Bottom-Up Bipartisanship? Yesterday Dave Brat, the conservative economics professor who is challenging Majority Leader Eric Cantor in today’s primary, sent out what I assume will be his final pitch to voters. Here’s a sample:
“The entire amnesty and low-wage agenda collapses if Cantor loses — all the billions of special interests dollars, all the favors, all the insider dealing — all of it is stopped in its tracks tomorrow if the patriotic working families of Virginia send Eric Cantor back home tomorrow.
Tomorrow, the middle class has its chance to fight back.
Tomorrow, the people of Virginia can show up to the polls and defeat the entire crony corporate lobby.
Tomorrow, we can restore our borders, rebuild our communities, and revitalize our middle class.”
Notes: 1) This is a pitch — against a “low wage agenda” and “crony corporate lobby” — that can appeal to Democrats as well as Republicans. Maybe partisanship will eventually be transcended, not at the top, with David Brooks, Gloria Borger and Jon Huntsman imposing a Beltway consensus they hammer out at an Atlantic panel, but at the bottom, where less sleek figures like Brat, Phyllis Schlafly and Jeff Sessions, can make common cause with Democratic workers who’ve gotten the short end of previous top-down triumphs such as global trade and Reagan’s 1986 amnesty, as well as of ineluctable technological trends like automation. 2) Perhaps not coincidentally, Democrats can vote in the Cantor vs. Brat primary. …
Backfill: See also this earlier Brat release, which expands the potentially bipartisan anti-corporate agenda to “other issues – like spending, debt and insider trading.” …