It's the amnesty, stupid
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) lost his seat in Congress on June 10, 2014 to economics professor Dave Brat, who was supported by the Tea Party. This is the first time since 1899 that a sitting House majority leader has been ousted. It is a monumental event.
Even though Cantor was considered to be a shoo-in by almost everybody, he still outspent Bratt by a factor of more than ten to one. Indeed, Cantor spent more at steakhouses than Brat spent on his entire campaign!
As the Washington Times pointed out,7 Democratic Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-IL) thinks it was because while Cantor was in favor of amnesty for illegal aliens, he wasn't sufficiently fervent in advocating his position. The New York Times threw up a red-herring accusation of anti-Semitism (Cantor is Jewish), which they immediately discounted in the same breath. The head-in-the-sand pundits are still trying to dredge up any old explanation for the upset, except the clearly obvious. Which is:
Cantor was in favor of amnesty.12 Brat vociferously opposed it.
Brat - a uniquely principled individual - focused the election on open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens. He said that the election would be the last chance to stop amnesty and that a vote for Cantor would be a vote for open borders.
As a result, voters overwhelmingly supported Brat and gave Cantor the boot.
The message of this election is irrefutably clear: when voters have a chance to vote against open borders and unending mass immigration, they will turn out in strong numbers to do so. As Donald Trump observed2, this election sends a clear message to incumbents: if you support amnesty, you, too, are vulnerable.
It's time for America to regain control of our borders and for Americans to regain control of Congress.
References:
1. Eric Cantor Primary Loss a Referendum Against Amnesty, Tony Lee, Breitbart, June 10, 2014
In the final weeks of the campaign, Brat made the race completely about amnesty and open borders, saying a vote for Cantor would be a vote for "open borders," and the seventh district primary would be the "last chance" to stop amnesty...
Cantor outspent Brat by more than ten to one during the last seven weeks of the campaign. Cantor spent nearly a million dollars, sending multiple deceptive anti-amnesty mailers ahead of the primary and ensuring his website made no mention of his previous support for amnesty and an increase in the number of high-tech visas...
Cantor has proclaimed that "one of the great founding principles" of the country was that children would not be punished for the mistakes of their parents, which is why illegal immigrant minors should be given amnesty. Brat said that was "one of the most radical pro-amnesty statements ever delivered by a sitting representative." He blamed Cantor's words, which were also in the House GOP leadership's immigration principles, for attracting illegal immigrant children to the U.S...
2. Donald Trump: Cantor's Defeat Shows 'Everybody' in Congress Is Vulnerable if They Support Amnesty, Matthew Boyle, Breitbart, June 12, 2014
“Everybody is vulnerable because what’s happening in the country is very sad and the world is watching,” Trump said..
Trump said he thinks Cantor’s “amazing” can be traced to his stance on immigration policy and because Cantor “lost touch with his people that he’s representing.”
“His whole stance on immigration and his softness on immigration caused him to lose one of the most embarrassing elections ever,” Trump said.
Overall, Trump warns the rest of the Republican Party, to avoid a fate like Cantor’s, don’t support amnesty or a massive increase in legal immigration.
“This is a great signal because it tells them people want to get our house in order,” Trump said. “If you look at what’s happening in Texas right now, or other places, people are just flowing into this country just like it’s an open door policy. We’re supposed to provide healthcare and we’re supposed to provide education—we’re supposed to provide everything.”...
3. Cantor loses by 11 million voters, Ann Coulter, June 11, 2014
Cantor spent more than $5 million on his campaign. Brat spent less than $150,000. But Brat made the election about Cantor's support for amnesty, so he won.
The pro-amnesty crowd -- i.e., everyone except the American people -- promptly lost its collective mind..."
4. Virginia Primary Results: Eric Cantor Stunned By Tea Party Challenger Dave Brat In Massive Upset, Huffington Post, June 14, 2014
With nearly all of the votes counted, Brat had 56 percent of the vote to Cantor's 44 percent...
Cantor had been expected to easily win reelection to an eighth term in Virginia's 7th Congressional District over Brat. Cantor raised about $5.4 million, compared with Brat's $200,000. And as the second-most powerful Republican in the House, Cantor's victory seemed secure... No sitting House majority leader has lost since 1899...
5. How to Lose an Election Despite Holding All the Cards, NewsMax, June 11, 2014
Such spending stands in sharp contrast to reports submitted by Dave Brat, the college professor who stunningly defeated the House majority leader in Tuesday's Virginia Republican primary. Brat's transportation charges through May 21 totaled $3,035 for gas reimbursements. His top food cost up to that date: $800 spent at a HoneyBaked Ham outlet.
"This is a rare example of an instance where money really isn’t the most important currency in a campaign," Quentin Kidd, a political scientist at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Va., said in an interview. "When you lose touch with your district, I don’t know that it matters how much money you spend."...
About 65,000 people voted in the Cantor-Brat primary, up more than 38 percent from turnout in the district's 2012 primary...
Cantor's vote total plunged 23 percent to 28,902 votes from 37,369 votes in the 2012 primary, a difference of 8,467 votes. Cantor lost re-nomination yesterday by 7,218 votes...
6. Why Eric Cantor Lost - His support for “immigration reform” was not lost on those who still respect the law, Thomas Sowell, National Review Online, June 14, 2014
Congressman Eric Cantor, with all kinds of name recognition, and outspending his opponent by $5 million to $100,000, lost 55 percent to 45 percent against somebody that virtually nobody had heard of before. Polls, incidentally, had predicted that Cantor would defeat Brat 62 percent to 28 percent...
Unlike those Republicans on either the establishment side or the tea-party side who are preoccupied with their internal party battles, Dave Brat is focused on the issues confronting this country at a crucial juncture in history and with the immediate task of defeating the Democrats in this fall’s election...
