The GOP eats its own

[DinoDoc]

heh.

[N35t0r]

Ad hominems don't detract from the accuracy of the ad hominem made about you.

FTFY

[Imran Siddiqui]

It's not just about Obamacare though, Romney also moved from being pro-choice to fiercely pro-life, from full equality for gays to fighting gay marraige, from supporting assault weapon bans to pretending to be a firm friend of the NRA and from being open to immigration reform to being a strident opponent. Oh and let's not forget those massive corporate tax cuts he wanted.

Please tell me more about how these are all moderate independent positions though.

These are positions that center-right candidates have tended to hold. Pro-life is just about universal on the right. In 2012, being against gay marriage was the same. An assault weapons renewal hasn't had a prayer since it expired in the early 2000s. And immigration reform is a no-go for many (well, until the border is more secure) - heck, Obama won't even push for it.

Aside from immigration reform, tell me how these positions are different from George W. Bush's.

(FWIW, Romney has actually been consistent in opposing gay marriage - he disagreed with the Massachusetts Supreme Court; and his immigration policy has been consistent since, at least, 2007 - no record of what his views were before that)

[kentonio]

These are positions that center-right candidates have tended to hold. Pro-life is just about universal on the right. In 2012, being against gay marriage was the same. An assault weapons renewal hasn't had a prayer since it expired in the early 2000s. And immigration reform is a no-go for many (well, until the border is more secure) - heck, Obama won't even push for it.

Aside from immigration reform, tell me how these positions are different from George W. Bush's.

What was Bush's popularity like at the end of his Presidency?

If you think Romney was pandering to the moderates then you'll need to explain why he lost an election that he should have won.

[regexcellent]

Eric Cantor's fantastic and this is a terrible result, but ultimately the seat and Congress will remain in Republican hands. Still, it's bad for Virginia since I guarantee it won't be another Virginian as Majority Leader or probably even Whip. Ultimately though the Virginia Republicans have still had a good week what with taking control of the Senate there.

Completely goddamn ridiculous anyway.

[Imran Siddiqui]

What was Bush's popularity like at the end of his Presidency?

What was it prior to the economic downturn? Hint, his positions on those issues didn't doom him.

If you think Romney was pandering to the moderates then you'll need to explain why he lost an election that he should have won.

Who in the world thought he "should have won"? If you want to search for it, I'm on record saying Obama was basically unbeatable in the 2012 election.

[regexcellent]

Romney almost did win. Obama held on by his dick hairs.

[Imran Siddiqui]

4% more in the Popular Vote and 126 more Electoral Votes is TOTALLY just hanging on....

[regexcellent]

4 points PV is downright miniscule. It was the smallest margin of victory for re-election in decades, and a slight swing would have resulted in a flipped EV count. Yes, it was very close.

[Imran Siddiqui]

It was the smallest margin of victory for re-election in decades

Well now you are just lying:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2004

[The Mad Monk]

Eric Cantor lost to a political neophyte running under the Tea Party banner (whatever that is) yesterday. I must admit to being a little shocked. The GOP are usually pretty disciplined about keeping their senior folks (like House Majority Leader!) slotted in.

To those in the area or in the know: Was there a "he's not Christian" whisper campaign, or was it really (as the media would have me believe) just a Tea Party hardliner who pounded Cantor on immigration, being a DC insider, and/or the budget compromise?

Bonus questions: Is Eric Cantor not conservative enough to hold office? Will he now be banished to the think tanks?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/c...,1218678.story

WP says business ties.

Why Cantor’s loss is especially bad news for big business

More

By Jia Lynn Yang June 11 at 2:37 PM



The country's biggest business groups lost a huge ally with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's shocking defeat Tuesday night to a challenger who attacked Cantor's ties to business. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

The country's most powerful business lobbying groups already knew they had a problem with the GOP when Tea Party lawmakers nearly forced the country into a massive default of its debt last year.

But with Eric Cantor's shocking defeat Tuesday night, things for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable just got a whole lot worse.

For one, they lost a major defender of their favored policies--from the beneficial tax treatment of private equity income to immigration reforms favored by the country's biggest tech companies. But even worse for their prospects, Cantor lost to a challenger who specifically attacked him for his close ties to big business -- going so far as to single out the BRT and the Chamber.

"The central theme of Brat’s campaign is that Cantor is beholden to business — specifically the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable," wrote Politico in April.

“If you’re in big business, Eric’s been very good to you, and he gets a lot of donations because of that, right?” Brat said at a local meeting of Republicans in Virginia, according to Politico. “Very powerful. Very good at fundraising because he favors big business. But when you’re favoring artificially big business, someone’s paying the tab for that. Someone’s paying the price for that, and guess who that is? You.”

While everyone is focused on Brat's critique of Cantor's immigration stance, that attack came in the broader context of the increasingly potent "crony capitalism" theme. For instance, Brat went after Cantor specifically for his support of strengthening the H1B visa program, a policy especially favored by tech companies such as Facebook since it allows them to hire more engineers from overseas. Critics have said that the program allows firms to seek cheaper labor to maximize profits and puts foreign workers ahead of Americans.

Here's how Brat attacked Cantor for it on Twitter: with a photo of him standing right next to Mark Zuckerberg.



It's true that Cantor enjoyed a strong relationship with business, and it went far beyond tech to Wall Street especially. The industry that gave him the most campaign contributions was the securities and investment sector. Individuals from the private equity firm Blackstone were his biggest financial supporters. Cantor went to bat for the industry repeatedly over politically unpopular issues, including the taxation of income at private equity firms at the lower capital gains rate.

