Obama's "Nemesis"

Oct 3rd, 2011

Jason Zengerle profiles House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) for New York Magazine. It's an ugly portrait of a very unprincipled man.

"Cantor’s role as Obama’s nemesis, as the National Review recently dubbed him, is remarkable for several reasons—none more so than the fact that, although he’s now the darling of the tea party, he initially rose to power in Washington by standing for almost everything the tea party is against..."

"Cantor’s primary job as a member of the whip operation was to cajole his fellow Republican congressmen into voting for many of the bills the tea-partiers now decry as the height of fiscal irresponsibility —including, most infamously, the 2003 Medicare prescription-drug legislation, for which he worked hand in hand with pharmaceutical-industry lobbyists and Karl Rove."

The article traces Cantor's self-transformation from establishment stooge to, well, stealth establishment stooge. It is amazing that someone so committed to preserving corporatist exploitation and defending outright waste in non-social spending has managed to dupe the GOP rank and file into believing that he is fighting for fiscal sensibility.

An interesting aside in the article actually shines a very bright light on just how Cantor has accomplished this. What's more, it also illustrates how he has marginalized Speaker Boehner while, at the same time, securing his general control over the radical, Tea Party driven newcomers who stormed into Congress last year.

"I can text Cantor and get a response back in minutes," says one freshman, explaining his allegiance. "I don’t know if Speaker Boehner even has a cell phone."

These freshman are his to control. They go home and tell their constituents his version of events. Their own narratives have been subsumed.

This is Eric Cantor's grand strategy... for Eric Cantor.

He has created and now wields a barely visible intra-party political machine. His continuing consolidation of power is impressive. His ability to call upon it to obstruct and sabotage both sides of the aisle raises the very real possibility that, as the title of Zengerle's implies, we are actually living in "Cantor's America."