First, I have to tell a story about Eric Cantor. I'll make it brief.
Last Halloween my neighborhood (just outside Sacramento) had a block party. I make it a point not to talk politics with my neighbors, but I arrived there late and one neighbor asked where I was. I jokingly said that I was at Occupied Oakland (this was when it was really hot). In truth I went to a Bar Mitzvah that was actually a few blocks from there (Henry Ogawa Plaza). Immediately, someone opined that "these kids don't even have a message." I maybe shouldn't have, but I frustratingly shot back, "Wanting to stop the greed and corruption on Wall St. isn't a message?" What ensued was a one hour political debate- myself against 2 neighbors and 1 neighbor's visiting Oklahoman father-in-law. One neighbor was a CFO of a large non-profit and the other, who was already a few sheets to the wind, called me (affectionately) stupid and said that it was people like him, a Tea Party person, who were the intelligent ones. The father-in-law reeled off sound bite after sound bite- "The job creators..." "They have no message" (he was the one who first said it), and about a dozen other ones.
So, towards the end i tried to cite an example regarding integrity. A few days earlier I had seen a clip of Eric Cantor putting down Occupy Wall St.- how this worried him, the large crowds taking to the streets, and how un-American it was, etc. And then a clip was shown of Cantor several months earlier praising the Tea Party for taking to the streets and how proud he was of them, etc. So, I tried to explain the hypocracy to them, only one thing kept me from doing so. Not one of them knew who Eric Cantor was. Not even the CFO. I'm not making this up. The #2 Republican in the House and not one of these 3 extremely fervent Republicans knew who he was. That's when I 100% realized that it's all about sound bites. Nothing else mattered. Just sound bites.
What i also wanted to say (ask) about Cantor: is there some sort of misconduct, even something illegal, regarding him knowing about the emails for a month (did he know about Petraeus?) prior to it coming out? I don't know the entire timeline, so excuse me if I don't have the right facts.