Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) “has decided not to run as a write-in candidate in November, according to two Republicans close to him. The Republicans were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive internal talks,” the Washington Post reports.

First Read: “Cantor’s loss last night is yet another sign that the Republican Party is fractured heading into the next presidential election. If you’re Jeb Bush — who supports comprehensive immigration reform and Common Core — does the result out of Virginia make you think twice about running in 2016? What about Marco Rubio, who was one of the co-authors of the “Gang of Eight” immigration bill that passed the Senate last year? Yes, Republicans are set to make some significant electoral gains this midterm election season. But today’s GOP is just as divided as it was after 2012, if not more divided.”

New York Times: “One measure of the extraordinary defeat could be seen in the candidate’s finances. Since the beginning of last year, Eric Cantor’s campaign had spent about $168,637 at steakhouses compared with the $200,000 his challenger, David Brat, had spent on his entire campaign.”

Jeff Schapiro says there were menacing signs for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) but “few paid them any mind.”

“In March — in Cantor’s home county of Henrico — tea partyers and libertarians, disdainful of the congressman’s more traditional brand of Republicanism, blocked his forces from using a practice known as ‘slating’ to take control of the county delegation to the party’s 7th District convention.”

“Then, in May, at the district convention a short distance from the outer Richmond subdivision where Cantor lives, the same coalition of grass-roots insurrectionists voted out Cantor’s handpicked district chairman, Linwood Cobb, and replaced him with Fred Gruber, a tea party activist from rural Louisa County.”

“After months of milquetoast statements and letting surrogates do any campaign trash talking, Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) went on the offensive in Hattiesburg on Tuesday, calling his opponent Chris McDaniel ‘an extremist’ who would hurt Mississippi with indiscriminate cuts to federal spending,” the Jackson Clarion Ledger reports.

“But his offensive campaign and more hands-on stumping comes late in the game, as Cochran trails McDaniel at least slightly in recent polls since fighting to a draw in last week’s primary and heading to a runoff June 24.”

Jonathan Chait notes Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) “went out the way he carried himself throughout his career: making comically disingenuous attacks. His television commercials assailed Brat as a tax-loving Democrat — he served on a non-partisan state revenue-estimating commission — and actually ran ads calling him a ‘liberal college professor.’

“It is conceivable that, by preposterously describing a Rand-loving right-wing crank as a liberal, Cantor actually managed to underestimate the intellectual discernment of his voters. In any case, he had ceded all the premises of the argument to his opponent even in the course of smearing him. Cantor was, finally, Cantor’d. He will not be missed.”

[Read more…]

GOP John McLaughlin, whose firm last week showed Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) leading in his primary race by 34 points, offered National Journal several explanations for why his candidate actually lost the election by 10 points: “unexpectedly high turnout, last-minute Democratic meddling, and stinging late attacks on amnesty and immigration.”

Said McLaughlin: “Primary turnout was 45,000 2 years ago. This time 65,000. This was an almost 50% increase in turnout… Untold story is who were the new primary voters? They were probably not Republicans.”

Meanwhile, Daily Kos compiles other bad McLaughlin polls.

David Brat (R), who upset House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) in a primary Tuesday, wrote in 2011 that Hitler’s rise “could all happen again, quite easily,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

He wrote: “Capitalism is here to stay, and we need a church model that corresponds to that reality. Read Nietzsche. Nietzsche’s diagnosis of the weak modern Christian democratic man was spot on. Jesus was a great man. Jesus said he was the Son of God. Jesus made things happen. Jesus had faith. Jesus actually made people better. Then came the Christians. What happened? What went wrong? We appear to be a bit passive. Hitler came along, and he did not meet with unified resistance. I have the sinking feeling that it could all happen again, quite easily.”

Vox compiles a list of 12 things you need to know about David Brat

A new Public Policy Polling survey conducted in Rep. Eric Cantor’s (R-VA) district last night finds that both Cantor and the GOP House leadership are “deeply unpopular” and that immigration reform “is actually quite popular in his district.”

Key findings: “Cantor has a only a 30% approval rating in his district, with 63% of voters disapproving. The Republican
leadership in the House is even more unpopular, with just 26% of voters approving of it to 67% who disapprove.”

More: “72% of voters in Cantor’s district support the bipartisan immigration reform legislation on the table in Washington right now to only 23% who are opposed. And this is an issue voters want to see action on.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) six GOP challengers “predicted the primary would be a referendum on the two-term incumbent’s record. Instead, Republican voters bucked Tea Party dissenters and gave Graham roughly 60% of the vote, lending credence to criticism the ‘anybody-but-Graham’ movement is driven by a vocal but small minority,” The State reports.

Michael Tomasky: “Has a party leader ever lost a primary like this? Stop and take this in. Like any political journalist, I’m a little bit of a historian of this sort of thing, although I readily admit my knowledge isn’t encyclopedic. But I sure can’t think of anything.”

Todd Purdum: “But in historical terms, it should not have come as a shock. House Republicans have been eating their young since the Eisenhower era, and the race has been always to the right.”

Jonathan Cohn: “There’s a certain poetic irony to Cantor, who exploited Tea Party frustrations in order to undermine Boehner, falling to a Tea Party challenger himself. And as my colleague Danny Vinik points out, this probably isn’t good news for the Republican Party’s political prospects in national elections, given how out of sync the Tea Party is with the rest of the country. But there’s a long way to go before 2016.”

Molly Ball: “Cantor’s loss will prompt the reexamination of some other pieces of conventional wisdom: One, that the Tea Party is dead–clearly, at least in one restive precinct, anti-Washington anger is alive and well. And two, that supporting immigration reform doesn’t necessarily hurt Republicans in primaries–Cantor’s supposed support for “amnesty” was Brat’s chief line of attack.”

Nate Cohn: “Regardless of the exact reason for Mr. Cantor’s defeat, the news media’s focus on immigration is likely to deter Republicans from supporting comprehensive immigration reform. It could even discourage Republican presidential candidates in 2016, when the party will need to broaden its appeal to Hispanic voters in states like Florida.”

Erick Erickson: “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. Cantor made it easy trying to be a congressman from Virginia and a worthy successor to the Speaker in K-Street’s eyes.”

“Democrats are so absolutely freaking desperate to win the governor’s race, if Charlie Crist had a dead hooker in the trunk of his car, they’d still be, ‘We’re good. He’s the guy.'”

— Republican media strategist Rick Wilson, quoted by the Sun Sentinel.

In a massive upset, little-known conservative activist David Brat (R) defeated House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) in his primary tonight, Roll Call reports.

National Journal: “Cantor’s defeat will send shockwaves throughout Washington. The House majority leader was one of the most well-known Republican figures in the country, reputed for his strategic acumen and political ambition. He wielded an immense amount of clout within the Capitol and was widely expected to one day seek to become the speaker of the House. His primary was never expected to be seriously competitive, and his loss is catching everyone — from veterans of Virginia politics to longtime analysts in Washington — by surprise.”

Politico: “Brat also halted one of the most meteoric rises in national politics, and his win illustrates the strong anti-incumbent fever that has taken over Cantor’s Richmond-area district.”

The Wall Street Journal said it was unclear whether Cantor “could or would run a write-in campaign in the general election.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) “was once thought to be among the Republican incumbents most vulnerable this year to a Tea Party challenge. But the most pressing question on Tuesday is not whether he will finish first in the party primary, but whether he can avoid a runoff by capturing more than 50 percent of the vote in a seven-person field,” the New York Times reports.