Cantor’s Big Business Agenda Sparks Primary Challenge
Kenric Ward, Talk Radio News Service, February 6, 2014
Dave Brat is challenging Rep. Eric Cantor in a Republican primary–and giving the House majority leader a verbal thrashing on immigration.
“Cantor is following the agenda of the Business Roundtable and the Chamber of Commerce–pursuing policies that are good for big business, but come at the exclusion of the American people,” said Brat, an economics professor at Randolph-Macon College.
Brat’s upstart bid against the second highest-ranking House Republican may seem quixotic. But it’s part of a growing national movement to oust GOP leaders who fail conservative litmus tests.
Cantor, in Brat’s view, is flunking badly on border security. Indeed, the congressman even applauded President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address outlining a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
On Friday, Cantor said on the House floor that “immigration reform could be an economic boon to this country.”
Brat is having none of it. He calls the imminent GOP cave-in on immigration an exercise in “crony capitalism.”
“It’s incredibly unpopular. It lowers wages, adds to unemployment, and the taxpayer pays the tab for any benefits to folks coming in,” Brat told Watchdog.org in an interview.
“This is not equal treatment under the law. People who are waiting in line (to immigrate) are fuming.”
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“At every turn, the GOP establishment is favoring the elites,” Brat declares. “A change in immigration policy means amnesty.”
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As corporatist Republicans go wobbly on the border, Brat said Cantor is violating the party’s “six conservative precepts.”
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Larry Nordvig, executive director of the Richmond Tea Party, says Brat has his group’s “100 percent” backing.
“The feeling from the grassroots is, ‘Finally! We have a viable candidate to get rid of Cantor,’” said Nordvig, who brands the congressman “backward on all the issues that matter to true conservatives.”
