Eric Cantor was booed in his home district this morning as party activists rejected his choice to lead Virginia’s 7th Congressional District Republican Committee in favor of a Tea Partier. Cantor was left sputtering:
“It is easy to sit in the rarified environs of academia, in the ivory towers of a college campus with no accountability and no consequence. When you throw stones,” Cantor said, “you throw stones at all of us who are working every day to make a difference.”
He was referring to his primary opponent, David Brat, who is a professor of economics at Randolph-Macon College. But, really, there isn’t anything “academic” about the opposition to Cantor within his own party.
May every GOP candidate receive the same welcome in every one of their districts. It is far past time for the American people to wake up and realize the GOP are true Domestic Terrorists that hate the USA.
Uh they’re booing because he didn’t do enough terroristic things.
What consequences have you faced for being the Majority Leader during the least productive Congresses in history? That big jobs bill you and your cohort ran on in 2010? Where is it?
Talk about living in an accountability-free environment!
I also like the part about Brat sitting in the rarified environs of academia. I think Brat would probably agree that what he does is of less consequence than what Cantor does. It might even have influenced is decision to run for Cantor’s seat.
Adam Curtis has a great documentary called “The Power of Nightmares”, where he compares and contrasts the neoconservative movement and Islamic terrorism. In fact, not only are they related, but they are based around the same idea – Purity.
One particular piece of the documentary covers an Algerian terrorist group that was fighting for the purity of Algerian society. Lo and behold the terrorist group eventually declared all of society to be heretics and the leader declared that the entire society besides the specific terrorists themselves should all be killed.
My point being:
As an aside, it is very interesting to notice the similarities between the Republican party and Islamic terrorists. They both believe that their political enemies are out to get them at every turn, they both want to establish an official religion sponsored by the state, and they both end up killing the people they pretend to be fighting for, because of purity.
Oh, here’s some light reading, because learning should be forever.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takfiri
“…they are based around the same idea –
PurityReligion.”Cantors district is the district I grew up in. My parents live there. It’s not neoconfederate, it’s straight up “the confederacy still exists”. I was taking prom pictures with my sister near the Spotsylvania courthouse, and a Civil War bus tour just ended and pulled up. Every last person on that bus was wearing the Stars and Bars and other southern slogans.
To emphasize the point, the Stonewall Jackson shrine is right off the exit from I95 coming north from Richmond. Just got off of it; home for Mother’s Day.
Moreso than a lot of parts of the South, that part of Virginia got a huge dose of seeing casualties that they knew; it got very personal down to the fourth and fifth generation.
I am not immune. Spotsylvania is where my great-great grandfather was captured by the US Army, taken to Point Lookout, Maryland, and put on the prison train to Elmira NY POW camp, where he died. He was conscripted in 1863. My mother never knew what her grandmother (his daughter) though about the Civil War. Her own great-grandmother on the other side of the family who had as a kid witnessed US troops foraging at the end of the war was different; she did not like Yankees at all. She lost her dad to dysentery at Malvern Hill, the failure of rations and sanitation among the Confederate ranks.
I cannot imagine the sorts of family attitudes that must still exist in the more traditional areas of Northern Virginia.
Those sort of post-traumatic stress reactions are something we do not think about so often when we so readily fight wars.
Ignoring those long term consequences is what “political toughness” turns out to mean.
The firebrands who met in First Baptist Church, Columbia SC ignored it and so, by the way, has Eric Cantor in his party’s rush to turn American politics into war. Maybe this time he’s the one getting a little singed from the fires of political passion.
A good, even-handed and understanding post, Tarheel. Thank you. No kneejerk, leftiness-style “damned peckerwoods” bullshit from you.
I want to expand a little on what you wrote:
Indeed.
That goes for all of the the “Third World” wars that the U.S. has fought since Korea. Four or five generations in much of the underdeveloped world will continue to hate the U.S. no matter what kinds of reforms might happen here. This is a terrible burden, especially in a world where one person and a suitcase containing a dirty bomb could take out thousands and thousands of people.
Yet we persist in meddling.
Dems and RatPubs alike.
When will we learn?
Damned if I know.
AG
I enjoyed Cantor’s whining about “decency”.
Smell the “decency”:
To highlight the factor, the Stonewall Fitzgibbons shrine is right off the quit from I95 arriving northern from Richmond. Just got off of it; house for Mom’s Day.
Spybubble