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Eric Cantor loses primary

Brainster said:
Both sides do it. Remember the Bush/Hitler comparisons? How do those people manage to function?
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Bush consolidated power to the executive branch with his homeland security nonsense. That's comparable to Hitler. What has Obama done that is comparable to Hitler?
 
MattusMaximus said:
Hoooooly cow, the Democrats are raising money hand-over-fist over this news.
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Yes, and if we may return for a moment to the original thread.... I think the Dems can steal this one. It'll require a lot of things falling in place, but it can be done. Remember, this is the Tea Party. They get giddy with power when they get a whiff of fame and step in it big time, quite often. I don't think the Dems need to run away from Obama so much as they need to get Warner in there running hard in the area. He gets statewide coverage anyway and a large part of the district is an adjunct to Richmond which is one of his bases. If they can pull the votes in suburban and exurban Richmond and the GOP mainstream lays low because they're butthurt about losing Cantor, it could well happen.

And, like I said.... Warner took the district in his first Senatorial run. With a noted GOP party stalwart to run against (instead of Cuccinelli who might've given him a far better contest), I think he's in a great position to take it again.

Is Gillespie still considered a "Bushie"? Will the big red machine throw a lot into the race? Or are they going to lay low? I'm not sure Virginians consider Gillespie to be one of their own so much as a Washingtonian.
 
Foolmewunz said:
I think the Dems can steal this one.
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I doubt it. The district is gerrymandered to be safe for Republicans. Romney won it with 57% of the vote (to 42% for Obama) in 2012 even though Obama won the state.

Unless Brat is soo crazy that he scares off even stalwart Republican voters, and I haven't seen evidence of that yet.
 
stevea said:
Well obviously it's not the frequency of deficit, as you suggest, but the depth of debt.
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Why is that more important that the amount of federal revenue which goes to service that debt? As long as the U.S. federal government can easily service the debt it has acquired, where is the problem? The U.S., even at its current debt level, is still far from reaching the point Canada was in the early 1990s when roughly one-third of Canadian federal government revenue was going to service its accumulated debt. (It's now down to about 13%.) If I recall correctly, debt service costs in the U.S. amount to under 10% of revenue at present.


stevea said:
I think anyone rational has real concerns abt US debt rising from 60% to 120% of GDP in ~8 years (and it won't stop there) while basket-cases like Portugal hangs around 90% and Germany at 45%.
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First, see prior reply about the proportion of federal government revenue which goes to service that debt. Second, past performance does not necessarily indicate future performance. (The U.S. budget deficit has been declining in recent years.)



stevea said:
NO ! NOT in terms of GDP or real dollars - your metric is flawed. The US was IIRC ~230% of GDP in debt at the end of WW2; that is perfectly sustainable IF you posit that the rest of the advanced nations have their manufacturing capability destroyed to our economic advantage.
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For 28 consecutive years the U.S. federal government spent more in outlays than it collected in receipts. These figures are a matter of public record. Since no surplus was recorded in those 28 years, then clearly the nation's total debt was being added to every one of those years. Over the last 67 years the U.S. has posted a surplus (defined here as total receipts exceeding total outlays, not just the spending officially 'on budget') just 12 times. Three of those were in the 1947-49 period and four in the 1997-2001 time period.

Every year where outlays exceed receipts is a year where the nation's debt is added to. The U.S. has done this for a large majority of the time since 1947. The nation is still around and still functioning. How was this possible?
 
geni said:
Not really. An extra year or so of the economy bumping along with zero percent growth is petty solid evidence that it was a mistake.
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Not really. Having relatively low and falling unemployment, record levels of employment, falling deficits, and the fasted growth in the industrialised world is pretty solid evidence that it's working well, with a bit still to do. Your post, and that of JJ, is also pretty solid evidence that people will choose to see what they want to see.
 
stevea said:
I sincerely love your posts Francesca, but can't agree. If reducing taxation has a substantially higher multiplier than government spending - as nearly every study seems to show - then decreasing spending & tax by the same amount (shrinking the state) is a LT net positive and expansionary.
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I agreed with this, but that the "elephant in the room" is that it is generally income-regressive. These are two different things.
 
Corsair 115 said:
Every year where outlays exceed receipts is a year where the nation's debt is added to. The U.S. has done this for a large majority of the time since 1947. The nation is still around and still functioning. How was this possible?
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The debt stock as a fraction of output does not rise just because spending > revenue, spending has to outpace revenue faster than the economy gets bigger. Hence between 1993 and 2008 total debt did not rise as a fraction of output. The implication with that is that neither did debt service cost (abstracting from bond yields-at-issuance of course, but those plummeted)
 
Puppycow said:
I doubt it. The district is gerrymandered to be safe for Republicans. Romney won it with 57% of the vote (to 42% for Obama) in 2012 even though Obama won the state.

Unless Brat is soo crazy that he scares off even stalwart Republican voters, and I haven't seen evidence of that yet.
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Well, Brat is pretty crazy from his Twitters and his background, but more important the TP are crazier and if they can come out and give him solid support while the home office types ignore them (they'll concentrate on Gillespie's campaign much more - he's one of the boys), he can be accurately portrayed as the fringe candidate he is. The state has two Dem Senators and a Dem Governor. They painted Cantor as "no longer recognizing Virginia's needs" and what they mean is that he didn't cater to the nutbar wing.

