Tag: dave brat
Prank Caller Asks Congressman Dave Brat: Can I ‘Sh*t In Your Mouth’?

Prank Caller Asks Congressman Dave Brat: Can I ‘Sh*t In Your Mouth’?

Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA), one of the star members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, got a rather uncomfortable question during an appearance Thursday morning on C-SPAN.

“Hi, good morning,” said a caller who identified himself as “Glen” from Salt Lake City, coming in on C-SPAN’s phone number for Democrats. “My question is, since we’re spending all this money, where are we getting the money from? And my second question is: If I can shit in your mouth?”

Video viaTPM/YouTube.

“I apologize for that, congressman,” host John McArdle told the visibly stunned lawmaker, as the caller was cut off. “We don’t take that kind of language here on the Washington Journal. We’ll move on.”

On a side note: It is somewhat curious that “Glen” called in on the number for Democrats, but that the initial wind-up of his prank call used the same sort of fiscal hawk language bandied by right-wing members like Brat.

Brat was first elected in 2014, in a stunning upset as a Tea Party-aligned challenger in the Republican primary against then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Brat’s victory briefly shook up the political landscape, and in the long run prevented Cantor from ever becoming Speaker of the House.

Indeed, when former Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) announced this past September that he was resigning, he revealed that it had been his original intention to retire at the end of 2014, and to pass on the gavel to Cantor. The latter man’s loss “changed that calculation,” however, thus causing him to stay on for an additional year.

Eric Cantor’s Opponent Beat Him By Calling Out GOP Corruption

Eric Cantor’s Opponent Beat Him By Calling Out GOP Corruption

by Lee Fang, Republic Report

“All of the investment banks, up in New York and D.C., they should have gone to jail.”

That isn’t a quote from an Occupy Wall Street protester or Senator Elizabeth Warren. That’s a common campaign slogan repeated by Dave Brat, the Virginia college professor who scored one of the biggest political upsets in over a century by defeating Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the Republican primary last night.

The national media is buzzing about Brat’s victory, but for all of the wrong reasons.

Did the Tea Party swoop in and help Brat, as many in the Democratic Party are suggesting? Actually, The Wall Street Journal reports no major Tea Party or anti-establishment GOP group spent funds to defeat Cantor. Did Cantor, the only Jewish Republican in Congress, lose because of his religion, as some have suggested? There’s no evidence so far of anti-Semitism during the campaign. Was Cantor caught flatfooted? Nope; Cantor’s campaign spent close to $1 million on the race and several outside advocacy groups, including the National Rifle Association, the National Realtors Association and the American Chemistry Council (a chemical industry lobbying association) came in and poured money into the district to defeat Brat. The New York Times claims that Brat focused his campaign primarily on immigration reform. Brat certainly made immigration a visible topic in his race, but Republic Report listened to several hours of Brat stump speeches and radio appearances, and that issue came up far less than what Brat called the main problem in government: corruption and cronyism.

Brat told Internet radio host Flint Engelman that the “number one plank” in his campaign is “free markets.” Brat went on to explain, “Eric Cantor and the Republican leadership do not know what a free market is at all, and the clearest evidence of that is the financial crisis … When I say free markets, I mean no favoritism to K Street lobbyists.” Banks like Goldman Sachs were not fined for their role in the financial crisis — rather, they were rewarded with bailouts, Brat has said.

Brat, who has identified with maverick GOP lawmakers like Representative Justin Amash of Michigan, spent much of the campaign slamming both parties for being in the pocket of “Wall Street crooks” and D.C. insiders. The folks who caused the financial crisis, Brat says, “went onto Obama’s Rolodex, the Republican leadership, Eric’s Rolodex.”

During several campaign appearances, Brat says what upset him the most about Cantor was his role in gutting the last attempt at congressional ethics reform. “If you want to find out the smoking gun in this campaign,” Brat told Engelman, “just go Google and type the STOCK Act and CNN and Eric Cantor.” (On Twitter, Brat has praised the conservative author Peter Schweizer, whose work on congressional corruption forced lawmakers into action on the STOCK Act.)

The STOCK Act, a bill to crack down on insider trading, was significantly watered down by Cantor in early 2012. The lawmaker took out provisions that would have forced Wall Street “political intelligence” firms to register as traditional lobbyists would, and removed a section of the bill to empower prosecutors to go after public officials who illegally trade on insider knowledge. And Brat may be right to charge that Cantor’s moves on the STOCK Act were motivated by self interest. Cantor played a leading role in blocking legislation to fix the foreclosure crisis while his wife and his stock portfolio were deeply invested in mortgage banks.

