Eric Cantor Ousted By Tea Party

@hawkeye10,

The other problem with that story is that a really successful get out the vote operation for Dems to vote in the Republican primary might be worth 3-5%. Here you have a "pollster" who has been making up the numbers and is now completely caught out.

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Bratt doesn't come across as the sharpest pencil in the box. On MSNBC, he was asked whether he supports raising the min wage. Bratt replied that raises should come only as a result of productivity increases. What he evidently doesn't realize is that productivity has soared, but without accompanying pay raises.

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@Advocate,

Quote:

Bratt doesn't come across as the sharpest pencil in the box

wow, you must have even less regard for the university than I do since you have no problem calling a PHD'd prof not too bright.

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@hawkeye10,

Bratt's Ph.D. is from American U., which is not known as an economics powerhouse. The school where he teaches has 1,300 students and is not very well known. I'm sure that the Dems are delighted to take him on.

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@Real Music,

NO. It would only pass as a voter initiative.

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Interestingly, Laura Ingraham, in her radio show, is largely responsible for Bratt's victory. Laura continually trashed Cantor as representing the establishment's position on immigration reform.

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@Baldimo,

Baldimo wrote:

This they had more votes crap is just that crap. You realize that not all districts are the same? Places like CA are going to have have more people then say others like CO. It's about population and population density. Simply stating that because they had more total votes in the House that they should have won is a leap of logic that can't be followed.

I guess you don't understand how the districts work or you don't understand the math involved. The GOP has 33 more representatives than the Dems. That would mean the GOP has to have at least 23 million fewer people in it's districts than the Dems do based on the average size of the districts. That would mean the average Dem district has to have 109, 000 more people than the average GOP district. That is just not possible with large states having large delegations since those states would have average sizes much closer to the average of the total. States with more than 5 representatives would be closer to the total average because the difference is spread out over more districts making your population density argument complete hogwash. Density has nothing to do with the number of people in a district. It is based solely on the number of people in a state divided by the number of districts for that state.

Quote:

The average size of a congressional
district based on the 2010 Census
apportionment population will be
710,767, more than triple the average
district size of 210,328 based on the
1910 Census apportionment, and 63,815
more than the average size based on
Census 2000 (646,952).
Based on the
2010 Census apportionment, the state
with the largest average district size will
be Montana (994,416), and the state with
the smallest average district size will be
Rhode Island (527,624)

Colorado actually has more people in it's congressional districts than California does according to the 2010 numbers. California has more people in it's districts than Texas does. With 435 districts, the numbers would probably lead to about the same average number of people in Dem districts and GOP districts.

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

Quote:
Bratt doesn't come across as the sharpest pencil in the box

wow, you must have even less regard for the university than I do since you have no problem calling a PHD'd prof not too bright.

I think he is plenty bright, but not very interested in things outside his immigration stance. He had no opinion on Syria for example. I was reading an article that said the real danger from the establishment side is that a lot of these domestic, one issue candidates can tip into isolationism very easily since they really don't have any interest in foreign policy. Of course Bratt may not be like that. He may spend the next three months studying hard and getting up to speed, but to be completely flat footed about Syria while running for a national office means he has some work to do and maybe not a lot of interest in doing it.

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@engineer,

Freshmen house members are not expected to have opinions on foreign policy. It would be like asking a 5th grader for his opinion on which history curriculum to buy.

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

Freshmen house members are not expected to have opinions on foreign policy. It would be like asking a 5th grader for his opinion on which history curriculum to buy.

I doubt that his constituents would feel that way. But they might were they pretty dense. Anything is possible in the South where the main issues are gays, guns, and god.

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@hawkeye10,

I expect just about every American to have an opinion on foreign policy although perhaps not a well informed one. I expect every college PhD professor running for Congress to have a well informed opinion even if I don't agree with it. I certainly don't think that a few terms in Congress will make him more informed on world events than he is now.

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@engineer,

From Forbes: Dave Brat-Eric Cantor's Career Killer-Nowhere Near Ready For Prime Time

Quote:

When a candidate like Dave Brat suggests that he cannot give a simple ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ when it comes to his position on minimum wage because he didn’t get enough rest last night, how can he be described as anything but another, run-of-the-mill disingenuous politician dodging what should be a no-brainer question?

And if Mr. Brat hasn’t take a moment to think about our foreign policy, he can only be described as a seriously unprepared candidate engaging in political malpractice.

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@engineer,

Quote:

From Forbes: Dave Brat-Eric Cantor's Career Killer-Nowhere Near Ready For Prime Time

Let's say that is true....you can have only one, do you want the slow guy, or the asshole/bully who you are sure is lying to you?

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@hawkeye10,

Quote:

Let's say that is true....you can have only one, do you want the slow guy, or the asshole/bully who you are sure is lying to you?

What scares people is that someone might really be honest enough to believe what he says. And that Congress is scared shitless of honest people. Both sides.

I think there is more than an outside chance this man is honest. I am not saying he will stay that way. Let's hope he does. And he actually knows something about the economy.

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@hawkeye10,

Can I pick number three? My point was back to the "what do you expect" post. I'm sure this guy is smart and all but he clearly has some work to do.

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@engineer,

engineer wrote:

Can I pick number three? My point was back to the "what do you expect" post. I'm sure this guy is smart and all but he clearly has some work to do.

he fulfills 99% of his obligation if he does he listens to what his constituents want and does that. I am not hing up on expecting this guy to solve our problem in his first term as a representative.

1 Reply

@engineer,

Quote:

I expect every college PhD professor running for Congress to have a well informed opinion even if I don't agree with it.

One suspects the college Ph.D professor is trying to be cautious. He is, it is reported, to be to the right of Cantor. Dave Brat, being a novice to politics, one gets the suspicion he does not want to answer the media until he's thought long and hard regarding the possible consequences of his answers. November he will have to face a wider voting audience, at least more than showed up for the Primary, and until that time, his words will be held in the balance and weighed; it's a strong possibility he will lose to the Democrat who is more favored on campus than he is and minorities along with Independents, women, Gays and Latinos who will surely not vote for him.

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

engineer wrote:

Can I pick number three? My point was back to the "what do you expect" post. I'm sure this guy is smart and all but he clearly has some work to do.

he fulfills 99% of his obligation if he does he listens to what his constituents want and does that. I am not hing up on expecting this guy to solve our problem in his first term as a representative.

Respectfully as possible, Hawk, the "do what the people want" argument is vacuous.

We are a nation where on almost every contentious issue...a sizable contingent wants "x"...while an equally sizable contingent wants "the opposite of x."

There is no "doing what the people want"...not even in a single congressional district.

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Here is a terrific piece by Paul Krugman that will help you make sense of Cantor's defeat. It also shows the importance of what is happening in conservative circles.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/13/opinion/paul-krugman-eric-cantor-and-the-death-of-a-movement.html?emc=edit_th_20140613&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=42932133

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@Advocate,

Good piece, Advocate.

As usual, Krugman is right on the button. (I must say that I am impressed that he is spreading out his commentary from the safe economics focus that he has used for so many years. It is a welcome shift.)

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Eric Cantor Ousted By Tea Party

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