Cantor Canned

Eric Cantor was canned.  He was fired.  He was sent packing.  Or to put it in political terms, he was turned out of office.  His election was supposed to be a no doubter.  Eric Cantor was supposed to be a shoe in.  The few voters who bothered to show up gave him the boot instead.  I am still laughing.  He really had this coming!  He is a demagogue whose ambitions made him all too eager to use the ignorance and paranoia of the extreme right wing to obstruct any constructive effort to get things done; thereby making John Boehner the most ineffective Speaker of the House ever.  Now the table was turned on Mr. Cantor.  He was attacked from the right.  He depended on the support of people who have such a dark view of the world that they can never be satisfied, and the ones that voted rejected him for not being destructive enough to suit their apocalyptic fantasies.  As frightening as that thought may be, I still enjoy the irony.

I am also laughing over the antics of the news media.  It loves Eric Cantor’s political pratfall.  Drama draws the rubes to the pitchmen, and it is really dramatic when a leader in Congress, with all the power his seniority gives him, is upset by a virtual unknown in a primary election.  So crank up the drama!  Gotta sell that soap, don’t you know?  Yell at the top of your lungs: “BE AFRAID!  Be very, very afraid!  The voters are mad as hell, and they aren’t going to take it anymore.  It is only the angry people who vote, and nothing makes the right wingers angrier than ‘amnesty for illegal immigrants.’  Ergo, Eric Cantor must have made the mistake of supporting something reasonable in regard to immigration.”  There is, however, no conclusive evidence to support that explanation.  The operative word is “conclusive,” because the number of issues and other variables make it difficult to determine the relative importance of the factors influencing the results of this election.

What we can prove is that the turnout for the election was very light, and that Eric Cantor kept his distance, depending on advertisements rather than getting out there and pressing the flesh.  We also know that he was downwind from the right wing flatulence infesting the air waves, and that his opponent bashed him on economic issues as well as immigration.  As far as I am concerned, Mr. Cantor’s opponent, David Brat, did the impossible.  By comparison, he made Mr. Cantor’s positions on immigration and the economic issues seem almost reasonable.  If Professor Brat succeeds Mr. Cantor in Congress, the only winners will be the kids who escaped the alleged economics classes presided over by a delusional twit who thinks congress should have tanked the economy of the world by preventing the United States from honoring its debts!