Eric Cantor's Surprising Primary Loss May Spell Trouble For The NSA
from the every-little-thing dept
The DC political world was completely shocked last night as House Majority Leader Eric Cantor lost his primary against a relatively unknown and completely underfunded challenger named David Brat. His Wikipedia page was set up only yesterday and initially had just two sentences, before the primary victory, leading people to suddenly start filling in more information. Just hours before the victory, the Washington Post had written: "the question... is how large Cantor’s margin of victory will be." Not surprisingly, the Post has now completely erased all traces of its Dewey Defeats Truman article, replacing it with one about Cantor's loss. As the political press tends to do, this morning everyone's digging for the "reasons" behind this unprecedented loss (no majority leader has ever lost a primary apparently) -- though almost all of the analysis is meaningless. Searching for a larger message in all of this is just silly -- as there are plenty of counter-examples. Whether it was about "the tea party," "immigration," "bipartisanship," "fed up with DC" or whatever... it doesn't matter. Politics can sometimes be a bit more complicated and nuanced than the single narrative.But, on issues of importance around here, it's worth noting that Cantor's loss could be bad news for the NSA in a big way. Cantor was a key part of the House leadership that was instrumental in supporting the NSA and blocking any meaningful attempts at reform. Rather than looking into what the NSA was doing, Cantor wanted to lead an investigation into Ed Snowden. It is believed that Cantor was also a key part of the effort last year to make sure that the Amash Amendment failed.
In contrast, one of Brat's campaign platforms was the following:
Dave believes that the Constitution does not need to be compromised for matters of national security. He supports the end of bulk phone and email data collection by the NSA, IRS, or any other branch of government.While some are trying to spin Brat's victory as a vote against the NSA, that seems unlikely (and again, seems to be people spinning this story to their own particular narrative). It appears that Cantor's loss (and, rest assured, this was much more a Cantor loss than a Brat win) was for many reasons, and it seems likely that the NSA was pretty far down the list. Obviously, assuming Brat goes on to win in the fall (now very likely), as a freshman Representative, he won't be able to do all that much. But just the fact that a very powerful ally of the NSA has lost to someone critical of the NSA is helpful in pushing back on the NSA's control over Congress.
Of course, there is one caveat in all of this. While Cantor cannot appear on the ballot (such as, by running as an independent) in the fall election, thanks to Virginia's sore loser law, he could potentially mount a write-in campaign. And, also, while the Democratic contender in the fall is considered to have absolutely no chance against any Republican listed, it is worth remembering that people also said Brat had no chance against Cantor. Either way, even if this wasn't a referendum on the NSA, it could be bad news for the NSA in losing one of its most powerful allies.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: congress, david brat, eric cantor, house, leadership, nsa, politics, primary
Reader Comments
The First Word
“Too many "key persons" in government and politics do believe they are untouchable. A little humility and remembering who they really work for would be nice.
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Too many "key persons" in government and politics do believe they are untouchable. A little humility and remembering who they really work for would be nice.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
But disruption is disruption, and we need some of that in this country.
There are leaders, and there are followers. Most people are followers, and we definitely need some better leaders.
Rather than complain about it, you best actually do something about it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
That's right, all you other people out there - get yer ass in gear whilst I rest on my laurels and tell you what to do.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
That is enough of a reason for Americans to vote for David Brat.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
He looks like a classic "late to the party" opportunist to me.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
We do need SOME patent and copyright, but not to the point where it strangles innovation and stifles competition.
But as I said there ain't and never has been a free market.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
*Waits in vain for the market at Trader Joe's to self-correct*
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
NSA is scrambling now
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: NSA is scrambling now
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Add in a smaller but more active base for Brat and you get the poll result.
In 2012 for the general election 223k (out of 398k) people voted for Cantor.
In the same year (2012) primary 37k (out of 47k) voted for Cantor.
this primary (2014) saw 29k (out of 65k) vote for Cantor.
The numbers seem to corroborate that interpretation, seeing that even with an 8k loss in voters with a 47k voter turnout Cantor would have won.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
While the Tea Party has received a lot of focus as a motivator for Brat's turnout, I'll also point out that Cantor was the last Jewish Republican in Congress. Here in Texas, the state speaker of the house is a Jewish Republican named Joe Strauss. His speakership is maintained by a coalition of non-crazy Republicans and willing-to-hold-their-nose Democrats. Every session, there's an attempt to oust him as speaker, with fringe Republicans arguing that the position needs a good Christian in it.
I suspect if we scratch the surface in Virginia, we'll find a bit of a similar campaign in the evangelical churches.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
It was about the government shutdown. Tea Party didn't end up getting their way so they are now offing key people like they said they would to show that they weren't bluffing about primarying people. It's about an extremist fringe minority trying to hijack the process.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
Please explain what "real racism" is.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
baggery and other things
As for the NSA, all I can say is "you wish". We all know that a campaign platform, especially from a bagger, is just that - a platform for election, not reality. Get him elected (not certain) and put him in power for a while and he will strap on the congressional feed bag and get back to wishy-washy politics as usual.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: baggery and other things
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: baggery and other things
Except he wasn't well funded. But, details. Also, key "tea party" challengers lost in almost every other primary.
The Baggers certainly do appear to be good at "getting out the vote", as the primary vote count is way up this year.
Vote was slightly up. Not way up.
