Even some of the most prominent establishment liberal figures who support amnesty legislation had to concede that Dave Brat ousted House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) last week because of Cantor’s embrace of amnesty legislation.
On this week’s The McLaughlin Group, Mort Zuckerman, one of the more esteemed voices in the political-business establishment who publishes U.S. News & World Report and the New York Daily News, said “there is no doubt” Cantor lost because of the amnesty issue.
Zuckerman, who said he supports amnesty legislation, said that what turned voters against Cantor was their belief that he was on the “wrong side of the issue.” They were reminded of it with anti-amnesty ads and Brat’s relentless focus on the issue, especially after Breitbart Texas Managing Director Brandon Darby first reported that illegal immigrant children were being warehoused in Texas. Brat only began to surge once he started hammering Cantor on amnesty, as Breitbart News reported.
Eleanor Clift, a liberal establishment journalist who now writes for The Daily Beast, said Cantor’s flirting with amnesty legislation not only made him seem like a Washington insider but, as Breitbart News reported, allowed Brat to attack Cantor as being aligned with crony capitalists.
“It lit the fuse,” Clift said of Cantor’s embrace of amnesty legislation. Clift also said that Republicans who rail against crony capitalism and the “Washington establishment” will be more successful in November. In fact, Brat has said that amnesty represents the greatest divide between Wall Street elitists and Main Street.
Pat Buchanan also mentioned that talk radio hosts Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin “were hammering” the issue on a daily basis, making sure voters knew Cantor embraced amnesty legislation.
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