WASHINGTON — House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s surprising primary defeat on Tuesday is further proof that Americans are fed up with their elected officials — all of them, of every party — in Washington, D.C.
That’s Rep. Michele Bachmann’s take on Cantor’s shocking loss at the hands of a conservative college professor on Tuesday.
“I think it’s really clear. People are very upset because they feel like elites in Washington, D.C. aren’t listening to them, and I agree with people,” she said after House votes on Wednesday afternoon. “People here in Washington, D.C. need to listen to real people, listen to what real people are saying, and we need to deliver, and that just hasn’t happened, it’s that simple.”
Bachmann, who is retiring at the end of the year, said Cantor’s loss should serve as a warning for lawmakers who vote for policies she says are out of step with American voters. That covers everything from the “lawless” Obama administration’s support for the Affordable Care Act and this month’s controversial prisoner exchange for an American POW to immigration reform pursued for more than a year on Capitol Hill.
Cantor’s opponent, David Brat, ran firmly opposed to immigration reform measures, though its impact on the outcome of the race is a matter of debate. Even so, Cantor’s defeat makes it even more unlikely that House Republicans will move forward with an immigration bill this year.
Bachmann said she thinks it should doom any effort to give “amnesty” to undocumented immigrants in the United States.
She’s Got It Wrong . . . Again!
The only message sent here was to Eric Cantor – sent by 35,000 Republican voters in a largely rural, southern Virginia district who speak for no one other than themselves.
Rep. Bachmann spent her entire congressional career with her eyes and ears shut tight (but not her mouth) to the problems facing many Americans who are not wealthy or not healthy or not working. She loves to talk about “the American people” incessantly but seems utterly clueless that a lot of them are not Republicans and are not conservatives. Those conservative and Republican voices and faces are the only ones she ever hears and sees so she wrongly assumes that only they are “the American people”.
We are the American people
We pay the taxes, we create the jobs, we fight the wars. We pull the wagon.
It’s about time Washington starts paying attention to us and quit pandering to those riding in the wagon.
Welcome
to the Dennis Tester cliche festival.
…and so do You
Republicans don’t protect the wealthy, it’s actually Dems who do. Punitive and ever increasing rules for people to make money creates more barriers to people moving into the middle and upper class. The wealthy will always have money and the more you tax those who want to make more money, the harder it is for people to keep the money they earn and their families and creates more disincentives to work hard. The only party that supports that is the Dems.
My Guess Is
That Eric Cantor spent a lot of campaign money (and others spent on his behalf) running ads,…
but their efforts to get moderates to the polls amounted to zero.
When only 12% of the electorate turns out to vote, you can be sure that those who are most angry will turn out to vote against the incumbent,…
whereas the more moderate folks, assuming (based on the polling numbers) that Cantor would win by a wide margin, didn’t feel any great urgency to go to the trouble of casting their vote.
Then, of course, a few percentage points for Brat may have represented Democrats who voted for him (which was allowed and completely legal) just to slight Cantor.
I suspect the only real message in Cantor’s loss is that a local Republican Party apparatus took far too many things for granted and, therefore, was completely unprepared for the election they were actually facing.
Yes, go ahead….
…base your entire strategy on the 35,000 rural Virginians who think Cantor is too left-wing.
Please?
More accurately, 65,000 voters was the turnout. And, he easily won in previous primaries with half that turnout. Something’s going on and liberals are in a panic as to what that is.
Liberals in a panic?
Are you serious? Eric Cantor’s defeat by a right-wing ideologue who spends his time trying to reconcile Catholicism and objectivism is the best thing that could have happened for the Democrats.
The Republicans are going to march even more relentlessly to the right, hoping to catch the wave. Let’s say that this strategy works for them this year: then what? You will have a Congress full of loudmouths who have no intention of accomplishing anything. “Compromise” is anathema, and they may as well drop the lie about “reaching across the aisles to end partisan gridlock,” because only a fool would believe that. They will take yet more votes to repeal Obamacare (perhaps on an hourly basis), spout forth at great lengths on guns and liberty, and waste who knows how much time on go-nowhere investigations that will make Darrel Issa look like a wise man. Forget funding the federal government, or paying on the national debt. The federal government will shutdown yet again, giving outraged members of Congress camera times in front of closed national monuments (let’s hope your constituents aren’t smart enough to make the connection). There is no question that the US will default on its obligations, letting our status as an economic power slip even more. That is the record Republicans will have to run on in 2016.
Do you think that is going to get a Republican President elected? Do you think they will retain their control of Congress with this kind of farcical record? Let us hope that the damage to the Republican Party will be the least of the damages writ by this kind of insanity. Let us pray that the damage to the country will not be permanent.
Panic?
Hardly…. the more out of the mainstream that the GOP ventures, the better we like it. Observing the GOP purify themselves into irrelevance is a lot more fun than that Abnormal Psych class I took back in college.
Why waste electrons
on Rep. Bachmann’s fantasies?
This was a primary
in a state that does not require party registration to vote in the primary. So some unknown number of Democrats crossed over to vote against Cantor. At least one of his opponents (Ben Jones) publicly invited them to do so.
This may say something about Virginia Republican party, but not much about voters in general.
Sometimes winning a primary means losing the election.