a republican, his own policy positions never moved an inch. and people can tell when you re saying one thing and doing another. and in the end, eric cantor s endless repackaging of the same old stuff, it couldn t be wrapped up in anything that anyone wanted to buy, even in his home district. joining us now, sam stein, political reporter for huffington post. sam, thank you for being here. thank you for saying young guns. young guns! i m worried about your throat. tomorrow i ll sound like a smoker. i did not expect when going back through, i did a sort of historical retrench on eric cantor s record. i didn t expect to find the only consistent through line was this rebranding stuff. he obviously thought that was key to his success and his leadership in the party. what do you think the actual impact of that was. you missed one, you missed the cut and grow rebrand that they did was that you cut oh, no, there was you cut and cut and grow, two different ones. he was a co
was during that round of eric cantor rebranding that the republican party eric cantor rebranding that he suggested maybe perhaps in some form, his party could accept something like the dream act for young immigrants. eric cantor said that could happen. and because he s the majority leader in the house, he could make that happen. but as always, this was rebranding, which is about brand and image and not actually about behavior. and so he never actually allowed a vote on the dream act or anything like it. he just stuck it in the rebrand and hoped people thought that he might have done something about it. then just a couple of months ago, because it was a new year, and that means a new republican image, courtesy of eric cantor, this past year, his new rebranding effort was labeled, an america that works, which did not work either at changing broad perceptions of the republican party, or changing at all the substantiative party actions of the party. nor did it serve to rebrand eric canto
impact of that was. you missed one, you missed the cut and grow rebrand that they did was that you cut oh, no, there was you cut and cut and grow, two different ones. he was a constant schemer and it served him well. he was the heir apparent to john boehner, perhaps knocking boehner out of the way. but when you change that much, obviously, it becomes tough to define who exactly you are. and i think what it ended up also doing was painting him as this constant schemer and not a serious ideological conservative and i think that obviously hurt him on tuesday night. when he did put his efforts behind a piece of legislation, he showed it could work. a great story of his is that he actually devoted his time to pediatric cancer and research at mih. it was a bill that was going to go nowhere this last year. he put a lot of his efforts, his political efforts and political machinations behind the bill. he shepherded it through the house, got it past the senate, path the president s des
all the substantiative party actions of the party. nor did it serve to rebrand eric cantor himself as a man that might be desperate needed in washington. the history of eric cantor s time in republican leadership in washington is basically a marketing history. the one remarkable thing about his legacy, if you look at it with a cold eye, is just how frequently he announced he was defining a new brand for the republican party, while also not changing anything substantiative about what republicans were actually doing in washington. and changing what republicans actually do in washington, that is well within his power as the majority leader. he decides what gets voted on and what doesn t. but under his leadership, despite repeated attempts at looking new and fresh and awesome, what house republicans actually did was fecklessly repeal obamacare several dozen times and vote to restrict abortion rights as often as they could and otherwise lurch from self-made debt ceiling crisis to self-made
you, that first inside the beltway pizza party was the last thing they ever did. this is actually what s at the website now, which eric cantor set up for his national council for a new america. this website now hosts something called no deposit casino bonus. i do not recommend gambling there. after that rebranding effort fizzled out, there was the young guns. there was also another new rebranding idea, which was called the america speaking out project, because new republicans want to know what america thinks. that website at least still exists and won t rob you blind, but they haven t posted anything there since november 2011. better rebrand again. in 2013, after president obama won re-election, congressman cantor decided to rebrand republicanism again. he invented a new image for the party that he called making life work. the beltway media nicknamed it cantor 4.0. that project also included a pizza party, because america, it