Karma for Eric Cantor: Ben “Cooter” Jones on the open letter that helped crush a “political hack”

The "Dukes of Hazzard" star and former politician tells Salon how he feels about his former opponent's defeat

ELIAS ISQUITH

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Jones on the first thing he saw after getting out of bed this morning:

I woke up and came outside … I’ve got a little office in a little place called the Briar Patch where I hide out. I just write on the walls — phone numbers, and quotations and things. The first thing that I saw after I got out of the bed was this thing I had written on the wall that said: “Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid.”

On why Cantor lost:

Eric was beaten by a coalition [of] mostly real conservatives. These weren’t Tea Party wackos that we hear about, these were thoughtful, sober, classic conservatives, like the William F. Buckley and Edmund Burke and all those people. They know their stuff, and they saw Cantor as just an extremely ambitious hack, who over the years has just swelled-up with hubris. So a lot of people said, “Well, the only chance we have to bring him down is right here, right now.” [Brat] is a very honorable guy. He’s a very serious guy. He’s a classical conservative, all the Hayek and Von Mises and all that stuff. He’s not a wheeler-dealer. He’s an intellect. Eric Cantor’s not an intellect. Eric Cantor is a political hack, frankly. A very ambitious one, but nevertheless. He doesn’t have the substance that Brat has.

On why Cantor’s loss was so richly deserved:

If I made a difference, I’m very pleased with that. As they say — well, “they” don’t say it around here but I kind of made it up — “There ain’t no freud like schadenfreude!” And I don’t go around just [mimics vindictive laughter] ‘I’ll show them!’ But [Cantor] insulted me. He mocked me, Cantor did. He knew I didn’t have money; I don’t take PAC money … I spent about what Dave Brat did against him. And [Cantor] didn’t have to do [mock me]. It’s the way they play. And they played that way against a Republican, and a good guy, before they had to … [Cantor] frankly has run some of the sleaziest campaigns when he didn’t have to … Cantor’s pollster says I made the difference, and if people want to think that, of course that’s fine with me. What goes around comes around. He ran one of the nastiest campaigns against me that I’ve ever [seen]. I’ve run against some tough guys; I ran against Gingrich.

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On the message Cantor’s defeat sends to the rest of Congress:

In these gerrymandered districts, these safe seats are no longer safe. These safe seats are no longer safe, because we can go in to these primaries, or these open primaries, and we can crossover and knock out incumbents, and knock out the person with the safe seat. And that’s exactly what happened. That was the safest seat in the country, that was a safe seat. But it wasn’t, because they didn’t know what the hell was going on on the ground. They weren’t talking to people … This is a template that can be applied in other places. And it’s not only that — it brings people together. Look at this terrible divide, people at each other’s throats, there’s no middle ground, no civility, no comity; but we can sit together in the cafes and talk, sit around the pool-hall, talk to each other. This is a very positive thing, not just because of the schadenfreude and knocking off Eric Cantor and taking him down, but [because] it was done by people whose common interest was, “Let’s get rid of this crowd.” So nobody’s seat is safe, if it’s worked right.

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http://www.salon.com/2014/06/11/karma_for_eric_cantor_ben_cooter_jones_on_the_open_letter_that_helped_crush_a_political_hack/