A key issue in this campaign was amnesty for illegal immigrants. Apparently the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives — which is to say, Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor — thinks that amnesty is not amnesty if you call it “immigration reform” and toss in some fig-leaf requirements before the amnesty kicks in...
Some people seem to think that amnesty is not amnesty if you throw in requirements for citizenship. Amnesty is not some esoteric concept. It means that you are not going to be punished for breaking the law — and that simply brings laws into contempt.
7. Pundits missing the obvious in Cantor loss - Immigration, not anti-Semitism, did Virginia congressman in, Wesley Pruden, The Washington Times, June 12, 2014
..the sore losers are back to trying to ‘splain away what really happened, that Mr. Cantor’s constituents were suspicious of squishy Republicans, and he allowed himself to be identified with the squish. It’s an occupational hazard for Republicans who can’t make up their minds who they want to be.
8. Editorial: Why Eric Cantor lost, The Washington Times, June 11, 2014
The cause was immigration, specifically the wave of illegal immigrants washing unrestrained over the nation’s southern border, encouraged if not incited by the Obama administration and its immigration allies, including Eric Cantor. Mr. Cantor signed the amnesty “principles” set out by certain Republicans in Congress and endorsed a wide-ranging amnesty for children. It’s this promise that invited the wave of unaccompanied children now coming over the Texas border.
Mr. Brat opposes all this, and said so, over and over. He talked of other things — Obamacare, the budget, bailouts — but opposition to amnesty was the centerpiece of his campaign, and he focused like a laser on it...
The voters in the grass roots, whether Tea Party or coffee party, watch as they see their country transformed, and they don’t like it. That’s what Tuesday night in Virginia was all about.
9. Cantor’s Loss is America’s Gain, Tim Dunkin, Canada Free Press, June 11, 2014
Eric Cantor's loss is truly America's gain because it shows us that principle, fortitude, courage, and conservative convictions can still be successful...
See, the elites in Washington don’t care in the least about the effect that illegal immigration has on the rest of us. They don’t care that it devalues our wage scale, drives up unemployment among American citizens, and has helped to destroy what remained of the African-American community’s employment base. They don’t care about the strain that chain migration and massive border-hopping place on our social services—hospital emergency rooms, welfare programs, and everything else that are funded by local tax bases...
This is why Cantor’s defeat is such an important thing. It isn’t just the possible gain of one House seat for Tea Partiers (assuming Brat defeats his Democratic opponent in November—something the GOP establishment is already working to see doesn’t happen). It’s the fact that Captain DREAM Act’s loss was a referendum on amnesty and open borders. The people of his district spoke the only language he apparently understands, and finally pulled the plug on him...
10. The Top 8 Consequences of Cantor's Defeat, Ben Shapiro, Breitbart, June 11, 2014
The “Young Guns” Are Firing Blanks. ...Ryan and Cantor have been vocal about their desire for immigration reform legislation this year. Cantor is now gone. And Ryan’s position as a leader is in serious jeopardy.
The Death of the Tea Party Was Greatly Exaggerated....
The Conservative Media Has Firepower. Without the power of Drudge, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Laura Ingraham, Breitbart News, and others in the new media, the consistent and steady push for amnesty in the House would have gone largely unremarked upon. Instead, it has become a national issue...
The Corporatists -- Including the US Chamber of Commerce -- Took a Major Hit...
Establishment Candidates Are In For a Rough 2016 Ride... It’ll be cash vs. activism in 2016. In Cantor’s district, activism just won a stunning victory.
Democrats Will Shift the 2014 Narrative to Immigration. With the conservative base fired up about immigration, President Obama and the Democrats will seize on Cantor’s defeat to once again swerve to the “Tea Party as anti-immigrant extremist” narrative. The goal: to avoid talking about Obamacare and split the Republican Party. It won’t work. The Cantor defeat is the death knell for the immigration reform caucus in the GOP, at least for this cycle, and that means that the party will be more, not less unified.
Barack Obama Will Use This As An Excuse for Executive Action -- After The Election. Obama has been threatening executive action for years on immigration. And he has the power to blanket amnesty millions, as I’ve written before in this space. But now Obama believes he may have a ray of hope in campaigning on immigration. That will delay any executive action beyond the election. He’d rather campaign on the basis that he needs a compliant Congress on immigration than act unilaterally prior to the election and have to answer questions about abuse of power...
11. Immigration Sinks Cantor, Rich Lowry, National Review Online, June 13, 2014
The Brat message is one that all Republicans should heed. If the GOP is ever going to become identified as the pro-worker party again, it must oppose flooding the labor market with new, wage-suppressing foreign labor at the behest of business interests...
If he [Cantor] and other members of the leadership had unmistakably slammed the door on the Gang of Eight bill or any permutations of it, he would probably still be on his way to the speakership. Now, the bill is dead, and so is his House career.
12. Eric Cantor on Border Crisis: Let's Work with Obama to Give 'Kids' Amnesty, Breitbart, June 7, 2014
Cantor was referring to what has commonly been referred to as his "Kids Act," which, as Breitbart News reported, would grant amnesty to illegal immigrants who were brought to America through "no fault of their own"--like many of the illegal immigrant children who have been pouring into the country in recent weeks.
13. Poll: Tea Party, Anti-Amnesty Voters Ousted Eric Cantor, Tony Lee, Breitbart, June 18, 2014
In addition, Tea Party voters, who made up 55% of the electorate, powered Dave Brat to the shocking upset. The Silver Bullet survey found that Brat won 71% of Tea Party voters while losing among "those who oppose the Tea Party or who have no opinion about it."