Episodes
Wednesday Jun 11, 2014
Leid Stories - Defeat of Eric Cantor A Bellwether for Grassroots Politics - 06/11/14
Wednesday Jun 11, 2014
Wednesday Jun 11, 2014
Dave Brat, a Tea Party-favored economics professor with a woefully underfunded political campaign, yesterday brought to a spectacular end the career of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, capturing Virginia’s heavily Republican 7th Congressional District in the primary election.
Few saw the possibility of Brat getting 55 percent of the vote, or that the same conservative movement that in 2001 brought Cantor in would also take him out. But Brat hammered away at Cantor’s seeming lack of fidelity to the scripted right-wing agenda.
Brat’s win has energized the movement within the Republican Party to reshape, redefine and reconstitute itself with respect to the needs and interests of its political base and core constituencies. In many ways, says Leid Stories, it should serve as a bellwether for grassroots political action, encouraging the emergence of a vigorous, committed, people-centered alternative to Democratic Party co-optation and betrayal.