And as I said, Warner took the district 60/39 in 2008. Re-districting does give it more of a lean to the red because the cut a huge swath of Richmond out, but there's something like a 24% black/latino vote which I think the Dems will have just about sewed up, now. That means they only need 26% out of the remaining (non-minority) vote if they can get the voters motivated. And the GOP has provided them with just the inspiration to do that.

It won't be easy. I already said that. It's a long shot. But a few visits from Ste. Sarah and the Cruz Ooze could alarm moderates considerably.
 
Please try to keep this thread on topic. If you want to discuss economics there are other threads, indeed a whole other forum section, in which to do so.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Cuddles
 
Back to the topic, the reality is that I think the one unifying concept among the tea party movement is that they have an uncompromising desire to cut taxes and government spending. With this election, I completely agree with the pundits that say this will have a chilling effect on compromise in Washington. Many Republicans will be more fearful that they could lose their seat to a Tea Party candidate. Does anyone disagree with this?

I think some of those fears by the Republicans are misguided because I think Cantors loss has as much to do with him being out of touch with his constituents as the Tea Party challenge. (All politics are local.) I think also you can't overlook the amount of free press Brat got from folks like Laura Ingram so if you were to put a value on what she did for Brat and add it to Brat's campaign expenses. The campaign expenditures may not look so different. I am not sure that Cantor really energized his own base either. There was an increase in voter turnout since 2012 but I'm wondering if Brat simply energized his supporters and Cantor did not do the same for his own and took them for granted.
 
seayakin said:
Back to the topic, the reality is that I think the one unifying concept among the tea party movement is that they have an uncompromising desire to cut taxes and government spending. With this election, I completely agree with the pundits that say this will have a chilling effect on compromise in Washington. Many Republicans will be more fearful that they could lose their seat to a Tea Party candidate. Does anyone disagree with this?

I think some of those fears by the Republicans are misguided because I think Cantors loss has as much to do with him being out of touch with his constituents as the Tea Party challenge. (All politics are local.) I think also you can't overlook the amount of free press Brat got from folks like Laura Ingram so if you were to put a value on what she did for Brat and add it to Brat's campaign expenses. The campaign expenditures may not look so different. I am not sure that Cantor really energized his own base either. There was an increase in voter turnout since 2012 but I'm wondering if Brat simply energized his supporters and Cantor did not do the same for his own and took them for granted.
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While Cantor is an especially sleazy example, I agree with others who've noted that the problem is gerrymandering. The GOP sought to create as many "safe" districts as they could in 2010, creating hard right enclaves that they wouldn't have to defend. The problem with blood red districts is that they contain nothing but hard right voters. They've sliced out all the moderates and sent them over to form the liberal districts around the cities. So in these gerrymandered districts, the threat now comes from crazy people like David Brat. And rest assured, what people are finding from his online history is as crazy as people expected. He's like Falwell meets John Galt, only stupider.

ETA: And circling back to gerrymandering, he'll most certainly win the general election. Again, safe, red, crazy district.
 
sunmaster14 said:
I'm with you on everything except this, unless you're going to hang your hat on the "some" qualifier. TPers generally want smaller government AND lower taxes. That's not austerity. In some sense, TEA stands for "Taxed Enough Already." The liberal posters here think that the Tea Party is some sort of racist, fascist movement, but I think of it as more libertarian. The anti-immigration stuff is not particularly libertarian, but put in context with a growing welfare state, I think the usual libertarian principle (e.g. open borders) here is impractical.
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The roots of the Tea Party were founded by people demanding fiscal responsibility and tax reforms, but the movement was quickly co-opted by the crazy, racist, misogynist hardliners that the "left" complains about.

As evidence take the 2010 midterms where all these Tea Party candidates swept in on platforms of fiscal responsibility and got straight to work on legislation attacking women's health and the rights of minorities.
 
Unabogie said:
While Cantor is an especially sleazy example, I agree with others who've noted that the problem is gerrymandering. The GOP sought to create as many "safe" districts as they could in 2010, creating hard right enclaves that they wouldn't have to defend. The problem with blood red districts is that they contain nothing but hard right voters. They've sliced out all the moderates and sent them over to form the liberal districts around the cities. So in these gerrymandered districts, the threat now comes from crazy people like David Brat. And rest assured, what people are finding from his online history is as crazy as people expected. He's like Falwell meets John Galt, only stupider.

ETA: And circling back to gerrymandering, he'll most certainly win the general election. Again, safe, red, crazy district.
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I agree with you about gerrymandering. However, I am inclined to beleive Cantor could have one if in the last two years he spent more time in his district shaking hands and kissing babies doing the usual thing politicians do in their local district. I think of Lindsey Graham who successfully defended his seat is a better campaigner. I also really wonder still how much Laura Ingram and other talk show hosts who campaigned for Brat influenced the outcome.

And just to avoid any confusion and for the record, I strongly disagree with the Tea Party and conservative republicans but it does make for interesting analysis.
 
Cantor didn't lose because he wasn't anti-tax or anti-government enough. He lost, besides the local poor campaign stuff, for being willing to work with Dems on any issue. The big one was immigration reform. Being willing to do the work of government and compromise is against the Tea Party ideals, whose stated goals have never been as important as the things they claim to deny.
 
tyr_13 said:
Cantor didn't lose because he wasn't anti-tax or anti-government enough. He lost, besides the local poor campaign stuff, for being willing to work with Dems on any issue. The big one was immigration reform. Being willing to do the work of government and compromise is against the Tea Party ideals, whose stated goals have never been as important as the things they claim to deny.
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Thanks much!

That is about what I was thinking of as well.
 
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