#NYTOpinion: @NYTimesKrugman: Fall of an Apparatchik

Paul Krugman

Wow — Eric Cantor lost his primary, by a large margin. Amazing.

Obviously I know nothing about his district, or what exactly happened. Fivethirtyeight does have something interesting, pointing out that Tea Party upsets seem correlated with the second dimension of DW-nominate, the Poole-Rosenthal system that maps roll call votes into an implied position space. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, I might come back to this, but basically I’m telling you that I remain a serious nerd.

What I think I might add to this discussion is a note on incentives: Cantor’s loss is part of a process that could well unravel movement conservatism as we know it.


Think Progress just ran a piece that parallels Cantor and Lindsey Graham’s approaches to immigration. The jist is that Graham had a position on immigration and backed it up by proposing legislation, while Cantor said he had a position but did nothing about it. Others point to Cantor’s perceived lack of purity as being the cause of his loss in a Tea Party district.
http://thinkprogress.org/immigration/2014/06/10/3447419/eric-cantor-davi…

Then, four days ago, HuffPo ran a piece on Cooter, the former Dukes of Hazzard actor who was involved in the campaign to unseat Cantor. I have no opinion as to whether or not it is he who made all the difference…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/06/ben-cooter-jones_n_5463196.html

To read the rest of my comment and Professor Krugman’s blog post, click here.


Curated from krugman.blogs.nytimes.com

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