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Reminder To Republicans: The Tea Party Is Stealing Your Money

Reminder To Republicans: The Tea Party Is Stealing Your Money

After David Brat pulled a stunning primary upset over House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) in Virginia’s 7th congressional district on Tuesday, Tea Party groups almost immediately began dancing on the deposed incumbent’s grave.

“The grassroots are taking their seat back at the table and returning accountability to Washington. Votes on Capitol Hill will be heard back in the district,” FreedomWorks for America president Matt Kibbe wrote. “If you stop representing your voters, they will hold you accountable at the voting booth. We are proud to stand with Dave Brat in his election and look forward to working with him to reform Washington, D.C.”

Madison Project policy director Daniel Horowitz took to Twitter to gloat:

And perhaps nobody enjoyed the victory lap more than Tea Party Patriots chairman Jenny Beth Martin, who penned an op-ed in the Daily Caller bragging that Brat “blew up” the narrative that “grassroots conservatism is on the wane, that the tea party movement has run out of steam and is destined for the ash heap of political history.”

“[A]ctivists who belong to a variety of tea party groups coalesced behind a strong candidate and carried him to victory,” Martin wrote. “It is with them that Brat shares the credit.”

Brat may question how much he owes to the variety of Tea Party groups credited by Martin, however. While they are more than happy to spike the football after Brat’s win, Tea Party groups spent exactly nothing to help him during the primary campaign.

Zero dollars.

Brat wasn’t ignored for lack of trying.

“I met with them all,” the Republican nominee said of the major Tea Party groups in a February interview with The New York Times. “But it’s tough. Everybody just wants to see the polls, how much money you’ve raised. But they do not know what’s going on on the ground.”

At least Martin was decent enough to learn Brat’s name before attempting to co-opt his victory. In her statement on election night, Martin congratulated “David Brent” on his win, praising him for defeating “the man many consider to be one of the most powerful member [sic] of the House, second only to Mitch McConnell himself.”

Memo to Republicans: If you give political donations to a woman who doesn’t know the difference between Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, or the House and the Senate, you aren’t a fiscal conservative.

Of course, this is nothing new for Tea Party groups, which have never fully put their money where their mouths are. But in recent years, the Tea Party scam has reached Nigerian prince levels. As The Washington Post’s Matea Gold reported in April, “Out of the $37.5 million spent so far by the PACs of six major tea party organizations, less than $7 million has been devoted to directly helping candidates.”

Tea Party Patriots had a particularly dismal record; of the $7.4 million that the group had raised at the time, just $184,505 went to supporting political candidates. By contrast, TPP paid Martin a $15,000 monthly fee for strategic consulting, in addition to $272,000-plus yearly salary as president of its nonprofit arm.

Brat’s upset victory proved that right-wing activists can still shake up Republican politics to startling degrees. But it also proved that they don’t need the do-nothing Tea Party groups to do so. That’s a lesson that Martin and her fellow Tea Party leaders hope that the grassroots never learns — because after all, traveling the country to rant about wasteful spending isn’t cheap.

Photo: Susan E Adams via Flickr

H/t: Matea Gold, The Washington Post

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Immigration Reform May Not Have Killed Cantor, But It’s Definitely Dead In The House

Immigration Reform May Not Have Killed Cantor, But It’s Definitely Dead In The House

Eric Cantor’s shocking loss to David Brat in Tuesday’s Republican primary has been widely attributed to his occasional calls to reform America’s broken immigration system. But while it’s true that Brat hammered Cantor on the issue throughout the campaign, it’s not clear that “amnesty” was the reason that the House Majority Leader is soon to be out of a job.

The available polling of Virginia’s seventh congressional district does not suggest that immigration reform was the issue that swung the election. A survey released by left-leaning Public Policy Polling on Wednesday finds that immigration reform is actually quite popular within the district. According to the poll, conducted by phone on election night, 70 percent of Republican voters in VA-07 support the bipartisan immigration reform legislation which passed the Senate last summer. Only 27 percent oppose it. Furthermore, 84 percent of Republican voters say it is important to fix the immigration system, while just 15 percent say it is not important.

Of course, previous polls of VA-07 were proven completely wrong on election night, and PPP’s numbers should similarly be taken with a grain of salt. But there are other reasons to believe that immigration isn’t solely responsible for Cantor’s defeat.

For one, if Republicans in the district really were looking for a candidate who would kill immigration reform efforts, they could do a lot worse than Eric Cantor. Despite his mild tone on immigration issues, the majority leader has gone out of his way to kill even the most politically benign reform measures (such as the ENLIST Act, a bipartisan provision which would have allowed undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country as children to serve in the military.) And Cantor spent millions making sure that his constituents knew that he is “the No. 1 guy standing between the American people and immigration reform,” while Brat spent only $122,793 total in his campaign to brand Cantor as an “amnesty” advocate.

