by Nomad
Right wing talk show commentator, Ms. Laura Ingraham, has been blamed for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's stunning defeat in the Virginia GOP primary. She resented the charge and explained that there was a much more logical reason for his defeat.
Conservative radio hotshot Laura Ingraham thinks she knows precisely why Eric Cantor lost his primary last week. It had nothing to do with the overall weakness of his party which has been running counter to American voter opinion on issues like immigration, same-sex marriage and marijuana law reform.
Nor the fact that he constantly undermined the Speaker of the House Boehner's attempts to work out any kind of deal with the president on a host of issues.
One conservative site offers this insight into the minds of some in the Republican party:
One conservative site offers this insight into the minds of some in the Republican party:
Republican insiders — fed up with the scorched-earth tactics of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor — privately fear the fiery Virginia right-winger could destroy the party’s majority in the House of Representatives with his constant undermining of Speaker John Boehner’s attempts to reach a debt deal with President Barack Obama.
The article adds:
“Whether Eric Cantor likes it or not, John Boehner is the leader of our party in the House of Representatives,” one frustrated GOP consultant said Tuesday. “If Cantor continues his infantile actions, there won’t be a Republican majority in the House after 2012.”
And it wasn't even that. Despite appearing to press the right buttons, Cantor simply did not abide by the wishes of his ultra-conservative voters in his state. Could that have been the reason?
While mouthing the appropriate rhetoric in favor of small and limited government, since 2001 Cantor voted in favor of No Child Left Behind, Medicare expansion, the creation of the Transportation Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security, Troubled Assets Relief Program, and the auto bailouts.
In addition to that, as Majority Leader, he also supported a GOP budget plan that would have increased annual spending from $3.7 trillion to $5 trillion over the next ten years. He also favored increasing military spending and a foreign policy that some thought was war-hawkish. He pushed crony-capitalist institutions like the Export-Import Bank, which subsidizes purchases of U.S. goods and services.
In the end, voters thought an unknown and untested nobody, a tea party challenger David Brat, an economics professor at Randolph-Macon College, was better than Eric Cantor. In the political laboratory of Congress, voters will learn the results of that decision. If the 112th no-nothing Congress is any indication, it will prove to be a costly mistake for the tottering GOP.
In any event, none of those reasons made a speck of difference, according to Ingraham. No way. The truth is a lot more obvious. (And you will slap your forehead for not thinking of it earlier.)
The real reason, she says, was that Eric Cantor couldn't take one of her anti-Semitic jokes.
Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham on Sunday argued that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) — the only Jewish Republican in Congress — had lost his seat because he couldn’t “take a joke” after she suggested trading him to the Taliban over his support for immigration reform.The article continues:
“Sending Eric Cantor back for a little while, let’s be sure he gets treated well, that could actually help things,” she insisted. “It could help our economy, stop so much spending.”Speaking to ABC News on Sunday, Cantor said jokes about trading him to the Taliban “cheapens the debate.”“That suggestion that I should be traded to the Taliban for Sgt. Bergdahl really is not a serious contribution to any public-policy debate,” he noted, adding that even tea party members did not agree with “that kind of notion.”Ingraham reacted to Cantor’s comments by accusing him not being able to take a joke.
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