Rolling Stone - Eric Cantor: Burned at the Steakhouse

$168,000? That's a lot of fucking steak.

In a plot twist so bloody and twisted you'd think George R.R. Martin scripted it, the Tea Party has claimed the scalp of House Republican leader Eric Cantor.

Dave Brat's primary victory over a sitting Majority Leader – reportedly the first in U.S. political history – was incredible on its own merits. A formidable fundraiser, Cantor built a 26-1 cash advantage over his opponent, a no-name professor of economics. The spending was so lopsided that Cantor dropped nearly as much at steak houses ($168,000) as Brat did on his entire campaign ($200,000). Cantor's top-dollar political team expected a runaway victory. The campaign's last leaked internal poll showed him with a 34-point advantage. Instead, the Virginian got trounced by Brat, who himself rolled to a double-digit win.

Goliath Cantor's defeat to a Tea Party David is all the more striking because it comes amid a string of establishment GOP victories that seemed to be about quelling the fratricidal unrest of the Republican Party. Well-funded challenges to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky and Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson, BFF of House Speaker John Boehner, had failed badly. In South Carolina last night, Sen. Lindsey Graham cruised to a primary victory outright, avoiding a potentially punishing runoff. (The Tea Party's last best hope to draw blood appeared to be in deep red Mississippi, where hoary establishment veteran Thad Cochran could still be ousted by a Tea Party loon.)

But Cantor's defeat is again feeding the flames of the GOP civil war. Most remarkable, the upset win wasn't astroturfed by outside groups. Brat's campaign was such a longshot that the big wing-nut money sat on the sidelines, investing next to nothing in his effort to unseat Cantor. Club For Growth sat on its wallet. According to right wing blogs, Tea Party Patriots leader Jenny Beth Martin couldn't be bothered to even meet with Brat. Nobody but nobody saw this coming: Barney Keller, Club For Growth's communications director tweeted last night: "Still in shock. Total shock."

Brat appears to have won the old-fashioned way, rallying grassroots support against an incumbent who'd been seduced by the ways of Washington. Cantor has long carried water for Wall Street, which feathered his political nest. Writing Cantor's political obituary, the Wall Street Journal memorialized Cantor as "a favored conduit for Wall Street firms."

But Brat really hammered Cantor on immigration: blasting the majority leader as pro-amnesty with the help of talk hosts like Laura Ingraham, warning that Cantor's reelection would lead to open borders and a flood of new cheap foreign labor to rob Virginians of their jobs. "He's for amnesty and he's for reducing wages," Brat said at a recent press conference. "Eric Cantor does not represent you." (To the extent that Cantor's loss reinforces the perception that immigration reform is a new third rail in GOP politics, his loss could have national political ramifications, threatening the prospects of reform backers like Jeb Bush.)


Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/eric-cantor-burned-at-the-steakhouse-20140611#ixzz34NEyqZpn