- David Brat – VA7 Giant Slayer…
The Republican primary in Virginia’s 7th congressional district delivered a political earthquake last night. For the first time in history, a sitting Majority Leader of the House of Representatives – Eric Cantor – was defeated for re-nomination by his own party.
That Cantor, a GOP rising star and the heir apparent to the Speakership of the House, could be defeated by a political newcomer, with little cash or name recognition, necessarily sends shock waves through the political class now obsessing about “what it all means.”
As the talking heads begin to hyperventilate about Cantor’s loss, here are a few grounded points that should guide any sober conversation about the primary and its lessons.
Eric Cantor Ran a Lousy Race: the excuse of record for most political losses, but especially true here. By all appearances, Cantor committed the all too common sin of long-time politicians – taking the race for granted. As a perfect illustration, Cantor was in Washington on primary day, holding a fundraiser on Capitol Hill, not at polling stations shaking hands.
Cantor never put together an effective ground game in advance of the primary to connect with voters. Instead, Cantor dumped huge money into an ill-advised TV campaign which violated the second rule of politics, don’t give an unknown challenger visibility. Not only did Cantor’s ads raise David Brat’s profile in the district, the attacks were harsh and likely created sympathy for the underdog.
This is a Tea Party Victory, But: the new Republican nominee for the 7th district, David Brat, an economics professor from Randolph-Macon College, was recruited to run by Larry Nordvig, executive director of the Richmond Tea Party. But the race never attracted the high profile, big bucks Tea Party donors who have invested in every failed Tea Party challenge this year.
In the truest sense of the word, Brat did this by himself.
Brat was outspent by Cantor 20-1, but he was able to connect with voters at a grass roots level that Cantor did not contest. Opposition to immigration reform and Obamacare animated Brat’s run, and he benefited from the support of talk radio hosts, Mark Levin and Laura Ingraham, who talked up his candidacy on air, even as the conventional wisdom favored Cantor.
It is a bit unseemly for Tea Party leaders to be crowing. They did not invest here and should not take credit for it.
Cantor’s Loss Does Not Change “EVERYTHING”: please. A little perspective.
65,000 Virginians participated in the GOP primary in the 7th. In 2012, Cantor won more than 222,000 votes in his victory. 65,000 votes, ironically as it turns out, was his winning margin. It is safe to assume that many Republicans in the 7th woke up this morning with serious voting remorse, having grown complacent and simply assuming Cantor would win without their votes.
While the relative size of Brat’s margin of victory as measured by percentage was impressive (11 percent), Brat’s margin of 7,000 votes is about three percent of Cantor’s total vote in 2012. Far from a repudiation of Cantor, these vote totals reinforce a narrative that Cantor lost touch with his constituency and had grown complacent. Brat in contrast, ran an energetic and savvy campaign with the tools available to him, and was able to position himself to the right of Cantor on hot-button issues that inspired those most likely to vote.
While Cantor’s loss is a cautionary tale for any other Republicans facing primary challenges, it is hard to imagine that Brat’s is the catalyst for a new Tea Party wave, though it will certainly be portrayed that way.
The Tea Party Scalped One of Their Own: there is something unseemly in Tea Party triumphalism in Cantor’s loss. Cantor was one of them. No one worked harder to force the US to the brink of default over the debt limit extension in 2011 than Cantor. That was a core Tea Party tenant after the 2010 elections and Cantor carried that water right into the Oval Office, torpedoing Speaker Boehner’s attempts to cut a deal with President Obama.
A troubling aspect of Brat’s win was his success in tying Cantor to the “Establishment” through his membership in the House leadership, which almost by Tea Party definition required that he be removed. This cartoonish proposition is a reflection of a political insurgency that has yet to come to terms with the consequence of victory – governance.
The Tea Party is like a dog chasing a car, and has yet to figure out what it does when it finally catches it.
Further, charges that Cantor was insufficiently conservative just fall flat. Cantor’s actual voting record – not the highly selective list maintained by Heritage – shows Cantor voting with his GOP colleagues 95 percent of the time. If 95 percent is insufficient fidelity to principle, it is a reflection of a much deeper problem with the Tea Party.
