by Harold Meyerson
The winner in last Tuesday’s mind-boggling defeat of Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor wasn’t just David Who? (Actually, David Brat.) It also was gridlock — for the remainder of this congressional session, and the next one, and probably for a number of years beyond that.
Brat’s victory is almost certain to push the Republican Party to the right on the very issue that will cement the Democrats’ hold on the White House: immigration. It’s not that Cantor’s alleged squishiness on the undocumenteds was the only issue in play; there were many reasons why Brat prevailed. One of them, surely, had to be voters’ almost pan-ideological revulsion at the congressional leadership. Brat, an economics professor at Randolph-Macon College, also attacked Cantor for his consistent defense of Wall Street. “All the investment banks in New York and D.C. — those guys should have gone to jail,” Brat said at a tea party rally last month. “Instead of going to jail, they went on Eric’s Rolodex, and they are sending him big checks.”
Source: Eric Cantor’s Loss is Likely to Widen the Immigration Debate
