Oh shit

[rcjordan]

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/gop-leader-eric-cantor-falls-tea-party-challenger-n127946

[Mackin USA]

This is just the beginning.

Swing of the pendulum. 

[buckworks]

Could someone from the US give the rest of us some background about what pendulum is swinging and why this is A Big Deal?

[Brad]

Could someone from the US give the rest of us some background about what pendulum is swinging and why this is A Big Deal?

There is a civil war going on for control of the Republican Party and the #2 Establishment incumbent just got taken out by the Tea Party unknown candidate despite the incumbents huge campaign dollars.

[ergophobe]

[edit: TL;DR - see Brad's post above]

Incumbents have an overwhelming advantage in the US and gerrymandered districts mean that districts tend to be "safe" for a given party. The most watched dynamic right now in US politics is the tug and pull between mainstream Republicans and Tea Party challengers.

Because these districts are already so conservative, and because the primary is, in effect, the general election in many of these cases, when Tea Party candidates unseat major, nationally-known incumbents, it's news. Cantor was the #2 Republican and had $5million to spend on the campaign. His challenger raised $150,000 and beat him by 10 percentage points, which is a huge margin. So when an entrenched, well-funded incumbent at the top of party leadership and having access to all the apparatus in place that favors incumbents gets unseated by a radical upstart that nobody has ever heard of, it's interesting. Imagine one of the top Democrats representing the left wing of the party getting unseated by a Green than nobody had ever heard of and you have the measure of it.

Whether or not there's a big pendulum swing happening is debatable. There have been some incumbents who were supposedly in trouble who trounced their Tea Party opponents.

Honestly, the most interesting political event of this year is the California primary. Basically, Californians got tired of all the bullshit but took a very different approach to the Tea Party approach. Californians, over intense opposition from the Democratic and Republican parties, passed two laws intended to moderate politics in California and ultimately, the nation, resulting in what is known as the "jungle primary" and has two innovations.

1. US congressional districts are no longer redrawn by the political parties to maintain their death grip on safe districts.

2. It's an open primary with a runoff between the top two vote getters, regardless of party.

One of the reasons (I think the main reason) for the deadlock in US politics is that years of gerrymandering districts make it so that the "real" election is in the primaries, and in the primary elections, politicians must appeal to the base (far left or right), so they encourage candidates at the extremes and who are beholden to the extreme wings of their parties.

This gives a rundown of a few races including one where it's still up in the air whether the general election will pit two Dems or a Dem and Rep against each other.
http://www.modbee.com/2014/06/10/3383252/many-close-races-remain-one-week.html

[littleman]

For those who do not know, the Tea Party is not an actual political party, but a movement (mostly within the Republican party) to what could be called 'far right*'.  The Tea Party candidates are very popular among the base of the party, but have been having a hard time getting elected in general elections.

* not far right in the European sense, but more like they support small federal government, gun rights, tend to be fundamentalist Christians and against social welfare programs

A major issue is that Tea party candidates is that they do quite well during the primaries but don't do so well in general elections.

[littleman]

Nice post Ergophobe!

I very much like what California has done, I hope the process spreads throughout the nation -- it will make for a more functional government.

[Chunkford]

Thanks for the explanation LM

I had visions of:

[ergophobe]

Oh... too far down in the weeds - thanks for the clarification for our non-US members Littleman.

Bucky - one last thing - reporting today is saying that this is the first time in the history of the office of House Majority Leader (create in the 1890s) that the incumbent has lost a primary. Also, polling and pundits were not debating Cantor's victory, but whether it would close or a landslide in Cantor's favor.

[Mackin USA]

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Va.), the chamber's second-ranking Republican, was badly beaten in a primary contest Tuesday by an obscure professor with tea party backing [who spent only $15K]— a historic electoral surprise that left the GOP in chaos and the House without its heir apparent.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/eric-cantor-faces-tea-party-challenge-tuesday/2014/06/10/17da5d20-f092-11e3-bf76-447a5df6411f_story.html