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House Majority Leader Eric Cantor Shockingly Loses Primary to Tea Party Contender
Republican Representative Eric Cantor. Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Eric Cantor (R-VA) was defeated Tuesday in the Republican primary in Virginia’s 7th congressional district by Dave Brat in an unexpected upset. The House of Representatives majority leader, who’d been expected to take over as speaker after John Boehner retired, lost “by huge margins in rural parts of the district” allowing Brat, “a relatively unknown economics professor,” to comfortably take the seat.
Though Cantor may still run as a write-in candidate for Virginia’s 8th district, the primary results are expected to send “shockwaves” through the Republican party.
The Guardian:
The clash between mainstream Republican leaders in Washington and more conservative Tea Party rivals has dominated US politics in recent years, leading to the government shutdown last year.
The decision by Boehner and Cantor to ultimately face down their Tea Party wing over its shutdown demands was thought to have taken the momentum out of the upstart movement and a number of mainstream Senate incumbents had recently seen off primary challenges from the right.
In Tuesday’s primary election in South Carolina, for example, Senator Lindsey Graham comfortably beat six separate Tea Party challengers and avoided a run-off election by gaining more than 50% of the vote.
Cantor, who was already seen as among the more conservative members of the House leadership, had been widely expected to win his primary comfortably. He heavily outspent his opponent with a relatively negative campaign pointing out Brat’s lack of experience.
Read More.
—Posted by Natasha Hakimi Zapata
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Source: http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/house_majority_leader_eric_cantor_loses_primary_to_tea_party_20140611/
This is good…. but not enough. Just as a Clinton must lie, just as an O’bamma must double down the government establishment can’t change. The solution lies in the French model for government reforms 1789. The only way to reform Washington DC is to either melt it or the French model – the parasites breed parasites and cannot change.