceville. Faced with a surge in the numbers of minors arriving on their own from Central America, representatives of the federal Department of Health and Human Services visited the campus this week and are nearing an agreement to use Saint Paul’s facilities for at least six months, sources in Brunswick County said.

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...

Discussing House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s surprising primary loss, on Friday’s Washington Week on PBS, John Harwood, chief Washington correspondent for CNBC, a regular on NBC and MSNBC, and a political writer for the New York Times, blamed hostility to Jews in Cantor’s “very rural conservative southern district.” “Eric Cantor is a Jewish Republican. This is a very rural conservative southern district where that is not a -- you don’t have a lot of Jewish members of Congress from the South.” Host Gwen Ifill, hardly a conservative, jumped in to counter Harwood’s presumption: “Oh, but he’s been elected several times...

Last night I posted what I thought was a very balanced comment on the 7th district congressional election. I expressed my personal disappointment that Eric Cantor lost, congratulated David Brat on his victory, and expressed concern over the deep divisions that currently exist in our party. I encourage you to read the comments that were made in response. The negativity and vitriol of these comments (dare I say the hate in some of them) reflects what is wrong in our party right now. We have to learn to disagree without being disagreeable, and we have to learn to respect the...

Former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is the new president of the Senate Conservatives Fund. "One of Virginia's strongest grass-roots conservatives is joining our team," Matt Hoskins, the organization's executive director, said in a statement Wednesday on its website. Hoskins also referenced House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's loss in the state's Republican primary on Tuesday, calling it "a major victor for freedom" for "the grass-roots in Virginia." Cantor, 51, who resigned his leadership post Wednesday, lost to little-known college professor David Brat, 49, a political newcomer who was backed by the tea party. It was one of the biggest political...

Editors at MSNBC.com trimmed down Republican congressional nominee Dave Brat's June 11 phone interview with MSNBC's Chuck Todd in order to paint him as dodging questions from the Daily Rundown host. But a review of the full interview [listen to the mp3 audio here] shows that Brat had already and seemingly quite gladly answered a few policy questions on such hot issues as the minimum wage, immigration reform, and his stance on Wall Street's influence on the business wing of the GOP. "Brat dodges Chuck Todd's questions," blared a teaser headline. "Brat: I just wanted to talk about the victory,"...

The pro-amnesty crowd -- i.e., everyone except the American people -- promptly lost its collective mind. The amnesty shills went on the attack, insisting that Cantor's historic defeat had nothing to do amnesty. Brat's triumph was touted as simply a victory for the "tea party."

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican tea party forces are rejoicing and the party establishment is somber or altogether silent in the wake of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's primary defeat at the hands of political neophyte David Brat, an unflinching foe of loosening immigration laws. Speaker John Boehner praised Cantor as "a good friend and a great leader, and someone I've come to rely upon on a daily basis" in a statement that steered clear of the issue that Brat put at the center of his campaign and has divided the party for years.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor on Wednesday stressed his support for a legalization measure for young undocumented immigrants in the military, after he was criticized by advocates who see him as the main obstacle to immigration reform. In an interview with POLITICO, Cantor said he backs the policy merits of the legislation from Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.), which would give a path to legal permanent residency for immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally as children.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor faced criticism over immigration from right and left Wednesday, laying bare the rough politics of the issue even as President Barack Obama sought to increase pressure on House Republicans to act. Cantor’s Tea Party opponent in Virginia’s June 10 GOP primary, Dave Brat, convened a news conference on the steps of the Virginia Capitol to label Cantor a top cheerleader for “amnesty” in the House, citing Cantor’s support for action on certain immigration measures. A short time later, in a conference room inside the state Capitol, Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., a leading proponent of overhauling...

Eric Cantor once praised Congressman Gutiérrez for his leadership on the issue of amnesty. Congressman Gutiérrez is here to set up a great deception that will allow Eric Cantor to claim he is opposed to amnesty, at the eleventh hour, just two weeks prior to the primary on June 10th. Congressman Cantor has spent countless dollars claiming that I’m a “liberal college professor.” This is the act of a desperate campaign. I am more conservative than Eric Cantor across-the-board. I am the constitutional conservative in this race. Eric Cantor is trying to buy this election with corporate cash from Los...

On Saturday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Up w/Steve Kornaki,” former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele said there was push for outgoing-Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) to head the Republican National Committee after he leaves office in January. Steele pointed to the build-up of the 2016 presidential election cycle as a reason for the push behind Cantor.

As soon as a little-known conservative toppled House Majority Leader Eric Cantor on Tuesday night, tea party enthusiasts turned their sights to the next big election-year targets: Mississippi and Kansas. The two states are next up on the GOP's primary calendar as Washington insiders, particularly 76-year-old Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, are fighting hard-right upstarts in an environment in which outsiders have suddenly gained currency. New ads went on the air in Mississippi two days after Cantor's defeat, hammering Cochran as a veteran lawmaker who deserves respect — but not another term in office. In Kansas, Milton Wolf, who is...

Saturday at the Costco in Arlington, VA, right outside of Washington, DC, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor made a surprise stop to see former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signing copies of her book, "Hard Choices."

Considering it’s the first time a sitting House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was defeated in a primary since 1899, and Dave Brat was out-spent $5.4 million to $200,000, Brat pulled off our biggest political upset since George Nethercutt beat then-Speaker Tom Foley in 1994. The first time a House Speaker had been unseated since 1862. By now most of us have already read and celebrated plenty of analysis of Brat’s statement win on Tuesday. But there are three things to learn from this upset that have largely gone unnoticed elsewhere, and provide a necessary blueprint for conservatives going forward. 1....

Though Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s epic defeat was a shock to the country, when you think about it, those of us within the Tea Party movement should not have been surprised. We know how frustrated and disappointed voters across America have been with our government. We have all endured a jobless recovery and Virginians (just like the rest of America) are trying to figure out how to put food on the table, gas in their tank, and how to pay for this "affordable" healthcare system that Barack Obama crammed down our throats without our consent. Yet, instead of focusing...

Predictably, Cantor's defeat has undammed a flood of punditry on why he lost, most of it focusing on immigration policy or on the tea party's supposed resurgence. In truth, it's way too soon to know exactly what went on in Virginia's 7th District, and by the time we get any perspective, it's not clear that anyone will care. But one way to look at Cantor's humiliation might be as an indictment of the culture of incumbency itself, and of the dysfunctional way in which a lot of Washington politicians get used to communicating, or don't.

HOUSTON, Texas--The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is taking select Members of Congress on a secret tour of the temporary children’s shelter set up to house the children who entered the country illegally as part of the Texas border crisis. The tour will visit the temporary shelter set up at Naval Base Ventura County later this afternoon. The Congressional delegation will be given a 40-minute tour of the facility where they will witness the interior of the shelter and the care being provided for the unaccompanied minors while they are being housed in their facilities. An email obtained...