Why Cantor lost

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House Majority Leader Cantor loses to Tea Party candidate

Dave Brat takes Virginia primary from Eric Cantor

The death of the Tea Party has been greatly exaggerated. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor lost his primary Tuesday night to David Brat, a man who was significantly outspent. Cantor spent $5 million to Brat's $122,000.

The media will play up Cantor's loss by claiming it was about immigration. They will be wrong, but it will be useful for the rest of us. Immigration reform is now DOA in the House of Representatives thanks to David Brat.

But Cantor really did not lose because of immigration alone. Immigration was the surface reason that galvanized the opposition to Cantor, but the opposition could not have been galvanized with this issue had Cantor been a better congressman these past few years.

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He and his staff have repeatedly antagonized conservatives. One conservative recently told me that Cantor's staff were the "biggest bunch of a**holes on the Hill."

An establishment consultant who backed Cantor actually agreed with this assessment. That attitude moved with Cantor staffers to K-Street, the NRSC, and elsewhere generating ill will toward them and Cantor. Many of them were perceived to still be assisting Cantor in other capacities.

After Cantor's loss Tuesday night, I got a high volume of emails from excited conservatives, but also more than a handful of emails from those with establishment Republican leanings all expressing variations on "good riddance."

Cantor's constituent services moved more toward focusing on running the Republican House majority than his congressional district. K-Street, the den of Washington lobbyists, became his chief constituency.

In Virginia a couple of months ago, several residents of Cantor's district groused that they were going to support Brat because they did not think Cantor was doing his job as a Virginia congressman. Others no longer trusted him.

Cantor and his staff both lost the trust of conservatives and constituents. They broke promises, made bad deals, and left many feeling very, very betrayed.

Much of it was because of Cantor's hubris and the arrogance of his top staffers. He could not be touched and he could not be defeated. He knew it and they knew it.

He kept his attention off his district, constituents, and conservatives while he and his staff plotted to get the Speaker's chair.

Cantor lost his race because he was running for Speaker of the House of Representatives while his constituents wanted a congressman.

The Tea Party and conservatives capitalized on that with built up distrust over Cantor's other promises and made a convincing case Cantor could not be trusted on immigration either.

By trying to be both a Virginia congressman and a worthy successor to the Speaker in K-Street's eyes, Cantor made it easy for conservatives to mount an under the radar case against him.