Tag: Eric Cantor

The Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor lost his primary in Virginia’s 7th District tonight to Tea Party Challenger Dave Brat.

The conservative challenger’s victory halts one of the most meteoric rises in national politics, and illustrates the strong anti-incumbent fever that has taken over Cantor’s Richmond-area district. Cantor is the second House incumbent to lose this primary season – Texas GOP incumbent Ralph Hall was defeated by a tea-party backed challenger at the end of May.

And the idiot Democrats didn’t field a challenger because they thought the seat was not winnable. Stupid.

Correction: According to David Nir at Daily Los, there is a Democratic challenger Democrat, Jack Trammel, who, like Brat, is a professor at Randolph-Macon College.

This also throws Republican leadership into question.

Up Date:

HuffPo has piece that there was a crazy plan by former congressman Ben Jones (D-Ga.), better known as “Cooter” from Dukes of Hazzard, who ran against Cantor in 200:

Crossing party lines to vote in an open primary has a long tradition in the solidly one-party South, Cooter argues in his letter. “[B]y voting for David Brat in the Seventh District Republican primary, we Democrats, independents, and Libertarians can make a big difference in American politics,” he argues. “It is your right to cast that vote. It is an ‘open’ primary and it doesn’t preclude anyone from voting anyway they wish in November. It may be the only way to empower those who want to make a statement about the dysfunctional Congress and ‘politics as usual.'”

Who knew this may have been the reason for Cantor’s loss.

Mirable Dictu! President Barack Obama has joined hands with Republican Eric Cantor to get money out of politics!

Even cooler, they’ve agreed to give the money to support research for illnesses that hurt children.

What could possibly be wrong with that?

Um… remember that little checkbox on your tax form that lets you give $3 to support presidential candidates?  The one that enabled public funding of presidential campaigns?

Obama just dismantled that with a stroke of his pen.

Obama signs ban on public funding of presidential campaigns into law

A ban on public funding of presidential conventions was quietly signed into law by Barack Obama on Thursday in a move that could further increase the dependency of US political parties on wealthy donors.

A day after the supreme court removed aggregate limits on how much wealthy individuals can spend supporting candidates, the White House agreed to enact legislation dismantling what was left of an alternative public financing model set up after the Watergate scandal.

US taxpayers could previously elect to earmark $3 (pdf) each year to help support presidential candidates, primaries and conventions in a bid to reduce their reliance on donors, but the amount spent has dwindled in recent years as parties increasingly ignore the subsidies on offer because they require agreeing to some limits on overall spending.

Now the Republican-controlled House of Representatives has proposed scrapping the last actively used part of the subsidy system, which provided an $18m grant to support each party convention in 2012, and use the money to fund national research into childhood diseases instead.

Despite opposition from some Democrats, including House speaker Nancy Pelosi, who regard it a political stunt, the bill called the The Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act was signed into law in a ceremony at the White House on Thursday afternoon.

Up Date below the fold

Call a Wahmbulance for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor as he quits the debt ceiling talks with Vice President Joe Biden:

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Republican of Virginia, said Thursday that he was quitting  the debt ceiling negotiations being led by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. because of an impasse over the role of taxes in any final deal.

“I believe that we have identified trillions in spending cuts, and to date, we have established a blueprint that could institute the fiscal reforms needed to start getting our fiscal house in order,” Mr. Cantor said in a prepared statement.

“That said, each side came into these talks with certain orders, and as it stands the Democrats continue to insist that any deal must include tax increases. There is not support in the House for a tax increase, and I don’t believe now is the time to raise taxes in light of our current economic situation. Regardless of the progress that has been made, the tax issue must be resolved before discussions can continue.”

David Kurtz at Talking Point Memo says this may not be such a big deal:

The read we’re getting is that this could be merely an indication that the emissaries to the talks have gotten as far as they can get and that the remaining heavy lifting is going to have be done by the principals: President Obama and Speaker Boehner.

Meanwhile, Speaker John Boehner doesn’t sound to pleased that he will now have to defend the Republican stand that tax increases are off the table:

“I understand his frustration, I understand why he did what he did, but I think those talks could continue if they’re willing to take the tax hikes off the table,” he said.

One possible interpretation of Cantor’s pullout was that he needed Boehner’s authority to negotiate revenue increases necessary to complete a far-reaching deal with Democrats, but Boehner made repeatedly clear on Thursday that he had not budged at all on the issue.

“Tax hikes are off the table,” he said. “First of all, raising taxes is going to destroy jobs….second, a tax hike cannot pass the US House of Representatives — it’s not just a bad idea, it doesn’t have the votes and it can’t happen. And third, the American people don’t want us to raise taxes. They know we have a spending problem.”

(emphasis mine)

Boehner may be correct on point two but he is so wrong on one and three that is totally laughable and flat out lies that the press refuses to counter. Americans know we have a revenue problem because of the Bush/Obama tax cuts and loop hole in the tax code. Americans overwhelmingly support tax increases on millionaires. I don’t think Boehner is stupid, I think he is a tool of his corporate masters.

My only question now is where the hell is the Democratic leadership to counter this? Why aren’t the Democrats out in front of the cameras pointing out how wrong the Republicans are? The Democrats need to listen to the people, too and take Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid off the table as well.  

The Speaker of the House John Boehner told Fox News host Sean Hannity that it was not the Republicans that were talking about shutting down the government on March 4 but the Democrats. Parroting his lying cohort, an “exasperated”, House Majority Leader, Eric Cantor (R-VA) boasted the same to Hannity.

Really?

I guess these two don’t talk to the other Republicans :

 – Rep. Steve Womack (R-AR): “Womack said he would be open to forcing a government shutdown over spending.” (The Hill, 12/12/10)

   – Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA): “If government shuts down, we want you with us. … It’s going to take some pain for us to do the things that we need to do to right the ship.” (9/10/10)

   – Rep. Tom Price (R-GA): Q: do you think shutdown should be off the table? PRICE: Everything ought to be on the table. (2/11/11)

   – Rep. Steve King (R-IA): “(King) said last week that he wants Boehner and other House leaders to sign a ‘blood oath’ that they will include a repeal of health care reform in every appropriations bill next year, even if President Barack Obama vetoes the bills and a government shutdown occurs.” (Roll Call 9/10/10)

   – Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI): If Obama…responds to the mandate from voters and understands he can’t disregard it, then he thinks Obama will do well “If he doesn’t, he will shut government down,” Walberg said. (Jackson Citizen Patriot, 11/03/10)

   – Rep. Alan Nunnelee (R-MI): Q: Are you willing to participate in what would lead to a shutdown of the federal government to stop this monstrosity from going down he tracks? NUNNELEE: I agree with Congressman Boehner. We need to do whatever is necessary to make sure this bill never goes into effect. (11/09/10)

   – Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX): “If it takes a shutdown of government to stop the runaway spending, we owe that to our children and our grandchildren.” (11/15/10)

   – Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX): “This is the way the government should adjust. If they can’t pay their bills, wait.” ()

   – Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL): “We will do what we have to do, to shut down the government if we have to, to choke Obamacare if we have to.” (2/12/11)

   – Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) when he was a candidate

Get the cotonout of your ears, guys. Ignorance is not bliss

h/t Think Progress