Apparently Eric Cantor lost his primary. I thought that deserved a thread. Apparently he was too much of a liberal on immigration.

it's his glasses

He was also the only Jewish Republican in Congress. I wonder if he'll try the write-in route now.

i hope he does

my wife is one of the directors of the Anne Frank Center USA, and they just planted a sapling from the chestnut tree outside Anne's window on the Capital lawn a few weeks ago. Cantor was one of the people who spoke at the event (alongside Reid, McConnel, Levin, and Wasserman-Schultz). It's weird that he'll be out since I actually just saw him recently

One of the hardest things I've ever tried to describe is the feelings I had while walking through the Anne Frank house.

Religion wasn't really made a campaign issue, but so unbelievably many God asides were tossed around (esp. for an economics professor tea party member) that I halfway suspect this was a case of encouraging people to vote their religion without directly acknowledging it. Sort of like "So long as I don't directly say Jew, you don't have to feel bad for voting against the Jew. Kapeesh?"

I find it hard to believe that such an enormous lead dissipated overnight for any other reason, and certainly can't imagine anybody beating Cantor because his immigration reform stance is too liberal, unless they were proposing that we just "shoot all the Mexicans and steal their tikis or whatever they have."

Thanks to a tweet I read late last night I've now had the Ramones stuck in my head since...

Can't say I'd call that a problem, but if you should become tired of the internal repetition then the solution seems obvious.

conservative jews and evangelicals are a lot tighter than they used to be, and religious intensity is a much stronger predictor of voting habits than sect. That's not to say that you're wrong, but cantor's repeated and clear expressions of religiosity were probably enough to neutralize his jewishness.

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I believe that according to state law, those that lose in a primary cannot be listed in the general (regardless of change in party affiliation). I think he's S.O.L.

Write in is still valid, I believe. Just mot an independent line on the ballot

Yeah, I would be stunned if voters couldn't write in for him. That strikes me as blatantly unconstitutional, or at least it should be.

That said, it sounds like he won't pursue a write-in campaign.

What if it's just people generally dissatisfied with the government? I mean they are hurting the political influence of their district no matter what. I'm not sure it's as simple as a single issue. He's an incumbent, people are frustrated with the government, so they vote the only guy they can out. This could just be about voting against Cantor because they don't like Cantor or the direction of the party. There's not much to like about the GOP right now anyway and that's why they are splintered.

I think Stip had it right in the first post. The right wing side of the news (Drudge especially) has been featuring the horrific conditions resulting from the flood of unaccompanied children to the southern border for several weeks now and anyone tied to amnesty is going to be vulnerable during primary season.

Ah, but what's a new guy with no clout really going to do to stop that from happening other than to go, expend a lot of fruitless energy, talk a lot and then go home?

This is where the far right wingers display their crazy. There are what 80 to 110 million illegals in this country because of gangs and drugs and lack of opportunities in Mexico/other places in the world, and we have an antique, outdated path to citizenship and for work. There has to be a better system. If we're going to have an amnesty I would hope its accompanied by a better and faster path to citizenship. It's just sort of odd to me that immigration amnesty would be a big issue for voters in Virginia. I'm a big fan of turnover though anyway so it's not like I'm shedding any tears for political change.

Our political culture seems to emulate our media.

Reading a bit further on this, other republicans elsewhere did fine running in favor of immigration, and even in his district Republicans seem to be broadly supportive. So you're right, this seems to be a general anti-incumbency vote, even if it produced someone more conservative (and maybe the district prefers that in general).

A Republican who voted for TARP presumably has at least a plurality of primary voters who will vote against them, if the voters are sufficiently informed of this fact. It is a bit tardy to be voting this folks out of office now. Perhaps the tea party was more focused on getting D's out of office than punishing heterodox R's back in 2010.

Getting close and nasty. Lots of race-baiting featured on CNN this morning.