House Majority Leader Defeated In Primary 932
An anonymous reader writes "For the first time in United States political history, the House Majority Leader has been defeated in his primary election. Long time Republican congressman and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was defeated by 10 percentage points in the Virginia primary by Republican Tea Party challenger Dave Brat. This shocking defeat is likely to upset the political balance of power in the United States for years to come."
Re:rumor is dems voted for him (Score:3, Informative)
VA has an open primary. No signing up necessary.
http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bi... [state.va.us]
Re:Democrats voted (Score:4, Informative)
Correct. Allowing outsiders to inject themselves as spoilers into an internal race isn't fair. This is why party registration and closed primaries make sense. That's at least ore fair than doing the entire nomination via convention and forgoing primaries all together.
I went to RMC ('06), so I've met Brat before. I've also done political work (07-08) and had many interactions with Cantor. Frankly, I think that Brat is a better person one-on-one, but that Cantor is probably better to have been the nominee and retained the seat. Frankly, I'm surprised by Brat's immigration stance -- he never seemed the type to me when I was in school, but I never took any of his classes. Pretty sure I remember him from College Republican meetings and don't recall that topic ever being addressed though.
That sociology professor running against him can suck it though. I don't like that guy at all.
Re:hahaha! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:rumor is dems voted for him (Score:2, Informative)
They have a candidate on the ballot in the general election. No one was willing to sign up to run because the assumed Cantor would be the nominee and they would stand no chance. However, they picked a candidate via convention rather than primary. If you're going to try to be dismissive, at least be dismissing the right things.
Re:Can't he still win (Score:4, Informative)
No, he can't appear on the ballot after losing the primary. He'd have to be a write-in.
Re:rumor is dems voted for him (Score:5, Informative)
It's a Republican district, but nowhere near as strongly as SF is a Democratic district. Cantor's district (VA 7th) is R+10, while downtown SF (CA 12th) is D+34. An example of a D+10 district is northwest Indiana (IN 1st).
Re:Democrats voted (Score:2, Informative)
Open primaries allow this sort of thing to happen. If you think about it, it isn't really fair, but we allow it in a lot of states, so this sort of thing should be expected.
No. Democrats had no impact on the vote.
1) There's no evidence at all of a Democrat effort to vote in the Republican primary. Hard to imagine 10,000+ Democrats voting and keeping it quiet.
2) There's no Democrat candidate running at all. If the Democrats were organized enough to run a campaign to unseat Cantor that resulted in 10,000+ votes, they'd be organized enough to run a candidate.
3) The margin of victory is way too big.
4) Brat's biggest margins came in the most Republican precincts
Re:Can't he still win (Score:5, Informative)
Oops, should have hit paste before posting:
"Mr. Cantor can't run as a third-party candidate. Virginia law forbids candidates who lose primary elections from appearing on the general election ballot. It is not immediately clear if he will mount a write-in campaign , as did Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska) after losing a 2010 GOP Senate primary." — The Wall Street Journal
Re:Anti-incumbent sentiment is running extremely h (Score:5, Informative)
This Congress actually did less than the do-nothing Congress. Least productive in US history.
Re:hahaha! (Score:4, Informative)
In fact, NASA says that 9 of the last 10 years have been the hottest on record
Who has her fingers in her ears now?
Re:hahaha! (Score:3, Informative)
Curry isn't the only one to suggest flaws in established climate models. IPCC vice chair Francis Zwiers, director of the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium at the University of Victoria in Canada, co-wrote a paper published in this month's Nature Climate Change that said climate models had "significantly" overestimated global warming over the last 20 years — and especially for the last 15 years, which coincides with the onset of the hiatus.
good enough for ya???
Re:hahaha! (Score:5, Informative)
“One Hundred Authors Against Einstein was (a short book) published in 1931 [which said the Theory of Relativity is wrong]. When asked to comment on this denunciation of relativity by so many scientists, Einstein replied that to defeat relativity one did not need the word of 100 scientists, just one fact.”
Same applies here.
Re:hahaha! (Score:3, Informative)
According to the climate scientists, there has been no increase in global temperatures during his entire lifetime.
That's most used climate myth #50 [skepticalscience.com]. Also, you are behind on the denialist canon, which currently pins "the end of climate change" at 2010. Not that I can blame you for that; it's been revised so many times it's easy to lost track.
That's not the California system (Score:5, Informative)
There is a primary, and the top two candidates run in the general election. Therefore, if, hypothetically Democrats voted for a right-wing-nut in mass, the wing-nut and a Republican will be in the general election, not an outcome a Democrat would prefer.
In practice, when people have their actually favored candidate on the ballot and are able to vote for them, they do.
The primary purpose of the top-two election system is to change the nature of the candidates who decide to run and think they can win.
It's an approximation to ranked preference voting.
Re:Democrats voted (Score:5, Informative)
Cantor had him outspent 20 to 1
FTFY.
Re:hahaha! (Score:0, Informative)
Well.. maybe you?
Here's a pro-AGW site which says global warming has "slowed" to less than half of what we had before, despite CO2 concentrations growing even faster. Other non-politically agenda'd sites and scientists state the growth isn't even what is being claimed, that the slight growth they report is due to incorrect data manipulations or simply bad temperature monitoring.
But we can't even discuss this.. BECAUSE THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED!!!! 98% OF SCIENTISTS AGREE!!! (which is a bogus number which has been proven false repeatedly).
I can't believe so many people are just feeding off the news bites and don't actually know anything about the actual data behind the science.
