… For all the talk about how partisan polarization is overwhelming Washington, there is another powerful, overlapping force at play: Voters who are not deeply rooted increasingly view politics through a generic national lens. Friends-and-neighbors elections were already a thing of the past in congressional campaigns. But the axiom that […] Read more »
Republicans come out of the 2014 primary season with little to guide them forward
The 2014 primary season, while leaving the Republicans in good shape for the fall elections against the Democrats, has done little to quiet their internal turmoil or to provide a winning formula going forward. As Republicans struggle to understand the electoral earthquake that cost House Majority Leader Eric Cantor his […] Read more »
The Cantor defeat: A voters’ revolt against, but against what?
Voters’ revolts are always instructive. But first you have to figure out what the voters were trying to say. And in the days since Rep. Eric Cantor, the second-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, lost his GOP primary election, there’s been plenty of disagreement about that. The prevailing conclusion […] Read more »
A Cantor Narrative
The moment it became clear House Majority Leader Eric Cantor would suffer a shocking primary loss to David Brat, reporters began speculating about what the result would mean for Republican candidates across the country. Bob [Garfield] talks with North Star Opinion Research President Whit Ayers who says the media is […] Read more »
Eric Cantor’s Untended Fences
… Shocking election results rarely have a single cause, and this instance is no exception. Clearly, the biggest single policy issue was immigration, which seemed to dominate coverage in the final days. … What is instructive about this is that Cantor’s positions were fairly middle-of-the-road; he didn’t embrace comprehensive immigration […] Read more »
The New Nihilism Threatens GOP’s Growth
Before nonagenarian Rep. Ralph Hall lost his seat in a Republican primary in Texas, no incumbent had been defeated in primaries this year, leading to the dominant press and pundit narrative: The Republican Empire Strikes Back. Oops. Now with the stunning defeat of Eric Cantor, we have narrative whiplash: The […] Read more »