Most self-described Tea Party Republicans, including Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, have railed against Washington in a general sense without calling out the powerful – often Republican-leaning — groups that wield the most power.

Not Brat.

“Eric is running on Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable principles,” Brat told a town hall audience, later clarifying that he meant the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the largest lobbying trade group in the country. He also called out the American Chemistry Council for funding ads in his race with Cantor, telling a radio host that his opponent had asked his “crony capitalist friends to run more ads.” Brat repeats his mantra: “I’m not against business. I’m against big business in bed with big government.”

Indeed, Cantor has been a close ally to top lobbyists and the financial industry. “Many lobbyists on K Street whose clients include major financial institutions consider Cantor a go-to member in leadership on policy debates, including overhauling the mortgage finance market, extending the government backstop for terrorism insurance, how Wall Street should be taxed and flood insurance,” noted Politico following Cantor’s loss. In 2011, Cantor was caught on video promising a group of commodity speculators that he would roll back regulations on their industry.

There are many lessons to be learned from the Cantor-Brat race. For one, it’s worth reflecting on the fact that not only did Cantor easily outraise and outspend Brat by over $5 million to around $200,000 in campaign funds, but burned through a significant amount on lavish travel and entertainment instead of election advocacy. Federal Election Commission records show Cantor’s PAC spent at least $168,637 on steakhouses, $116,668 on luxury hotels (including a $17,903 charge to the Beverly Hills Hotel & Bungalows) and nearly a quarter-million on airfare (with about $140,000 in chartered flights) — just in the last year and a half!

But on the policy issues and political ramifications of this race, it’s not easy to box Brat into a neat caricature of an anti-immigration zealot or Tea Party demagogue, or, in Time’s hasty reporting, a “shopworn conservative boilerplate.” If Brat ascends to Congress, which is quite likely given the Republican-leaning district that he’ll run in as the GOP nominee, he may actually continue taking on powerful elites in Washington.

This article originally appeared on Republic Report.

AFP Photo/Jay Paul

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5 Times Eric Cantor Pandered To The Right Wing That Booted Him From Office

5 Times Eric Cantor Pandered To The Right Wing That Booted Him From Office

Gage Skidmore via Flickr.com

Gage Skidmore via Flickr

On Tuesday, voters in Virginia’s 7th congressional district deemed House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) just not conservative enough for re-election. Challenger David Brat, a little-known economics professor at Randolph-Macon College, handed Cantor a stunning 56 to 44 percent defeat in the Republican primary, and is now being touted as the Tea Party’s best underdog story.

Given Cantor’s long record as a hard-hitting right-winger, however, one must wonder how extreme you have to be to win GOP support these days.

A member of the House since 2001, Cantor has long represented the far right’s interests in Congress. His name became almost synonymous with ultra-conservatism and, in many ways, Cantor paved the way for the Tea Party’s rise. And while Brat is now being heralded as the “Tea Party candidate,” and Tea Party groups are celebrating Cantor’s defeat, they seem to be forgetting that the man they call a “moderate” was a member of the Tea Party before the Tea Party was cool.

In fact, a walk down memory lane shows that when it comes to being conservative, it’s hard to outflank Cantor. Now that his reign as majority leader is coming to an end, let’s revisit some of Cantor’s most memorable right-wing moments — which still failed to land him another term in Congress.

The Grand Bargain

Photo: Jeff Malet

Photo: Jeff Malet

In an interview with Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker, Cantor boasted that it was a “fair assessment” to say he was a driving force behind the collapse of the 2011 “grand bargain” negotiations. Although budget talks had dominated politics that year, Cantor successfully convinced House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) to pull out of discussions with President Obama and reject his offer to make significant spending cuts to the federal budget. Even with a government shutdown on the horizon, Cantor urged Boehner to refuse Obama’s offer to cut social programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, and reduce government spending by about $300 billion over 10 years.

Cantor bragged that his influence ultimately derailed the deal that could have avoided sequestration and sidestepped the constant threat of fiscal crisis that now plagues the federal government. Why did he do it? Cantor hoped to use the budget crisis to his political advantage, and told Lizza that he wanted to “have it out” with Obama during the 2012 election. Considering that Obama won re-election, that didn’t exactly work out in Cantor’s favor.  

Extending The Government Shutdown

Photo: Republican Conference via Flickr

Photo: Republican Conference via Flickr

In another display of stubborn, backhanded politics, Cantor played a critical role in prolonging the 2013 government shutdown, which Tea Partiers vainly hoped would lead to the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. On the eve of the shutdown, the House Rules Committee made Cantor the only member of the House with the power to call a vote on a “clean” funding bill that would allow the government to continue operations.

