Thursday, June 12, 2014

Fallout from Eric Cantor's primary loss: what should people take away?

Ah, there's nothing better than a political shocker.  In a field that seemed to get just a bit too predictable, the Republican voter's of Virginia's 7th congressional district handed the political establishment of Washington a bit of a surprise.  Eric Cantor was defeated in his own party's primary by Dave Brat, a formerly little known economics professor that has now managed the impressive feat of unseating a sitting majority leader in a primary for the first time since the Constitution went into effect in 1789.

There will be many takeaways from this race, especially among the Republicans in the House.  This can be very dangerous, for despite Cantor's inability to retain his seat, this new trend is so far a trend of one; it is very difficult to accurately determine long term consequences based on one race in one district in one state out of fifty.  However, Republicans all over do have some reason to be worried: if Cantor could lose his primary, it means that they could too.

This, to a certain extent, has always been the case, but it still won't stop Republicans from overreacting to the Cantor race.  The fact that Brat ran emphasizing his opposition to immigration reform means that many Republicans will run away from an issue that they should in fact be embracing.  The longer Republicans ignore the need for immigration reform, the more immigrant and minority groups will vote for Democrats instead, and in large numbers.

We'll see for certain in the coming weeks and months what the Republican leadership takes away from Cantor's race, but they need to be careful not to read to much into it.  Brat ran a grassroots campaign, didn't take anything for granted, and capitalized of of Cantor's perceived complacency about the race.  If the GOP continues to drift to the right, as it has in other races, nominated candidates who oppose compromise, they will set themselves up as a parliamentary party that does not appeal to the nationwide electorate and they will struggle in presidential elections.