Eric Cantor got what he deserved: A political fraud’s stunning demise - By Joan Walsh

Immigration foes killed the majority leader, as they’ll kill the GOP. It couldn’t happen to a more swell guy

JOAN WALSH

Around 8 p.m. MSNBC began running B-roll footage of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor as though he died, and, well, he did politically. None of the major networks were prepared to cover a major election upset. In a GOP primary season where the big story had been the GOP establishment beating back the Tea Party, the story turned on a dime with Cantor’s stunning defeat. He is the first majority leader in history to lose in a primary in his own party since 1899.

This is a huge victory for anti-immigration extremists, including Ann Coulter, Matt Drudge, Laura Ingraham and Mickey Kaus. Drudge is mocking Salon for writing that Cantor was likely to beat unknown far-right economics professor Dave Brat, but in fact Jim Newell got the pulse of the race right. Brat had accused Cantor of shoving immigration reform down the party’s throat – the right is obsessed with things being forced down their throats? – and with recent news about children crossing the border from Mexico vainly hoping for congressional sanity in the form of an immigration deal, the issue had new heat.

“Eric Cantor represents large corporations who want a never-ending supply of cheap, low-wage foreign labor,” Brat said in his stump speech. “Eric Cantor saying he opposes amnesty is like Barack Obama saying he opposes Obamacare.” On MSNBC Tuesday night, Chuck Todd recalled that this morning, in an interview, Dave Brat used “amnesty” roughly every fourth word.

Of course Cantor was last seen trying to tell his voters that he was fighting Obama’s “amnesty” plan, but it clearly didn’t work.

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