esrosedotblog

We do not get to see huge landmark events in recent politics.

But this is a shocker to everyone.

Eric Cantor to Step Down as Majority Leader

It is a precipitous fall in a "take it for granted" career. He was thought to be the successor to Boehner. Not now.

Experts seem to differ on what happened. One is that the nasty right got him right where we would like to see someone of his ilk gotten. Another is that in an open primary a lot of Democrats crossed over to give Eric a big black eye.

Whatever the case, it is an interesting development and probably not good news.

It is almost laughable to think of Cantor as a liberal voice but he was that for his party. One of the few. They will now be an endangered species. And anyone seeking to moderate, to work with the Obamas, will be seen as a traitor to a newly amplified cause.

For Democrats, in the short term, it is just a pain in the ass. His power is gone and it took only a day for the rabble to eat him whole. Scrambling to take his place. No one to work with now. A new face.

In the longer term it is just one more step in the long retrenchment of the GOP into a minority party with little to say for itself but archaic negativity and mossback points of view.

It cannot be good news for them.

Time will tell.

I suppose there are some factors that will reveal themselves on closer reporting. Evidently Cantor's electorate thought him insufficient. Whether that is in his loyalty to the tea partyish thinking or his neglect or them as "his people" is not too clear. Maybe the Democrats did take revenge with crossovers.

Maybe it is a lot simpler than that.

Cantor has always struck me as a supercilious bastard. A priss. A dogmatist without any core. Perhaps even a poseur. An empty shell.

It does seem that he took things a little for granted a little too long in his district. Tip Oneil always said that people expected you to ask for their vote. Simple enough. But a lot of guys get busy with being the GUY to remember that. A bit too big for their boots. In need of an ego trim.

Cantor strikes me as that kind of guy.

A jerk who needs to get jerked out of his seat.

Whatever the case, I do not think that he will standout in history for much of anything but ambition. Ego. To be the guy. And that is a pretty low bar to cross.

Labels: GOP, politics, right wing, world class assholes.