In Washingtonian Elaina Plott covers the post-political career of former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R), who was unexpectedly beaten by a primary challenger who alleged that Cantor was soft on the ACA – typical RINO-speak. How has Cantor, now in the private sector, changed since then?
It’s far easier to cop to political gamesmanship when out of office. But Cantor says if he could do it over again, he wouldn’t have bought into this “expectation . . . that says if it’s not everything, then it can’t be conservative.” He pauses. “That’s a perspective I’ve gained.”
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Yet here’s the other shocker: despite all that, Cantor’s read of how party leadership is navigating the current landscape is nothing short of sanguine.
While he won’t go so far as to say Trump’s presidency has been a “disaster,” as Boehner recently put it, Cantor admits he’s less than charmed by the state of the West Wing: “The lack of humility right now in the system is striking to me. I’m worried about Trump’s rhetoric. . . . If things keep going like they are now without any real progress, it’s a problem for electoral victories for our party.”
But strikingly, he won’t criticize House speaker Paul Ryan or others for not demanding a new course. Cantor does say that, were he speaker, he would “answer the questions I’m asked,” a subtle dig at Ryan’s penchant for evading Trump-related questions from the podium. But that’s as pointed as he’ll get.
Why not demand more from leadership? For one thing, Cantor is convinced that the party’s current state—the fury roiling the base and the White House alike—is an aberration. He calls the moment an “anger detour,” which sounds less like a label for a larger GOP identity crisis and more like an inconvenient square in Candy Land.
His position, however, reflects that of many in the establishment—that a pro-immigration, pro-market strain of conservatism, the one Cantor championed at the end of his tenure, is still the future of the party. It’s why he helped raise funds for Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign even after his own primary defeat was seen by many to be the first sign of a populist wave to come. It’s why Cantor continues to believe that President Trump, his policies, and the discontent that wrought them are mere hiccups and that at some point they’ll all cycle out.
“It’s very captivating to a lot of people right now because of the extremes of the language, of the Twitter, of the activity, and it’s just . . . it’s really a lot about showmanship,” he says. “It could end up to all be a lot of steam that, in the end, the implementation will be a lot more consistent with what I think the party’s about.”
I find it striking that his primary worry is not about where his party is going, demographically and philosophically, but about electoral victories, and, implicitly, that’s how to measure the success of your party. I would call that the necessary but not sufficient part of the political equation – are you winning, AND …. where it’s a big AND.
On the other side of that AND is the more important part of the equation, in my opinion – are your goals for which you strive for victory good or bad for the country. Properly aligned, the party and the country should prosper together.
And, honestly, every time the GOP has been in control, we’ve seen economic disaster. I’m simply hoping that the incompetency at the top, and the basic stasis in Congress, will result in only minimal damage. Unfortunately, the judiciary may be burdened with incompetent ideologues for decades to come.
This is the price we pay for “change in Washington.”
