Iâm not fully conversant with the structural details of US government, but does this mean your country is even more broken? âCos it was pretty fuckinâ broken before.
Doesnât really change much, itâs just really shocking. Nobody was expecting him to lose.
Yes, it does.
It means the House of Representatives probably becomes even a little more conservative, although you would likely be hard pressed to tell the difference. Maybe slightly more hostile to immigration reform. Itâs also possible that Dave Brat will accidentally say something outrageous and hand the seat to Jack Trammellâthis is always a danger with Tea Party candidates, but the district is heavily gerrymandered and that is unlikely to happen.
He who lives by the stupid bigoted idiots, dies by the stupid bigoted idiots.
It wasnât that the Tea Party was spending money to eliminate Cantor - no he was the victim of an ultraconservative gerrymandered district that was supposed to give him life time job security. but instead it turned on him like Frankensteinâs monster.
This is less Tea Party and more neoconfederate.
Dave Brat teaches economics - how will he respond to his baseâs demands that America default on the national debt and crash the world economy?
The Victor:
DR. DAVID A. BRAT
Department of Economics and Business
Director, BB&T Moral Foundations of Capitalism Program
Ph. D. (Economics) 1995, The American University , Washington, D.C.
M. Div. 1990, Princeton Theological Seminary , Princeton, New Jersey.
B.A. Business Administration, 1986, Hope College , Holland, Michigan.
Ainât no crazy like batshit crazy! Love that tea party! Keep primarying the âmoderateâ Republicans and watch them go down in flames in the General election.
Hell, Clint Eastwood could run an empty chair as a Democrat and have a decent chance of winning.
Nah. From the sound of it, the incumbent ran a crappy campaign against a well-organized, well-funded, firey opponent. It wonât change much, itâll just add a bit more crazy sound bite action to Fox News.
Whatâll change is that the incumbent was well known and well connected. The new guy isnât. Not good for the GOP.
POINT of reference:
That blurry pic of President Obama - THAT is what is called a âshit-eatinâ grinâ.
This is one of the ways IT could startâŚ
The Noxious Joke Party that everybody just laughs off until it doesnât just dry up and blow away on its own, no, it has RALLIES and funding and budgets and goddamned committees and chairmen of its own by now. Screwheads with cash dump time and dollars into this shit.
It just snowballs and eventually theyâre like twelve percent of the government somehow while nobody was even watching, it seems.
And then the Noxious Joke Party gets way less funny. People turn up missing every day or it turns out they were a secret Islamist or harboring immigrants illegally and everyone just freezes when someone questions in conversation whether thatâs like, ALL RIGHT with everybody now. Rorshackâs Journal time.
Itâs too late for regrets when everyone turns out to be a Noxi.
The thing is, all the national pundits really got it wrong. I live right next to this district, my parents live in his district, my roommate voted for Brat (because Cantor was too busy playing national politics to pay attention to his district) and a whole lot of the vote for Brat was just that - people sick of a Representative not representing them, not bringing home the bacon, and campaigning for President instead of taking care of the people who put him in power.
Cantor has not taken care of the people in his district, and hasnât for a long, long time. Itâs about time the bill came due - and other Representatives who prefer playing fucky-fucky in DC to taking care of their electorate should probably pay attention.
We are the kingslayers, one ballot at a time.
It never ceases to amaze me at the myopic views that tea partiers have about the candidates they support. Supposedly, they are for strictly limited government, balanced budgets, reduced spending, throwing orphans out on the street, yada-yada⌠yet even the most fiscal tightasses still expect their Congresscritter to open up the taxpayer checkbook for their district.
My Congressman (Lamborn - I didnât vote for him but Iâm just a blue pimple in a crimson red cesspool) is a tea party darling yet will be the first person in front of the cameras to protect spending on the 4 military bases and tens of thousands of government contractors that call this area home.
Iâm still holding onto a shred of hope that the Tea Party might actually save this country.
I know, bear with me.
My hope is that the TP could manage to actually peel the lunatic fringe off of the Republican party into a separate group. If it worked, the Greens might do the same with the Democrats, and leave the Libertarians without the fringe right wing influence and able to be more centrist.
So instead of a far-right vs slightly-left-of-center two party system, we end up with a reasonably strong moderate left and moderate right, plus three smaller but still formidable parties occupying the far left, far right, and center.
And then we might actually have some real choice and a chance to institute instant runoff voting.
It probably wonât happen, but I can dream.
No, it doesnât mean anythingâs broken. Itâs sort of like an MP in the UK losing his seat because his district doesnât like him, regardless of his importance to his national party, but itâs a primary election so he lost it to another politician from his own party. (The Tea Party isnât an actual party - itâs a right-wing faction within the Republican party.)
The US House of Representatives (lower house in Congress) has 435 voting members from districts allocated geographically, with very roughly equal populations. Each party in Congress determines its political leaders through complicated infighting.
Cantorâs a fairly conservative Republican from a conservative district who just lost a primary election to an even more conservative newbie. (The district is conservative enough that the Democratic opponent is unlikely to win the general election in the fall, unless the new guy is crazy, which he doesnât seem to be, so far.) Cantorâs young but has become very influential politically within the House Republicans, while the new guy will be have very little influence because heâs a new guy.
Correct me if Iâm wrong but wasnât the tea party the butter subset that caused the government shutdown last year?
Yeah, similar to this:
Except that, of course, Cantor was hardly a moderate.
Not that heavily gerrymandered. After all, they generally donât spend too many R voters on a safe seat when theyâre drawing the map. Looking at recent presidential election numbers on the wikipootia, the seat has been safely R but R-partisanship hasnât been more than 60/40 for national seats in the past few elections. According to the wikipedia page, the district only gave 53% to McCain and 57% to Romney.
So the combination of Brat being a loss leader in the national media and potentially giving away the actual seat makes this less entertaining and more significant. Although with the lege being taken over they might be able to do another redistricting. I donât know the specifics.
It doesnât precisely mean anything; this guyâs going to win (though will contribute far less to his district than Cantor, a member of House leadership), and Republicans are going to do well this year. But itâs not a great sign for the GOP, which in earlier primaries this year had shown signs of bucking the Tea Party influence and nominating relatively mainstream conservatives.
Cantor, the only non-Christian Republican in Congress, was just purged because he was perceived as being too moderate on immigration. Is this a party thatâs ready to make outreach efforts to expand the base for a presidential election?
