Posts Tagged ‘David Brat’

LinkSwarm for June 18, 2014

Wednesday, June 18th, 2014

There’s so much news going on in the world that it’s hard to sit down and focus on one story to get a single blog post out of it when there’s another huge story coming down the pike. Iraq, Ukraine, the VA Scandal, the dog eating Lois Lerner’s emails (“Barack Obama has brought us Jimmy Carter’s economy and Richard Nixon’s excuses”); too damn much going on to focus on one thing. So here’s a LinkSwarm instead:

  • Barack Obama is not interested in war, but war is interested in Obama.
  • Obama golfs while the world burns. “Oh Lord, I was born a golfing man!/I get in a round whenever I can…”
  • Obama Administration admits that ObamaCare will cost people more for health care, even with the subsidies.
  • Russia cuts off natural gas supplies to Ukraine.
  • Russian tanks appear in eastern Ukraine.
  • Russia’s top anti-corruption cop decides to take up flying.
  • One reason the IRS went after the Tea Party: Chuck Schumer asked them to.
  • “The Obama administration has reached levels of hitherto unknown incompetence.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • A majority of Americans do not believe that Obama is trustworthy. You don’t say.
  • Another day, another 48 people dead at the hands of Jihadists in Kenya. There are days when 48 people killed at a hotel would top the news…
  • The Obama Administration also released 12 Jihadists in Afghanistan.
  • Won’t someone please think about poor, impoverished Hillary Clinton?
  • The Obama Administration’s intentionally lax border control enforcement is letting letting Mexican gang members waltz into the country.
  • “Thousands of young, poor would-be immigrants—90,000 this year alone—have swarmed across the border, the logical fruition of the entire cynical approach of the Obama administration toward illegal immigration.”
  • Bill Gates wants to propagandize you into accepting illegal alien amnesty. Actually, what Gates and his high tech baron compatriots really want is more H1-B visas, but since that doesn’t help the Democratic Party as much as illegal alien amnesty, it gets rolled into the giant “comprehensive immigration reform” ball.
  • Should Obama have erased the IRS emails Nixon have erased the tapes?
  • Turning point in the Brat campaign: crashing a staged event to prove Cantor was lying about amnesty.
  • “Prostitutes more than double their earnings by moonlighting as currency traders” in Venezuela.
  • Argentina runs out of rope.
  • European cab drivers protest Uber by halting traffic. Result? Uber sees 850% increase in signups.
  • I’m going to boil this down to the essentials: Never open an account with a Georgia bank.
  • But maybe they need to seize your money to pay for all that food stamp fraud.
  • Does anyone really think West Virginia Democratic Senate candidate Natalie Tennant is any more “pro-coal” or “pro-gun” than Bart Stupak was “pro-life”?
  • Another year, another lefty writer caught plagiarizing the work of others. And not just any lefty writer, but a Pulitzer Prize winner to boot…
  • Chelsea Clinton got paid $600,000 by MSNBC. That worked out to $26,724 for each minute she was on the air. In other news, your betters in the overclass really don’t care what you think of the financial compensation one member of the class gives to another…
  • Millions in “urban redevelopment” money in Democratic-controlled Philadelphia ends up in certain people’s pockets with almost nothing to show for it. Try to contain your shock. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • South Carolina university professors: “How dare you make us teach the Constitution?”
  • Violence and subway strike in advance of Brazil’s World Cup.
  • New guidelines for ignoring due process in accusations of college campus sexual assault = Lawsuitapalooza!
  • Erick Erickson calls out Ted Cruz for not endorsing more conservatives.
  • Dwight does some gun geeking for you Smith & Wesson fans.
  • Dear anyone who’s ever self-published their own book: you’re a fascist Ayn Rand supporter, using your evil individualism to bypass the holy gatekeepers of traditional publishing.
  • And if you think that’s the stupidest left-wing essay you’ll read today, think again.
  • There was enough voter fraud in a Weslaco City Commissioner Race for the judge to order a new election. “Some of the disallowed ballots were cast by voters claiming Rivera’s childhood home as their address.” Note: Weslaco is down in the valley right next to Donna, Texas, which had its own voting scandal.
  • Doggies! (Patriotic doggies, no less.) (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • “This harlot-sized ensemble will make you the envy of your trampish posse on your fraudulent wedding day.”
  • Aftershocks From Eric Cantor’s Defeat

    Wednesday, June 11th, 2014

    Pretty much everyone on both sides of the mediasphere/punditocracy was shocked by last night’s defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor by David Brat.

    Here’s a quick roundup on thoughts and reactions to Cantor’s defeat:

  • If David Dewhurst’s flailing campaigns hadn’t already destroyed consensus wisdom that money is everything in a political race, Brat’s vitory provides further confirmation. “As of mid-May, Brat had raised only about $200,000, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission. Cantor raised more than $5.4 million for this election cycle.”
  • Indeed, Cantor’s campaign spent almost as much on steakhouses as Brat spent on his entire campaign.
  • Erick Erickson:

    The media will play up Cantor’s loss by claiming it was about immigration. They will be wrong, but it will be useful for the rest of us. Immigration reform is now DOA in the House of Representatives thanks to David Brat.

    But Cantor really did not lose because of immigration alone. Immigration was the surface reason that galvanized the opposition to Cantor, but the opposition could not have been galvanized with this issue had Cantor been a better congressman these past few years.

    He and his staff have repeatedly antagonized conservatives. One conservative recently told me that Cantor’s staff were the “biggest bunch of a**holes on the Hill.” An establishment consultant who backed Cantor actually agreed with this assessment. That attitude moved with Cantor staffers to K Street, the NRSC, and elsewhere generating ill will toward them and Cantor. Many of them were perceived to still be assisting Cantor in other capacities. After Cantor’s loss tonight, I got a high volume of emails from excited conservatives, but also more than a handful of emails from those with establishment Republican leanings all expressing variations on “good riddance.”

