Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh said Wednesday that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor lost his primary Tuesday night because “his constituency became Barack Obama and the House leadership.”
Limbaugh claimed the Virginia Republican congressman — who had been widely expected to defeat tea party challenger Dave Brat by double digits — “forgot who his constituents are.” While Cantor and President Obama often butted heads, the Majority Leader was more sympathetic to immigration reform than many of his colleagues and may have been the White House’s best chance to push a bill through Congress.
“His constituents ceased to be the people that live in his district,” the radio host explained. “Eric Cantor became a creation of Washington, and his constituency became Barack Obama and the House leadership. That’s why he was doing what he was doing, that’s for whom he was doing what he was doing, and the people of his district finally figured it out, I think.”
“You don’t take pictures of yourself arm-in-arm with Barack Obama when the subject is immigration and expect there to be no kickback, or pushback, on that,” Limbaugh continued. “But the tone-deafness, and, I think, the willing disregard of public opinion on any number of issues, is unlike anything I’ve seen.”
The radio jock noted that it wasn’t always this way — at least with the Republican Party. “The Republicans have always been . . . distant, or not tied to that elitist, establishment existence,” Limbaugh said. “And I think that’s changed.”
“I think the pressures of that town is such — you know, the libs run it,” he noted. “They run it politically, they run it socially — which is crucial — they run it media-wise.”
“All these guys are caught up in this notion that they can’t be confrontational,” Limbaugh concluded. “That that’s going to kill them, it’s going to wipe them out. They’ve got to be agreeable, they’ve got to be bipartisan. Well look where it’s getting them!”