As for the NSA, all I can say is "you wish". We all know that a campaign platform, especially from a bagger, is just that - a platform for election, not reality.
Agreed. But you conveniently ignore the key point made in the post: it wasn't about Brat. It was about Cantor.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: baggery and other things
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: baggery and other things
Losing Cantor was a blow to the NSA, but gaining Brat is a neutral at best.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
A textbook example of this would be Cynthia McKinney's defeat by Denise Majette in 2002 for a House seat from Georgia. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em (then beat 'em from inside).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
RESTORE THE US CONSTITUTION
NULLIFY OBAMACARE
END THESE UNDECLARED WARS
FIX THE VA (UNHOOK THE DSM 5 and OBAMACARE and NCIC DATABASE and FAILED LEADERSHIP)
QUIT BANNING FIREARMS, SSRI's are the PROBLEM, the FALSE SCIENCE CALLED PSYCHOLOGY is the PROBLEM!
EXPAND FT LEAVENWORTH TO HOLD OATH BREAKERS
ABOLISH THE IRS AND INCOME TAX
AUDIT CAFR
LEGALIZE CANNABIS quit calling it POT, WEED, MARIJUANA
leave people alone to seek happiness, quit goin after gibson guitar wood, raw milk, cheese wood, wild pigs, while pushing carbon tax, sustainability Agenda 21, and spying on everything so you can poke monkey wrenches into American's happiness.
This country will bounce back like a Forrest fire if the feds would stop being oath breaking f***ing retards
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
I've heard of silicon chips, but not silicone. Is this some new unpublished discovery? The potential for breast implants is astounding, this maybe huge!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Make sure to stop by the Insider Shop to order a logo T and tinfoil hat.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Every single thing has evolved in the past hundreds of years, except for politics, which remains the same old archaic system that never really worked that well in the first place but is there to protect the people that run it, protected by the people that run it.
It makes no sense and needs to be completely rethinked.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Politicians shouldn't be involved in law making? That's their job.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Even the harshest dictator has to deal with political factions bickering.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
Some day elections turn too much into "American Idol" and the influencing industry too much into an oligarchic dictatorship.
When people start to want politicians out of lawmaking, I guess that level has been reached.
It is not long ago I heard someone suggest removing elections and making them into a random draw among the citizens. That seems hard to do but I am beginning to see the appeal of such a solution for filling at least a good chunk of the political positions.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
-- Pericles (495 BC-429 BC)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
As if they are now ...
Most laws today and in the recent past are/were written by PACs and lobbyists, most so called law makers do not even read the bills before giving their stamp of approval.
"It's like the cops deciding who they can arrest and why"
As if this is not happening ... really?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
And Obama was going to give us the most transparent administration in history. Political positions from unelected leaders are meaningless. Once in the house, he'll be a peon with no power, and he'll fall in line if he hopes to accumulate any power.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Eric Cantor gets the BOOT
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
"too big to fail" politicians
But it would be premature to celebrate this as a complete victory against the sort of entrenched, "follow the money"-type politicians of which Eric Cantor serves as prime example. Does anything really think that Eric Cantor will pack his bags, leave Washington, and go back to doing what he did before he entered politics?
Not a chance, the Golden Rule is: "once a Washington insider, always a Washington insider." There's little doubt that Cantor will end up becoming a lobbyist, or CEO of some trade association with a Washington, D.C. office. He might even start his own "consulting" business - the kind of "back-door lobby" in which companies pay top dollar in the hope of landing lucrative government contracts.
Either way, Cantor will almost certainly cash-in on his years of servitude to big-money interests -- just like the vast majority of career politicians that leave office.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The Elephant in the Room
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
More of the same
That's not the bad part, which is the Tea Party now has a official representative in Congress. That's very bad news. You liked the government shutdown? You like the "Benghazi" shouting? Well, score one for them.
As for Brat's 'platform', I'm sure that Washington will cure him of any idealism very quickly and he'll change his position once he learns the ropes.
They all do.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
re: last year's government "shutdown"
Many National Parks in the western states are actually quite profitable, and a significant source of foreign exchange revenue during the tourist season, for both the government as well as the local economy. Their closure might have seemed extremely counter-productive, but that was the whole point - it was punitively used as a tool of retaliation, and sadly, the propaganda campaign worked. The Republicans might have caused the shutdown, but a Democratic President greatly exacerbated the damage by using it as a cruel politically-motivated weapon against the citizenry. And it worked. The democrats successfully painted themselves as victims, rather than scheming co-perpetrators of that childish fiasco.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: re: last year's government "shutdown"
Yeah, he could've caved and given those idiots everything they whined about in their temper tantrums.
"but instead went to great lengths to make it as painful as possible for as many people as possible."
Yeah, it was not Congress that screwed over everyone with their shutdown mania - it was the prez, cause he didn't give in to childish demands.
Your bizarro world view is intriguing, can I subscribe to your newsletter?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: re: last year's government "shutdown"
Why did so many roads need to be forcibly shut down -- at considerable expense to the taxpayers -- when it would have cost nothing to allow them to remain open?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: re: last year's government "shutdown"
Hint: it was not the whitehouse - congress is in charge of funding
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
There's still hope, though
I just hope that the Democratic party gives his opponent all the money they can and the tools to defeat him with.
We really don't need another conservative Tea Party member in Congress. We've had enough of them and their antics, which have cost us very dearly, both in money and time. We can't afford this.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]