Eric Cantor: dumped for having a heart?

Yesterday brought the stunning political news that U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia lost his seat to a Tea Party challenger, David Brat, who accused Cantor of betraying conservative principles on spending, debt, and immigration.

Brat spent only $122,000 and apparently wasn’t seen as a threat to Cantor by media or within national GOP circles.

A few thoughts on this.

Though my attentions lately have been elsewhere and I’m a little late to the game in covering the Cantor race, I have interviewed Eric Cantor personally and been impressed with him. This is a real shocker, as he is a Conservative with a Capital C. (And clearly–or should I write Clearly–that is something the voters in his Virginia district take seriously).

The one issue on which Cantor seems to have deviated from Conservative Orthodoxy in recent days is immigration reform. Apparently he gave an interview to a local Virginia radio station earlier this month in which he spoke of the possibility of working in cooperation with President Obama, saying, “I have told the President, there are some things we can work on together … We can work on the border security bill together, we can work on something like the kids…” (Apparently the latter reference was to the possibility of some sort of amnesty for children of millions of immigrants who entered the country illegally).

Obviously immigration reform is an incredibly complex proposition. But one thing is clear: there is no simple fix, and denial will not solve the problem, nor will pretending that the U.S. economy and agribusiness specifically do not benefit from the cheap labor of millions of undocumented immigrants. In this instance, I think Cantor’s pragmatism – and perhaps, like most Americans, as the descendant of immigrants, his heart – may have cost him. Although very recent news reports suggest that tough measures against illegal immigration, along with other factors, may be deterring some illegals from entering the U.S., there are still massive numbers of Spanish-speaking immigrants – legal and illegal – here in the U.S. to stay. No massive deportation program will ever be implemented. For one thing, it would be totally impractical as we are talking about over 10 million people. Also, as a nation of immigrants, too many Americans empathize with the plight of illegal immigrants who came here to work. True, our ancestors for the most part came here legally. But if they could have bettered their lives and those of their children by coming illegally, would they have chosen instead to remain, say, in the shtetl being attacked by Cossacks or starving in Ireland or barely eking out a living in Italy? Probably not. This is pure speculation on my part, but the point is, it does not require a criminal mindset to imagine trying to improve one’s lot and help one’s family if doing so required violating the letter of the law without causing harm to anyone else.

One hates to be paranoid, but the other obvious thing that distinguishes Eric Cantor from other Conservative Republicans is he’s a Jew. His swift rise to becoming House Majority leader owed nothing to that fact and seems, at least in the opinion of this commentator, to have reflected his sterling work ethic.

In recent weeks, Conservative pundits like Laura Ingraham have laid into him.  Her prerogative, of course. All I can say is, I think it’s a loss to the GOP.

That said, predictions of Cantor’s demise from the political scene may be premature. If the Republican Party is to have a future it will need to adapt to changing times and accept the demographic shift underway in the U.S. While the Tea Party represents a powerful grassroots movement, even if a third major party emerges from its ranks, they too may find themselves needing to adapt on immigration reform to a more pragmatic position in time. The one issue on which Cantor showed willingness to compromise with the left will, I believe, be the one issue on which the hard right will be forced to compromise in coming years.

And by then, they may be welcoming Cantor back with open arms.

This entry was written by Heather Robinson and posted on June 11, 2014 at 1:09 pm and filed under Blog. permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Keywords: Eric Cantor. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL. */?>