    Cantor’s constituent services moved more toward focusing on running the Republican House majority than his congressional district. K Street, the den of Washington lobbyists, became his chief constituency.

    “Cantor lost his race because he was running for Speaker of the House of Representatives while his constituents wanted a congressman.”

  • Erickson also says the race is a good indication of why conservatives should forget about the American Conservative Union congressional rankings:

    The American Conservative Union has long been a mouthpiece of the Republican Establishment and in the past few years has basically been K-Street’s conservatives. Their scorecard reflects the Republican-ness of a member of congress far more than the conservativeness of a member of congress. Just consider that Mitch McConnell was considered more conservative in 2012 than either Jim DeMint or Tom Coburn.

    In contrast to the American Conservative Union, Heritage Action for America takes a more comprehensive approach to its scorecard, it does not try to help Republican leadership look good, and is a better barometer of a congressman’s conservativeness. The ACU had Eric Cantor at a 95%. Heritage Action for America has him at 53%.

  • And as long as I’m quoting Erickson:

  • Constituent: Why we fired Eric Cantor:

    Because [Cantor] didn’t have to worry too much about getting re-elected every two years, his political ambition was channeled into rising through the hierarchy of the House leadership. Rise he did, all the way up to the #2 spot, and he was waiting in the wings to become Speaker of the House.
    The result was that Cantor’s real constituency wasn’t the folks back home. His constituency was the Republican leadership and the Republican establishment. That’s who he really answered to.

    Guess what? Folks in the seventh district figured that out.

    Snip.

    That, ladies and gentlemen, was Eric Cantor: the soul of an establishment machine politician, with the “messaging” of the small-government conservatives grafted uneasily on top of it.

    So yes, you can now tear up all those articles pronouncing the death of the Tea Party movement, because this is the essence of what the Tea Party is about: letting the establishment know that they have to do more than offer lip service to a small-government agenda, that we expect them to actually mean it. Or as Dave Brat put it in one of his frenzied post-victory interviews, “the problem with the Republican principles is that nobody follows them.”

  • Mickey Kaus, who probably did more than any other pundit to defeat Cantor, points to the importance of illegal alien amnesty as the decisive issue in the race:

    I would have settled for his challenger, Dave Brat, getting more than 40%. I was all ready to (legitimately) spin that as a warning shot across Cantor’s bow. Instead, Brat went and actually beat Cantor–decisively, by 10 points, 55% to 45%. He and his campaign manager Zachary Werrell obviously ran a very effective race with minimal resources–against Cantor’s millions. Independent anti-Cantor actors like the We Deserve Better group — and various local conspiracies we don’t even know about — probably played a role as well.

    But the main issue in the race was immigration. It’s what Brat emphasized, and what his supporters in the right wing media (Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter, Mark Levin) emphasized. It’s the charge Cantor defended against—by conceding the issue and posing as a staunch amnesty opponent. But Cantor had signed onto the GOP’s pro-amnesty “principles” and endorsed a poll-tested but irresponsibly sweeping amnesty for children (a “founding principle” of the country, he said). Brat opposed all this, even as illegal immigrant children were surging across the border in search of a Cantor-style deal.

    Brat won this immigration debate. Cantor lost. It’s basically that simple.

    Kaus also notes that it puts a stake in the heart of MSM “Republicans are really OK with amnesty” BS.

  • What does it mean for House leadership?

    Those conservatives, suddenly smelling blood in the water, might now be emboldened to push for a wholesale change in leadership—ousting Boehner and McCarthy in this November’s conference elections, and entering the next Congress with a new top three.

    “It should frighten everyone in leadership,” one conservative House Republican, who exchanged text messages on condition of anonymity, said shortly after Cantor’s defeat was official. “They haven’t been conservative enough. We’ve told them that for 3 years. They wouldn’t listen.”

    The GOP lawmaker added: “Maybe they will listen now.”

  • Cantor’s internal polling (conducting by the McLaughlin Group) showed him up by 34%, when he actually lost by 10 points. I guess McLaughlin failed to note the results were +/-44 points. That’s some mighty fine polling methodology you have going on there, John…
  • Debunking myths about Cantor’s defeat. It wasn’t a low-turnout election, and Democrats didn’t provide the margin of victory.
  • Brat on his victory: “Dollars do not vote. You do!”

  • Brat offers Washington insiders a lesson in humility. Bonus: “The 10th Amendment is the big one; the Constitution has enumerated powers belonging to the federal government. All the rest of the powers belong to the states and the people.”
  • A look at David Brat’s theological writings, which cover Christian Libertarian ground. Warning: Hitler (but not in a Godwin’s Law sense).
  • Eric Cantor Goes Down in Flames; Will He Take Amnesty With Him?

    Tuesday, June 10th, 2014

    Tonight is primary night in Virginia, and in Virginia’s 7th congressional district, and with 75% of districts reporting, House Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor is losing to underfunded tea Party challenger David Brat by about 56% to 44%.

    Cantor used to be a reliable conservative, but the overwhelming issue in this race was Cantor’s support for the thin “Dream Act” wedge of illegal alien amnesty. Republican voters, blue collar workers and Americans in general have stated over and over again they’re opposed to illegal alien amnesty, but Democrats, big business lobbyists, certain Hispanic groups and squishy establishment GOP moderates keep pushing it.

    Attention all Republican office holders everywhere: Supporting illegal alien amnesty is a career-ending move.

    Also, it appears that reports of the Tea Party’s death have been greatly exaggerated…