RNN Interview: Does Eric Cantor's Historic Defeat Signal The Ending of The Republican Party?

Lawrence Wilkerson is a retired United States Army soldier and former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell. Wilkerson is an adjunct professor at the College of William & Mary where he teaches courses on US national security. He also instructs a senior seminar in the Honors Department at the George Washington University entitled "National Security Decision Making."

PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT AT LINK BELOW VIDEO:


Does Eric Cantor's Historic Defeat Signal The Ending of The Republican Party?JAISAL NOOR, TRNN PRODUCER: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Jaisal Noor in Baltimore. And welcome to this latest edition of The Wilkerson Report.

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We're now joined by Larry Wilkerson. He's the former chief of staff of U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, currently an adjunct professor of government at the College of William & Mary, regular contributor to The Real News.

Thank you so much for joining us, Larry.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON, FMR. CHIEF OF STAFF TO COLIN POWELL: Thanks for having me, Jaisal.

NOOR: So, Larry, obviously the buzz in Washington and around the country really is the defeat of Eric Cantor in this historic defeat. Never before has a sitting House majority leader been defeated in a primary election. And he was defeated by a Tea Party challenger. What do you make of this?

WILKERSON: First I have to say that I'm elated. I'm a Republican, but I never liked Eric Cantor, never liked his positions, never liked his ambition, never liked the way he pursued his policies [inaud.] both personal and professional. So I'm elated as a Republican that he's been defeated.

The second thing I make of it, and probably more to your question, is that, number one, the Republican Party is in disarray. It's been in disarray for some time, but there are more manifestations of it that I hope at least get the leadership and fundamental Republicans who have chafed at this problem the Republican Party has, get their attention, and we start doing more to fix the party, so to speak. But secondarily, it also, I think, indicates the disarray that the Tea Party is in, because you have Tea Party people, candidates all across the country who are doing poorly, and then you have one here in Virginia, in a district where Republicans should win quite easily, mostly due to gerrymandering, and all of a sudden we have a Tea Party guy winning against, as you said, the House majority leader. So there are two reflections that I have on this. One is the Republican Party's disarray, and the other is--counterintuitive [perhaps?], given the victory in Virginia--the Tea Party's disarray.

NOOR: And what do you make of the forces that helped propel this challenger, David Brat, to this victory? Now, we know that a lot of the right-wing talkshow hosts--Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh--backed this challenger, David Brat. And what kind of forces do they represent in the country?

WILKERSON: I think you have to discount the talk radio influence, except at the margins. I'm not saying it wasn't influential, but at the margins, because, let's face it, poll after poll shows that those watching talk radio like Laura Ingraham and Rush Limbaugh and so forth are overwhelmingly over 65 years old. Now, those people go vote, though, while people, younger people, like my students at William & Mary [incompr.] don't often go vote. So that's an important part of the electorate.

But you also have to consider this is Virginia. This is Virginia, and this is the heart of [incompr.] from 1808 to 1860. And that might seem funny to go back to that period, but it's not at all. This is what bred nullification. This is what bred opposition to the New England desire for tariffs. This is what bred secession. This is what bred, in essence, the Civil War. It's the same group of states, in many respects, who are generating some of this political tension today. And because those states flocked overwhelmingly to the Republican Party when they got tired of segregation, desegregation, school busing, and so forth and everything that went along with the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and because the Republican Party now has many of those people within its ranks, the Republican Party finds itself a party of that group.

And I'm not stretching the historical analogy to say that the same kinds of tensions that rendered this nation from 1800 to the Civil War, and then in the Civil War came to a bloody rendering, aren't still operative today. You hear the same kind of things coming out of some of these states, some of these regions that you heard during that time.

And so I'm not surprised at all at what happened to Eric Cantor. In fact, two days ago I predicted he was going to lose. And I was over on the Hill yesterday talking to some Republican staffers--and indeed some members, Republican members--about Iran, and I got disbelief when I said something like that. I thought he was going to lose because of the uniqueness of this particular area in Virginia.

CONTINUED TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW AT LINK:

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11981

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