KRUGMAN: How big a deal is the surprise primary defeat of Representative Eric Cantor? VERY.
The Fix Isn’t In
Eric Cantor and the Death of a Movement
PAUL KRUGMAN
JUNE 12, 2014
How big a deal is the surprise primary defeat of Representative Eric Cantor, the House majority leader? Very. Movement conservatism, which dominated American politics from the election of Ronald Reagan to the election of Barack Obama — and which many pundits thought could make a comeback this year — is unraveling before our eyes.
I don’t mean that conservatism in general is dying. But what I and others mean by “movement conservatism,” a term I think I learned from the historian Rick Perlstein, is something more specific: an interlocking set of institutions and alliances that won elections by stoking cultural and racial anxiety but used these victories mainly to push an elitist economic agenda, meanwhile providing a support network for political and ideological loyalists.
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So whither movement conservatism? Before the Virginia upset, there was a widespread media narrative to the effect that the Republican establishment was regaining control from the Tea Party, which was really a claim that good old-fashioned movement conservatism was on its way back. In reality, however, establishment figures who won primaries did so only by reinventing themselves as extremists. And Mr. Cantor’s defeat shows that lip service to extremism isn’t enough; the base needs to believe that you really mean it.
In the long run — which probably begins in 2016 — this will be bad news for the G.O.P., because the party is moving right on social issues at a time when the country at large is moving left. (Think about how quickly the ground has shifted on gay marriage.) Meanwhile, however, what we’re looking at is a party that will be even more extreme, even less interested in participating in normal governance, than it has been since 2008. An ugly political scene is about to get even uglier.
more;
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/13/opinion/paul-krugman-eric-cantor-and-the-death-of-a-movement.html
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What a treacherous, damaged, fucked-up little shit Cantor is.
I am bathing in schadenfreude.
Last edited Sat Jan 17, 2015, 10:09 PM - Edit history (7)
That's what happened to Cantor -- he got so caught up in flashing the swords of his own rhetoric and ambition, he completely lost sight of the even more powerful weapon that his own voters still had.
Just like that, a member of the GOP's congressional "gang of three" is gone, and more important, it puts a bug in the ears of Boner and McTurtle's voters that it's not impossible for them to do the same. Power to the people, right on!
rocktivity
Last edited Tue Nov 30, 2021, 09:35 PM - Edit history (14)
If Jones' only line of defense was his whip, I would have started wondering why he wasn't using it, or trying to take advantage of the distance between us by running away. I would most certainly not have been so egotistical as to conclude that Jones was so dazzled or frightened by my swordplay skills that he couldn't react.
rocktivity
I read that only 65,000 voted in the primary. It seemed to me at the time that the early analysis was that Cantor may have simply gone down to voter apathy. There are a lot of anecdotal explanations floating around and maybe some of them are insightful and even illuminating, but 65,000 voters do not make a movement. I would not read TOO much into this joyous event. 
Cantor dropped the ball against his own 
