In a bit of seriously twisted logic, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) blamed President Obama for his defeat in the Republican primary on ABC’s This Week.
Video:
http://youtu.be/2YBEZt63m7Q
Transcript from ABC’s This Week:
KARL: Well, what do you say to those Tea Party — those groups claiming they represent the Tea Party, going after you, going after other Republican leaders? What contribution are those groups making?
CANTOR: Listen, there’s a lot of frustration out there. I have seen it. There’s frustration against this president. There’s a frustration against Washington, of not being able to stop this president when he says I’ve got a phone and a pen and I’m going to do what I want if you Republicans don’t agree with him. There is frustration.
And one of the things that, you know, I want to remember, is Tea Party means taxed enough already. You know, these are moms and dads, grandmothers and grandfathers that got into the political debate and process back in 2009 after the lurch leftward, expansion of government with Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, cap and trade, stimulus and the rest.
Eric Cantor’s attempt to blame President Obama was a cop out that was designed to avoid the real issues behind why he lost his seat.
Cantor never took responsibility for the two things that likely cost him his seat. Rep. Cantor never admitted that he and his fellow House Republicans have been promising things to Republican voters that they knew they could never deliver. For example, repealing Obamacare is something that was never going to happen, but House Republicans have been running on it for years. Republicans like Cantor have built up unrealistic expectations by over promising.
The second area that Rep. Cantor refuses to take responsibility for is the tactics that House Republicans have been using. Cantor suggested that the reason why he lost was that Obama is a dictator, but in reality he lost because the Republican position of saying no to everything made Cantor an easy target for a primary opponent, because when push came to shove on issues like the government shutdown and the debt ceiling, House Republicans caved.
The idea that President Obama is a unilaterally acting dictator who cost Eric Cantor his House seat makes no sense. Cantor lost in a Republican primary that Obama had nothing to do with. What is telling is that Cantor refused to criticize the tea party, and would not rule out running for office again.
Eric Cantor harbors the same ambition to be president that he has always had. Virginia governors are term limited to one term. I suspect that, Cantor if he isn’t tapped to be on the ticket in 2016, will run for governor of Virginia in 2018. If Brat would somehow to lose the election for Cantor’s House seat in the fall, there is no doubt that Cantor would run to get his House seat back in 2016. It is doubtful that the nation has seen the last of Eric Cantor in politics. Either way, Cantor is plotting his next political move.
His blaming of Obama for his defeat makes it virtually certain that Cantor will be back.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
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