Here's your pro-AGW cite:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-12/nasa-study-projects-higher-temperatures-despite-recent-slowdown-in-global-warming.html
"Global temperatures have increased at a rate of 0.12 degree C (0.22 degree F) per decade since 1951, NASA said. But since 1998, the rate of warming has slowed to only 0.05 C (0.09 F) per decade—even as atmospheric carbon dioxide continues to rise."
Re:hahaha! (Score:5, Informative)
Too bad you don't have any facts on your side, then, isn't it?
You people are as bad as the creationists with your science denial. There's overwhelming evidence that the earth is warming, that it's caused by mankind, and that it's going to be really bad for us in another one or two hundred years. It's so overwhelming that 97% of climate scientists agree with that.
And then you like to point out irrelevant local phenomena as "evidence" against this, like the antarctic sea ice extent increasing this year while ignoring the actual volume of it, ignoring arctic sea ice, ignoring greenland ice melt. Or you like to point to 1998 as being a very hot year and saying "look, we've only had a couple of years hotter than that" while ignoring the trend lines, as if one year of temperature means everything.
Which is why you're as bad as the creationists. You think your tiny little facts, like an incorrectly dated fossil, or some scientific misconduct around one hominid fossil, disproves an enormous body of evidence. You've got your head in the sand and you seem to like it there.
Re:hahaha! (Score:4, Informative)
I've got a son graduating high school next year. According to the climate scientists, there has been no increase in global temperatures during his entire lifetime.
Who's got their fingers in their ears? Maybe the one's saying "The science is settled!!!!". Hint: Science is never settled.
You have that backwards. Any person that has been born after 1978 has never seen the year-over-year global temperature DECREASE during their lifetime: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/global-land-ocean-mntp-anom/201301-201312.png -- it has increased every year. The levels of atmospheric CO2 hasn't decreased since we began recording it in 1959 (after the International Geophysical Year, which sparked a concerted effort to make systematic global measurements of a wide range of phenomenon, including atmospheric composition). In 1959, the CO2 concentration inout atmosphere was about 315 ppm, today it's about 400 ppm (just a bit under 30%; see http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/global.html).
The science on the subject is "settled" in that both CO2 levels and global temperatures are rising - it's an objective and verifiable measurement of a physical phenomenon; as are related measurements of ice sheet thickness, sea-level rise, marine salinity, and marine pH. Those are all very simple data points that are not contended even by those paid to deny climate change for political reasons. It is also settled in that there are no publications in scientific journals that refute the conclusion that there's a rapid warming of global climate and the connection to CO2 (check your local university library) - all of that has unanimous consensus.
There were a few articles early on (late 80's and early 90's) that questioned anthropogenic (man-made) causes for the increases, but the authors of all of those papers have since identified issues in their work and joined the consensus that the causes are largely anthropogenic and compounded by other physical phenomenon.
The only areas of disagreement today, scientifically, are on the models used to predict the effects. We've seen that many models have under-estimated the rate of change by not properly accounting for albedo changes, methane releases from warming tundra, and glacial shifts. We also know that the rate of change in sea level rises is somewhat under-estimated. However, the most difficult things to predict with any accuracy are the effects on food and water availability.
I think that policy makers are slowly adjusting their rhetoric as well. Policy makers no longer deny global warming outright and rarely make claims based on science on the record. Rhetoric has shifted to the perceived economic cost of remediation and the possibility that remediation efforts might be unsuccessful versus a sense that we to respond quickly and decisively to avoid the risk of a catastrophic outcome, whatever the cost may be.
Re:Democrats voted (Score:5, Informative)
this is so important because california's legislature is so horribly disfunctional, and because you need 2/3 vote to pass any bill that levies taxes, it means a minority can basically shut down regular operation.
btdubs this was just one of the reforms passed by Arnold Schwarzenegger, who I think will be remembered as one of the best governors in CA history.
First, the legislature was so screwed up because it used to take a 2/3 majority to pass a budget, which meant the minority party could shut down the government if they threw a hissy fit. Since Prop 25 passed in 2010, we've had a Democratic majority in both houses and a Democratic governor and gridlock is gone. Balanced budget! Surplus! Arnold didn't support Prop 25. [ballotpedia.org]
Second, Arnold didn't "pass" anything regarding open primaries. Prop 14 [wikipedia.org] was a constitutional amendment that passed both houses of the legislature and then was approved by the voters. Arnold supported it but didn't pass it.
Re:Democrats voted (Score:5, Informative)
From what I've heard about him, he's also very libertarian leaning. I think libertarian leaning Republicans have a bright future. I think the old guard and the social conservatives will have a hard time against them in the future as well.
Libertarian leaning my ass [davebratforcongress.com]!
"We Believe That faith in God, as recognized by our Founding Fathers is essential to the moral fiber of the Nation."
"I reject any proposal that grants amnesty and undermines the fundamental rule of law. Adding millions of workers to the labor market will force wages to fall and jobs to be lost. "
"Human life is sacred, as proclaimed by our founding documents, and I will always support laws that protect life. Our fundamental rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness precede the existence of government and come from God, the Author of Nature."
"Dave understands that the most important factor in our nation’s success is the strength of the family unit. As our congressman, Dave will protect the rights of the unborn and the sanctity of marriage, and will oppose any governmental intrusion upon the conscience of people of faith."
He's a typical social conservative nut whose only libertarianism is on economic issues (and even there he conveniently forgets about it when it comes to immigration). Exactly the type that exemplifies what Tea Party movement ended up being.