Furthermore, other Republicans representing conservative electorates have not suffered from their actual support for immigration reform. As many Democrats have pointed out, while Cantor was conceding defeat on Tuesday night, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) — a member of the “Gang of Eight” that crafted the Senate’s immigration reform bill — was crushing his primary opponents in a landslide, despite their charges that his re-election would lead to “Grahamnesty.” Similarly, Rep. Renee Ellmers’ (R-NC) support for immigration reform did nothing to stop her from winning her primary.

It seems likely that Cantor’s personal unpopularity had more to do with his stunning loss than the charges that he is weak on immigration reform. The aforementioned PPP poll found Cantor’s approval rating at 30 percent within the district, with 63 percent disapproving. The Republican leadership of the House fared even worse, with a 26 percent approval rating and 67 percent disapproval. As Jeff Schaprio writes in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Cantor never realized the danger of being the public face of an unpopular Congress within his district:

Cantor’s maneuvering on immigration was illustrative of a larger issue: a perception within Republican circles that Cantor, in his determination to succeed John Boehner as Speaker, seemed more interested in positioning for the next phase of the nonstop news cycle than embracing a distinct agenda.

Further, Cantor — a self-styled Young Gun, who along with Paul Ryan, the 2012 vice presidential nominee, was a symbol of Yuppie Republicanism — became a distant figure to many of his Virginia constituents, seen only on Sunday talk shows and in the pages of national newspapers.

Cantor’s priority was traveling the country, raising money from corporate and financial leaders. The torrent of Cantor-generated cash would shore up a smaller but more influential constituency for the often-aloof lawyer: a handful of conservatives within the Republican caucus who would decide the speakership.

Even if immigration reform did not kill Cantor, however, his loss almost certainly cements its death in the House of Representatives. Although Cantor was not a helpful advocate for reform, he at least paid lip service to the idea that the immigration system must be changed. After seeing Cantor fall to a challenge from the right — and watching most of the media blame it on immigration — it’s hard to imagine other House Republicans doing the same, much less actively voting on legislation.

Cantor’s loss will ignite a competition to replace him as majority leader, or even to challenge John Boehner (R-OH) as House Speaker. Whoever wins will need to consolidate right-wing support, and arguing that the House majority should partner with Democrats on immigration reform is not a good way to do so.

It’s now almost impossible to imagine the House moving on immigration reform until after the 2014 midterms. And by then, the 2016 presidential primary campaign — and the inevitable sprint to the right that it inspires — will be getting underway.

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

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Analysis: Cantor Loss Proves All Politics Is Local

Analysis: Cantor Loss Proves All Politics Is Local

By Mark Z. Barabak, Los Angeles Times

The stunning primary defeat of Eric Cantor this week was, by any metaphoric measure, an enormous event: an earthquake, a volcanic explosion, a political tsunami.

But, at bottom, it also underscored some of the essential truths of politics, none more so than that old chestnut — oft-quoted and ascribed to the late ex-House Speaker Tip O’Neill — that all politics is local.

And, it might be added as a corollary, woe to the politician — whatever the office or their presumed import — who takes re-election, and by extension the people he or she represents, for granted.

Rep. Cantor of Virginia was the No. 2 Republican in the House leadership and, both logically and politically, the heir to House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio. There was even talk of Cantor someday running for president and, if his dreams were realized, becoming the first Jewish president in the country’s history.

However, that leadership position and Cantor’s unrequited ambition meant a great deal of time and travel away from his district, which left him ripe for attack by his underfunded, little-regarded challenger, college professor David Brat.

That argument — that a lawmaker has lost touch with the folks back home — is another old political standby; it produced a similarly historic upset in 1994 by Republican George Nethercutt, who ousted then-House Speaker Tom Foley in the national GOP wave.

“We need a listener,” Nethercutt repeatedly told voters, “not a speaker.”

Cantor had the burden, as do all congressional leaders, of serving dual masters, his constituents and the national needs of his party. Those are increasingly diverging in a GOP split between what might be called, for simplicity’s sake, the pragmatists and the purists.

The pragmatists believe that compromise is a necessary part of the political process. The purists, the animating force of the tea party movement, would rather lose elections than surrender what they believe to be fundamental conservative principles.

Perhaps the most important flashpoint has come over the issue of immigration. Many Republicans believe the party must join Democrats to pass some form of legalization for the millions in the country without legal documentation. Others call that amnesty, the battle cry that Brat used in the race against Cantor, who supported some easing of immigration law.

Too late did Cantor realize the strength of Brat and, more broadly, voters’ disdain for the type of give-and-take required of someone in Cantor’s position. A last minute blast of ads that underscored his concern went nowhere.