This meant Cantor, quite literally, was the one thing standing in the way of ending the government shutdown. And Cantor did not move. This continued resistance was particularly detrimental to Virginians; the commonwealth contains a high number of federal employees (185,000 at the time), and is home to many veterans whose benefits were delayed by the government shutdown. Moreover, federal spending comprised around a third of the state’s economy, which Cantor persistently ignored as he stood his ground.

Refusing Disaster Relief

AFP Photo/Mark Wilson

AFP Photo/Mark Wilson

In another slight against his home state, Cantor has consistently opposed disaster relief funds, insisting that such aid would have to be balanced by federal spending cuts in other sectors. Cantor voted in 2004 and 2011 to refuse to allocate funds for disaster relief.

This was particularly startling in 2011, when tornadoes had just decimated Joplin, Missouri, and an earthquake — whose epicenter was located in Cantor’s own district — had just shaken Virginia. According to an estimate by Standard & Poor’s, the 2013 government shutdown (which was spearheaded and perpetuated by Cantor) cost the United States $24 billion. But Cantor couldn’t justify spending any money for Americans to rebuild their homes.

Hanging With The Religious Right

Gage Skidmore via flickr.com

Gage Skidmore via Flickr

Cantor didn’t just pander to the far right; the far right seemed to be big fans of his, too. In 2013, Cantor rubbed shoulders with Tea Party darling Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and other ultra-conservative leaders at the Presidential Inaugural Prayer Breakfast, hosted by a religious-right organization. Cantor was proudly broadcast as a special guest of the event, which featured Messianic Rabbi Jonathan Cahn as a keynote speaker. Cahn believes that the Bible forewarned us against the September 11 attacks, that the U.S. is in the midst of divine punishment for “tolerance for immorality” and teaching “sexual immorality in public schools,” and that America has about 10 to 20 years left before God destroys it.

The Eventbrite invitation for the breakfast noted that it would include pancakes, warm apples, yogurt martini, sausage or turkey bacon, and coffee or tea, but failed to mention the main attraction on the menu — a healthy helping of far-right lunacy.

Inviting Secessionists To The Capitol

AFP Photo/Mark Wilson

AFP Photo/Mark Wilson

In what might be our favorite example of Cantor’s far-right tendencies, the former majority leader once planned to receive a group of secessionists on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. In 2010, an anti-government, pro-secession group known as the Constitution Alliance organized an event in Washington, D.C., in which Cantor was expected to accept a letter from Virginian lawmakers declaring the state a sovereign entity.

At the time, the Virginia Sovereignty March claimed on its website that Cantor would “officially receive the delegation at the U.S. Capitol,” not only tacitly encouraging its attempts to leave the United States, but seeming to support them. Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA) was also an expected participant in the Sovereignty March’s antics, along with Richard Viguerie, a pioneer of the religious right.

With company like this, how could Cantor possibly lose the support of the conservative base? 

Cantor To Resign As Majority Leader; GOP Leadership Scramble Begins

Cantor To Resign As Majority Leader; GOP Leadership Scramble Begins

By Lisa Mascaro and Richard Simon, Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — A battle royale emerged Wednesday among House Republicans jockeying to move up the leadership ladder after Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s stunning primary defeat to a tea party newcomer.

Cantor, a seven-term Republican from Virginia, is expected to resign his post as the No. 2 party leader July 31, according to those familiar with his thinking, setting up a fresh fight between the House GOP’s establishment and tea party wings for his spot.

After Cantor’s shocking political tumble to a little-known challenger, Dave Brat, it would be all but impossible for him to wield any political clout among rank-and-file lawmakers, leaving him little choice but to step aside. A hastily called closed-door meeting of the GOP majority was set for late Wednesday afternoon.

As House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-OH) tries to corral his rebellious majority, an intense scramble to fill Cantor’s position was already underway Wednesday.

The No. 3 GOP leader, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, is next in line for the spot, but his tenure has been beset by setbacks as he fell short of herding the rebellious conference. He “doesn’t have this sewn up,” said one GOP insider.

As Cantor’s loss became apparent Tuesday night, Representative Pete Sessions of Texas, a powerful committee chairman, began dialing up lawmakers seeking their support, sources said.

A McCarthy-vs.-Sessions contest would set up a battle between representatives of two large states, California and Texas, although other lawmakers could join the mix. Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, the No. 4 Republican, is also said to be interested in the job.

The party’s tea party wing is reportedly considering its options, with several lawmakers considering runs for the No. 3 post if McCarthy moves up.

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr