The Hangover Chapter 2: Chris Stirewalt and Eric Cantor

The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg

The Dispatch

Politics, News

4.7 • 6.6K Ratings

🗓️ 27 May 2021

⏱️ 57 minutes

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Summary

With a country split practically down the middle when it comes to politics, it’s a truism that the GOP needs to broaden its base if it wants to win elections. But it’s hard to make progress when the party’s leadership is struggling to make heads or tails of its own voters, let alone outsiders. Republicans could stand to take a few lessons from former Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor, who was the House Majority Leader for the 112th Congress. Cantor tells The Dispatch’s Chris Stirewalt that he developed a necessary trait for a Republican coming to political consciousness in a deeply suburbanizing, ever-more purple Virginia: It was “a vision [to] add more people to the armies and champions of liberty,” and he makes the case that this should still be the priority for elected Republicans. Show Notes: -Richard Obenshain -Virginia’s population boom -Young Guns: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders -Boehner’s “Dollar-for-dollar” plans -Eric Cantor talks about a refusal to tell the truth in our politics Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Chris Stierwald and this is The Hangover, a limited run podcast from the dispatch
0:05.2	and dispatch media that aims to figure out how Republicans took the shortest trip for
0:09.3	a party in nearly 70 years from total control in Washington to absolute minority.
0:15.3	The GOP doesn't seem very interested in understanding why, so we'll have to do it for them.
0:20.2	How did the surprise success of 2016 give way to defeat an effort to steal the election
0:25.1	in the siege of the U.S. Capitol?
0:26.8	And what comes next?
0:28.4	No individual, probably other than Barack Obama himself, played a bigger role in creating
0:33.1	the Republican wave of 2010 than former Virginia Congressman Eric Cantor.
0:38.4	And no event better foretold the coming Republican crack-up than Cantor's stunning primary
0:43.1	loss four years later.
0:45.2	Along with Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy, Cantor spearheaded an effort to recruit younger,
0:49.7	more conservative candidates, and raised huge sums to support their efforts.
0:53.9	Their bet paid off when Republicans delivered the worst midterm shellacking to Obama of any
0:58.2	president since 1938.
1:00.6	The win vaulted Cantor into the position of House Majority Leader, from which he had
1:04.7	to try to keep a fractious freshman class of 63 new members together and negotiate with
1:09.8	the Obama administration on a series of brutal battles over tax's debt and spending.
1:15.6	That tension helped lead to Cantor's primary loss to a political novice, riding a populous
1:21.3	wave of resentment against the GOP establishment.
1:24.7	Sound familiar?
1:35.5	Welcome, Eric Cantor.
	...

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