As uncomfortable as it makes me to admit it, once in a blue moon, Donald Trump is right on the money:
Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump suggested Thursday he was happy to not get the endorsement of former House Majority Leader Eric Canter (R-Va.).
Shortly after news emerged that Cantor would endorse GOP presidential rival Jeb Bush and join the former Florida governor's campaign as a Virginia co-chairman, Trump tweeted:
Who wants the endorsement of a guy (@EricCantor) who lost in perhaps the greatest upset in the history of Congress?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 27, 2015
Who can argue with that? Cantor is an odious man--a spineless lick-spittle, a career hypocrite and a shill for the worst elements in Israeli politics.
Amongst the ghastly Cantor's many Hall of Shame moments, his close relationship with the vile Tom DeLay and with the crooked Jack Abramoff stands out:
When Cantor wasn’t whipping votes, he was spearheading Tom DeLay’s defense against an ethics complaint—or, as Cantor called it at the time, “trumped-up charges” that were “an attack on the conservative movement.” “It’s the final phase that Democrats are coming to grips that Republicans are a permanent majority,” he told one reporter. He was also connected to the now disgraced Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff. In 2003, Cantor—along with Blunt, DeLay, and House speaker Dennis Hastert—signed a letter to the Interior Department written at the behest of a Louisiana Indian tribe, an Abramoff client that was seeking to protect its gaming interests. That same year, Abramoff’s D.C. deli hosted a $500-a-plate fund-raiser for Cantor during which a tuna sandwich was named in honor of the Virginia congressman.
"Gimme a tuna-salad on rye, onions and extra mayo". "You mean The Cantor?". "Forget it. Instead, I'll have chicken livers on pumpernickel, extra
schmaltz." "One Boehner coming right up...". "You know what? Forget it...I've lost my appetite."
So why is a jerk like Cantor worthy of notice at this point? Well, because Cantor has decided, via the New York Times opinion pages, to castigate the GOP for, you guessed it: doing the same shit that he did:
...somewhere along the road, a number of voices on the right began demanding that the Republican Congress not only block Mr. Obama’s agenda but enact a reversal of his policies. They took to the airwaves and the Internet and pronounced that congressional Republicans could undo the president’s agenda — with him still in office, mind you — and enact into law a conservative vision for government, without compromise.
Strangely, according to these voices, the only reason that was not occurring had nothing to do with the fact that the president was unlikely to repeal his own laws, or that under the Constitution, absent the assent of the president or two-thirds of both houses of Congress, you cannot make law. The problem was a lack of will on the part of congressional Republican leaders.
Now we see that these same voices have turned to the threat of a government shutdown or a default on the debt as the means by which we can force President Obama to agree to their demands. I wonder what they would have said, if during the last two years of President Bush’s term, the Democratic congressional majority had tried something similar.
This is
breathtaking dishonesty, even from a shifty creep like Cantor.
Why wonder, Eric? We know what happened when the GOP shut down the US government in 2013, with you, Eric, in the vanguard. Wikipedia explains:
As House Majority Leader, Cantor was named in House Resolution 368, which was passed by the House Rules Committee on the night of September 30, 2013, the night before the October 2013 government shutdown began, as the only member of the House with the power to bring forth bills and resolutions for a vote if both chambers of Congress disagree on that bill or resolution. Prior to the resolution's passing in committee, it was within the power of every member of the House under House Rule XXII, Clause 4 to be granted privilege to call for a vote.
This amendment to the House rules was blamed for causing the partial government shutdown and for prolonging it since Cantor refused to allow the Senate's continuing resolution to be voted on in the House. Journalists and commentators noted during the shutdown that if the Senate's version of the continuing resolution were to be voted on, it would have passed the House with a majority vote since enough Democrats and Republicans supported it, effectively ending the government shutdown.
Are you bone-stupid, Eric, or do you think that we are?
As New York Magazine wrote in 2011:
...Cantor, with his finely tuned political radar, then picked up on—and, in turn, helped initiate—what has become the Republican Party’s most profound cultural shift: its belligerent intransigence....“Cantor comes from the more contemporary [Republican] school that says cooperation is a dirty word and compromise is an unpardonable sin,” says Obama adviser David Axelrod. “I think he’s a very ambitious guy who’s reading the direction of the Republican Party, and he’s trying to ride that wave.”
...
Since the 2010 election, of course, Cantor has had a much more lethal weapon at his disposal, one that he played a major role in creating: the 87 freshmen who make up more than a third of the Republican’s House majority. In the run-up to the midterms, Cantor, along with McCarthy and Ryan, used their “Young Guns” candidate-recruitment program to find Republicans who could capitalize on the growing tea-party backlash against Obama and Washington. “We wanted to bring ‘cause’ people to Congress,” says Ryan, “not people who were looking for political careers.”
In other words, Cantor not only
cultivated the bomb-throwing Tea Bagger crazies, he
encouraged them.
And now, he has the unmitigated gall to come out with guff like this:
The tragedy here is that these voices have not been honest with our fellow conservatives. They have not been honest about what can be accomplished when your party controls Congress, but not the White House. As a result we missed chances to achieve important policies for the good of the country.
No, Eric, the 'tragedy here' is a political system that allowed slimeballs like you to get into positions of power. Happily, you got your shifty, lying ass kicked by an unknown.
So much for trying to be Machiavellian without the intelligence to carry it off.
Crawl back into your merchant bank hole, you mendacious twerp, and trouble us no more.