“This is the grass roots flexing its muscle and reminding members of the Republican leadership — and reminding all Republicans — that this is a very conservative party at the grass-roots and they’re angry,” said Stuart Rothenberg, who analyzes campaigns nationwide for his nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report.

“And they care more about their anger and expressing their anger and electing someone who will express their anger than they are about electing someone who gets the best deal in negotiations with the White House or the Senate.”

The ouster of Cantor was widely seen as a victory for the tea party, and it most assuredly was.

But also on Tuesday night two-term Sen. Lindsey Graham easily romped past six primary opponents in South Carolina, a pugnaciously conservative state that had been a hotbed of tea party support. Indeed, Graham was once seen as one of the most vulnerable Republican incumbents facing a primary challenge this year.

He bent some, but not much, in the direction of his party’s purists. Mostly, though, Graham sneered at his tea party challengers and said he wanted not just to win, but to pound his opponents into South Carolina’s dirt, to show there was still a place for compromise inside the GOP.

The key difference was that Graham knew he had a challenge and responded forcefully, raising a small fortune by South Carolina standards, starting his campaign early and stumping tirelessly.

Two states, two vastly disparate outcomes and one fundamental truth, which illustrates why Tip O’Neill, dead for 20 years, is gone but not politically forgotten.

AFP Photo/Mark Wilson

Dave Brat: The Anti-Immigrant Thorn In Eric Cantor’s Side

Dave Brat: The Anti-Immigrant Thorn In Eric Cantor’s Side

After an April phone call between President Barack Obama and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), two conflicting stories of their conversation emerged.

According to the Obama administration, the call was pleasant: The president wished Mr. Cantor a happy Passover and the two briefly discussed immigration reform.

For Cantor’s camp, however, the call was an overreach on the part of Obama, who had just issued stern words about the GOP’s inaction on immigration. “The president called me hours after he issued a partisan statement which attacked me and my fellow House Republicans and which indicated no sincere desire to work together,” Cantor said in a statement after the call. “After five years, President Obama still has not learned how to effectively work with Congress to get things done.”

It was confusing.

But one thing about the bizarre turn of events was clear: Cantor, who is poised to be the next Speaker of the House, was not going to be viewed as bowing to the Democrats on the immigration debate.

Dave Brat, Cantor’s Republican primary challenger, may well be the cause of Cantor’s pushback on the issue.

The libertarian-minded Brat, it seems, has tapped into populist sentiment among a number of Republicans in Virginia’s 7th district, which primarily consists of conservative Richmond suburbs. Brat earns cheers from audiences across the district when he shares his Tea Party-inspired campaign platform of empowering small business, attacking what he sees as Cantor’s big-business agenda, and emphasis on his view of the Constitution and the “rule of law.”

Brat appears to have peeled some Republican voters from Cantor, who won a primary in 2012 with nearly 80 percent of the vote. On May 10, Tea Party activists booed and heckled Rep. Cantor as he tried to defend his record at his own district’s Republican convention.

Brat is hoping that his platform — featuring his staunch resistance to immigration reform, which he often calls “amnesty” — speaks to those Republicans who booed Cantor at the convention.

“Why does big business want amnesty? Why does The Chamber [of Commerce] want amnesty? Because it’s cheap labor,” Brat told a friendly crowd in Henrico, VA. “Big business gets cheap labor and what do you get?” Brat continued.

“The shaft!” an overzealous audience member screamed.

Brat, a professor of economics and ethics at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, VA, then turned to his area of expertise: “Who’s going to pay for the unintended costs that’s going to come with amnesty? Who’s going to pay for the education, Medicare, food stamps, Medicaid? Is big business going to pay those bills, or are you? You’re going to pay those bills,” he said.

In other words, Brat seemed to suggest, immigrants are lazy and will inevitably end up on government assistance. Leaving aside the apparent xenophobia and questionable economics, there is significant irony in Brat making immigration an issue in the race.

For starters, Eric Cantor and other House Republicans may talk about passing immigration reform, but have taken no action on the issue. Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) will not bring the already passed Senate immigration bill to a vote on the House floor until he has majority support from his own party — which he does not have.

Furthermore, in an op-ed published in Roll Callon Wednesday, Tea Party Express co-founder Sal Russo offered an impassioned plea for Congress to act on immigration reform. “We need to make the 11 million people who are here illegally obey the law, pay taxes and come out of the shadows,” Russo argued.

While Russo stopped short of calling for “amnesty” for undocumented immigrants, it’s clear the co-founder of one of the largest Tea Party groups in the United States now backs some pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

With at least some elements of the Tea Party lining up more closely with the Republican “establishment” on the immigration issue, why does a candidate like Brat continue to hammer an incumbent like Cantor? Perhaps because it’s an issue he can use to seem further right than the Majority Leader — a common campaign tactic of Tea Party candidates.

Photo: Republican Conference via Flickr