general. how do you determine what happened with eric cantor? nobody saw it coming. what is your interpretation of that? i think that it speaks for itself, that it is the constitutionalists, those who understand that the constitution is the blueprint toward a more perfect union, and if politicians would follow it, our country would be better off. included in that kind of that principle of following the constitution, adopting the free market, adopting any policy that would allow thriving of the american people, the entrepreneurial spirit to once again grow. cantor wasn t representing that, he was representing the machine. the establishment that had been there too long, and was part of that status quo problem. and refreshing to see new energy getting there and not necessarily new ideas. because these are time tested
general. how do you determine what happened with eric cantor? nobody saw it coming. what is your interpretation of that? i think that it speaks for itself, that it is the constitutionalists, those who understand that the constitution is the blueprint toward a more perfect union, and if politicians would follow it, our country would be better off. included in that kind of that principle of following the constitution, adopting the free market, adopting any policy that would allow thriving of the american people, the entrepreneurial spirit to once again grow. cantor wasn t representing that, he was representing the machine. the establishment that had been there too long, and was part of that status quo problem. and refreshing to see new energy getting there and not necessarily new ideas. because these are time tested
numbers and what exactly went down in this race, it s still hard to explain. it s baffling. it must be a combination of factors. the part that cantor wasn t there in his district. that he was not particularly liked. lindsey graham seems to be much more liked in his district. and the tapping into the immigration issue by a right wing talk radio. it raises the question of what the party now leaves from whomever wins in the election. what s the challenge, the main priority for whoever is the next majority leader? and which of the three people that seem to be running do you think, steve, would be best suited to bringing somehow the republican party together? do we now have to have a situation where the upstarts in the party need to get a leadership position so that the party can show that it has listened to what happened in the seventh district? look, i just think that when you look at the candidates that are in the race for majority leader, you have to look at
mcintosh with emily s list. lizza had this interesting piece where he talked about the populist campaign that brat ran, in which he talked about the fact that big business and big government were in with each other. he talked about wall street and talked about the fact that cantor wasn t on the side of the little guy. and i think there s a lot of there s a lot of populist anger against congress and eric cantor kind of represented the worst of it. and i spoke to a couple of local reporters from that district today. and they both had stories, along the lines of, cantor when he would rarely visit the district, would come in with an suv and a bunch of bodyguards, and literally shove people out of the way. and so i think that kind of expanded upon that narrative. i think that s why that narrative stuck to a guy like cantor, because he seems to have been sort of personally the epitome of that s right.
that was an ad from a few years ago when eric cantor was one of the new stars, the young rising stars of the republican party. one of the three amig miyagi goes along with kevin mccarthy in leadership and paul ryan, who you have probably heard about. well, eric cantor s political career came to a shocking screeching halt tonight when he lost a primary in his own district in virginia, the republican primary by about 11 points to a guy that basically no one outside the district had heard of until this evening, guy by the name of david brat. howard fineman is still with me. joining me now is msnbc contributor karen finney. karen, what do you make of this? i make it that the republican party needs to get a different pollster, because yet again it seems like the internals in no way it s really hard for me to believe, i have to be honest with you, that they had no idea this was coming. and so yet again we see what i would consider political malpractice. and i mean that quite seriously. a