That's no surprise: for decades, the GOP and big business have worked closely together to build a political alliance that until recently appeared airtight. But now with Tea Party activist groups charging the traditional wing of the GOP with "crony capitalism"--and Cantor's loss--the balance of power is creeping away from the pro-business faction of the Republican Party.

The business lobbying groups can sense this, and they've made no secret of their intense dislike of the Tea Party wing, as Tom Hamburger and I reported last year. Dirk Van Dongen, the longtime chief lobbyist for the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, called Tea Party lawmakers and their activist supporters "the Taliban minority."

That enmity can only now be escalating, with people like Brat going directly after the lobbying crowd. “Cantor is following the agenda of the Business Roundtable and the Chamber of Commerce — pursuing policies that are good for big business, but come at the exclusion of the American people,” said Brat earlier this year according to the conservative website Watchdog.org.

His win signals that it's not just the policies supported by the BRT and the Chamber that are under threat. The business lobby groups and big firms themselves have increasingly become political targets--along with any lawmakers who are seen as working closely with them.

Update: Wall Street seems already to have reacted to Cantor's loss by sending stocks of Boeing down more than two percent. The company relies heavily on support from the Export-Import Bank, a government credit agency that helps finance sales to overseas buyers of U.S. goods, including Boeing's planes. Cantor was a supporter of the Export-Import Bank, which conservative groups including the Club for Growth want to abolish since they view it as more "crony capitalism." Cantor's loss paves the way for more Tea Party lawmakers to take shots at the agency; a fight over the bank is already shaping up for this fall, when its authorization expires.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/06/10/why-cantors-loss-is-especially-bad-news-for-big-business/

People like to forget that crony capitalism is a big sticking point for the Tea Party, but it is.

[DinoDoc]

Following on with what I said earlier:

I have yet to read anything suggesting that Cantor had a good home style. His staff is consistently described as aloof, and his constituent service is lacking. This is consistent with my experience. Anecdotes are not data, but after passage of the Affordable Care Act, I called his office with a question about what autism therapies for my son would now be covered (I lived in Cantor’s district for six years). I never heard back. This surprised me, as constituent questions rarely go unanswered. I never once saw Cantor, not at county fairs, not at school board meetings, and not in the parades that would sometimes march past our house (we lived on a major thoroughfare). This isn’t to say that Cantor never did these things, only that they weren’t frequent enough to register; he wasn’t the stereotypical Southern politician whose face showed up at every event.

In short, Cantor seemed more focused on the second and third goals of a politician — power and policy — to the detriment of the first. I am guessing he didn’t realize he might have a problem until he was booed at a district meeting a month ago. If he’d run scared, the result might well have been different. But he didn’t, and he lost. This is really the big-picture message for GOP incumbents. You don’t have to remake yourself into a Tea Partier. But you do have to care.

What Cantor's Loss and Graham's Win Mean

[Elok]

If you think Romney was pandering to the moderates then you'll need to explain why he lost an election that he should have won.

Because he was about as personally appealing as a bowl of porridge made out of crumbled drywall and aged horse piss?

[Guynemer]

Wait, are you saying you prefer fresh horse piss?

You've got to age it to bring out the flavors.

[The Mad Monk]

Some notes on the new guy, from Wikipedia:

Originally from Alma, Michigan,[6] [7] Brat moved to Virginia in 1996 with his wife, Laura.[8] Brat attended Hope College in Michigan and received a B.A. in Business Administration in 1986; he also graduated with a Master's degree in Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1990 and earned a Ph.D in economics from American University in 1995.[1]

After working for Arthur Andersen and as a consultant for the World Bank, he became a professor at Randolph–Macon College (RMC) in 1996.[1]

His published papers include "God and Advanced Mammon: Can Theological Types Handle Usury and Capitalism?" and "An Analysis of the Moral Foundations in Ayn Rand."[9]

David Brat is a Roman Catholic and is a parishioner of St. Mary Catholic Church in Richmond with his wife and their two children

Although Brat has stated he does not identify as a Randian, he has acknowledged having been influenced by Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged and has expressed appreciation of Ayn Rand’s case for human freedom and free markets.[24] He actively identifies with the Tea Party movement.[15]

On the campaign trail, he "frequently trumpeted the six elements" of the "Republican Party of Virginia Creed" which were posted at his campaign website:[22]

That the free enterprise system is the most productive supplier of human needs and economic justice,
That all individuals are entitled to equal rights, justice, and opportunities and should assume their responsibilities as citizens in a free society,
That fiscal responsibility and budgetary restraints must be exercised at all levels of government,
That the Federal Government must preserve individual liberty by observing Constitutional limitations,
That peace is best preserved through a strong national defense,
That faith in God, as recognized by our Founding Fathers, is essential to the moral fiber of the Nation.[25]

Brat is the BB&T Ethics Program Director, serving 2010–2020. The program arose from a $500,000 grant, given by the charitable arm of the Fortune 500 financial services and banking firm BB&T, awarded to Randolph-Macon College for the study of the moral foundations of capitalism and the establishment of a related ethics program. Other board and leadership positions include:

Governor’s Advisory Board of Economists, GABE/JABE, 2006 – present
Board of Directors, Richmond Metropolitan Authority, 2008–present
Board of Directors, Vice-Chair and Chair of Executive Committee, [[Great Aspirations Scholarship Program]], 2008 – present
Board of Trustees, VACo/VML Pooled OPEB Trust, 2009 – present
Advisory board, Virginia Public Access Project, 2011 – present[