Republicans Are Going to Miss Cantor: Cantor infuriated me during the 2011 fiscal brinksmanship, but anyone who has watched him realizes that he has grown during his time in the majority.
He was all fire and brimstone, refusing to entertain anything but Democratic unconditional surrender on all issues after the GOP assumed the House majority in ’11, even though the political math of a Democrat president and Senate made that an impossible proposition. But in the time since the near default in 2011, Cantor has become something of a hybrid, understanding both the issues that animate the Tea Party base, as well as legislative navigation required to get things done in DC. It is only the confluence of these two realities, balancing issue intensity with what is politically possible, that can lead to a successful Republican agenda, and Cantor was emerging as one of those people.
Instead of the a myopic focus on losing tactical fights of 2011, Cantor has become more strategic, understanding that the only way to implement a conservative agenda is to win enough political races – including presidential – to have the power to govern. Unlike the many in the Tea Party leadership, Cantor understood that no party can win power with 40 percent of the vote, and that, at the end of the day, there is no real glory conferred on losing over and over again.
For these reasons, Cantor was poised to be the kind of Speaker that today’s House Republican caucus requires. Now however, through Cantor’s indifference and Tea Party scalp hunting, the GOP has lost that bridge. It is not immediately clear if there is another Republican aspiring for Cantor’s job who understands that.
Who is Smiling Today: no doubt there are a lot of happy faces in the West Wing this morning. For the Administration, Cantor was a political bomb thrower who kept wrecking POTUS’s attempts to reach a grand bargain on the budget. It did not help that in their in person meetings, Cantor was borderline disrespectful to the President. That this was Republican fratricide makes Cantor’s exit all the more sweet.
And somewhere in the Capitol today, where the doors are closed and the drapes pulled, John Boehner is smiling broadly.
Boehner has had a complicated relationship with Cantor from the beginning, as the ambitious and more ideological Cantor consistently undermined Boehner’s leadership. Since 2011, there have been any number of rumors of a pending palace coup against Boehner, organized by Cantor. There will be no real tears over Cantor’s exit in the Speaker’s office.
The Tea Party “No” faction in the House is alive and well without Cantor, and will give Boehner fits in 2015, should he remain as Speaker (now more likely), but at a minimum, Boehner can use his office to influence the selection of the next Majority Leader, and hopefully a more workman-like relationship.
What is Next? most of the Republican primaries are over, and with the exception of Ralph Hall of TX and Cantor, all incumbents beat Tea Party challengers.
Thad Cochran is in a very tough primary race in Mississippi, but this race has effectively been “nationalized” by outside money with national Tea Party groups pouring in millions for a “not ready for prime time candidate” – a la Christine O’Donnell, Richard Mourdock and Sharron Angle. The dynamic of the race was in place before Cantor’s loss and will continue, though Cantor’s loss is surely a symbolic shot in the arm for the Tea Party.
There are a handful of GOP House races where the Tea Party has fielded a candidate, but these will more likely than not be decided by local, not Tea Party issues. Two Republican Senators face primaries where the Tea Party candidates have trailed significantly. Look for these Senators to up their game in advance of primary day for insurance.
The Next Majority Leader: As far as the Majority Leader’s position, if Cantor resigns there will be a Republican Caucus vote. My money is on Congressman Kevin McCarthy of CA, the House Majority Whip. If leadership lines up behind McCarthy, the only real question will be whether the Tea Party faction in the Party puts it’s own candidate forward, forcing a choice and some accompanying blood in the water.
There is No Republican Civil War: the battles between Tea Party candidates and incumbents is not about issues. Read Brat’s victory speech. There is very little in there that most Republicans would disagree with. In fact, Brat supported Cantor’s previous bids for office.
The argument – fierce and consequential – is about tactics. How do you bring about change?
In 2011 and 2013 the most ardent Tea Party advocates were prepared to allow the perception of US default on its debt to achieve policy victories opposed by 2/3rds of the government. It was as dangerous as it was unrealistic. It wrecked the Republican Party’s image. In 2013, only the failure of the Obamacare rollout saved the GOP from itself.
Is unconditional surrender and “no compromise” the only way to win? Or is it the easiest road to irrelevancy. That debate will continue.
Contrary to Democratic wishes, the debate is not the end of the Party.