Free Republic

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...

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...

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.

Former vice presidential candidate discusses the state of the GOP

“All of the investment banks, up in New York and D.C., they should have gone to jail.”That isn’t a quote from an Occupy Wall Street protester or Senator Elizabeth Warren. That’s a common campaign slogan repeated by Dave Brat, the Virginia college professor who scored one of the biggest political upsets in over a century by defeating Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the Republican primary last night.The national media is buzzing about Brat’s victory, but for all of the wrong reasons.Did the Tea Party swoop in and help Brat, as many in the Democratic Party are suggesting? Actually, the Wall Street...

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."

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...

A Tea Party candidate soundly defeated House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., on Tuesday, sending shockwaves through the Republican establishment and the Democratic Party. And Dave Brat, the 52-year-old chairman of the Randolph-Macon College Department of Economics and Business in Ashland, Va., staged the huge upset without any help from major Tea Party organizations. But this troublesome fact hasn't stopped certain so-called Tea Party groups from capitalizing on Brat's victory, declaring enthusiastically that Cantor’s defeat equals a Tea Party insurgency. FreedomWorks president Matt Kibbe wrote: “Congratulations to Dave Brat on his huge upset. The statement from the grassroots could not...

One of the most powerful men in Washington, Rep. Eric Cantor has lost his bid for re-election! He invested 5 million dollars in this primary race. He blitzed his message across Virginia and the 7th District that he represents. He was a 7 term incumbent and he was also the number two most powerful Republican in Congress. Cantor became majority leader for the 112th and 113th Congress and he had his sights on eventually becoming Speaker of the House and he lost! It was a historic defeat because Cantor, an establishment Republican, lost to a virtual unknown! Challenger Dave Brat...

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 canceled a scheduled speech he was to give Wednesday morning before the National Association of Manufacturers, as policymakers scramble to sort through what his stunning political loss means for the financial sector. Cantor was expected to discuss a host of conservative policy initiatives at NAM's annual summit, but now he will be replaced by Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), according to a source familiar with the matter. No explanation was given by the source. Cantor lost in a primary election Tuesday night to Tea Party challenger David Brat, an economics professor. His last minute speech cancellation...

The Tea Party is five years old this election season, which means it’s done teething and spitting up on itself, but still prone to temper tantrums, irrational outbursts and threats to take its toys and storm off if it doesn’t get its way. As a movement, it is down to a couple of former talk-radio hosts running for office in two states of the old Confederacy, Texas and Mississippi. And in the latter, the Senate candidate, Chris McDaniel, has given a keynote to a group that considers Abraham Lincoln a war criminal. It’s not hard to make the case that...

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...

Just a few miles from his family home, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) felt the wrath of the tea party Saturday, when activists in his congressional district booed and heckled the second-most powerful House Republican. They also elected one of their own to lead Virginia’s 7th Congressional District Republican Committee, turning their back on Cantor’s choice for a post viewed as crucial by both tea party and establishment wings in determining control of the fractured state GOP.

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.

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)

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...