The House Republican leadership, so solid in its opposition to President Obama, was torn apart Tuesday by the defeat of its most influential conservative voice, Representative Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, whose demise will reverberate all the way to the speaker’s chair, pull the top echelons of the House […] Read more »
VA-07: In Shocker, Cantor Loses Primary
In one of the biggest House primary earthquakes of all time, GOP House Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor lost renomination tonight to Randolph Macon College economics professor Dave Brat, 55 percent to 45 percent. … Cantor’s leadership position, unwillingness to prolong last October’s government shutdown, far-fetched attacks on Brat, and […] Read more »
The Eric Cantor Upset: What Happened?
In a shocker, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has lost the Republican primary in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District to a relatively unknown college professor, David Brat. Brat spent little money in the race; Cantor spent over a million dollars. The political media will spend days trying to figure out what […] Read more »
Why Democrats Have Little to Lose in Taking On the Coal Industry
The Obama administration’s proposal Monday to reduce carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants is already being characterized by Republicans as the latest salvo in a “war on coal.” The eagerness of Republicans to exploit the issue is understandable. Democrats have lost considerable ground in coal-producing areas in recent years, and […] Read more »
Lesson for Poll Watchers: Why 2 Virginia Polls on Medicaid Expansion can’t be trusted
Is the expansion of Medicaid taking a turn for the worse? … The poll, conducted by Christopher Newport University’s Judy Ford Wason Center for Public Policy, found a majority opposed to expansion, 53% to 42%. Two months earlier, in February, the same poll reported majority support, 56% to 38%. That […] Read more »
What do Tea Partiers think of the GOP?
On Monday, Seth Masket wrote a piece about the schism between Tea Partiers and the GOP, investigating whether it mirrors the division between the 1980s Republican elites and the main conservative faction of that time, the Religious Right. Masket suggests that the Tea Party and the GOP might differ less […] Read more »