Eric Cantor's historic defeat at the hand of an angry electorate fed up with his elitist neglect of them pretty much encapsulates everything about the GOP's worst nightmare since the rise of the Bush family to national prominence on the knife's edge of Lee Atwater's sharpened wedges. Tell stupid voters what they want to hear at election time, then ignore them at all other times while you govern for your rich benefactors. Cantor's arrogance became so acute that he thought he could get away with ignoring his voters even at election time. The spectacle of him smoozing with lobbyists at some $100 a steak Ruth's Chris wannabe in DC the day before the election conjures apocryphal analogies of Gaulish townsfolk and their Roman garrisons reveling in the local arena while Goths stormed in, or the perfumed dandies at Versailles wondering what the all the noise was about when they looked up and saw pike-wielding mobs running up the driveway.
Cantor's loss should inform Rove, necons, and speculator class donors that their misplaced belief in JEB! as some "sane" and competitive Dorian Gray alternative to the actual image in the portrait of themselves they painted during two generations of bait and switch politics is their fatal delusion. The painting is about to come out of the attic and into the gallery, for a really big postmodern exhibition.
But the political media are still largely in full denial:
Democrats should take notice as well. Twenty-five years of populist rhetoric under Clinton and Obama while party policy favored deregulation of Wall Street speculators, followed by unconditional bailouts will set a political price for them they will have to pay also at some future date.
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