Eric Cantor and the Capitol Building

Cantor’s loss: The Jewish factor

  Eric Cantor, the House of Representatives’ majority leader and only Jewish Republican, has officially been buried. One day after a stunning loss to Tea Party challenger Dave Brat--who ran an aggressive campaign vowing for free-market change and denouncing Congress's bipartisan budget deal--the high-potential politician announced that he would resign his leadership post. Pundits and policy makers have wasted no time shoveling in the dirt, offering myriad explanations for the inevitability of Cantor's fall from grace (despite nobody having predicted it beforehand). Many have homed in on one component of Cantor's demise: the Jewish factor. The New York Times argued that Cantor's Jewishness had become a liability: David Wasserman, a House political analyst at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said another, more local factor has to be acknowledged: Mr. Cantor, who dreamed of becoming the first Jewish speaker of the House, was culturally out of step...

Continue reading

Waxman and Cohen Move Up: US Congress Jewish Update

By Benjamin Schuman-Stoler In the aftermath of the election and an entirely new incoming administration, the Republican and Democratic parties have shuffled their rosters to prepare for the next Congress. As a result, some Jewish members have been promoted and now hold top positions. This week, representatives Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Henry Waxman (D-Cal.) got significant promotions in their parties' and Congress' hierarchy. On Wednesday, Rep. Cantor (see above video) was unanimously elected House minority whip by his fellow Republicans. The Jerusalem Post and Ha'aretz both had pieces about Cantor and the GOP's post-election efforts this week. Ha'aretz had this quote: "As a rising star in the Republican party and an outstanding legislator, Rep. Cantor is a source of tremendous pride for the Jewish community," Republican Jewish Coalition official Matt Brooks said. "While the many challenges facing this country,...

Continue reading

Some of My Best Friends are…Lutheran?

When Sarah Palin ran for mayor in 1996, she apparently floated the possibility that her political opponent was an M.O.T. ("member of the tribe")—and the tribe in question wasn't Inuit. Kudos to the New York Times for conducting on-the-tundra reporting that might have behooved the McCain campaign during the full day or two it allowed for vetting the potential Next-in-Line. The resulting examination of Palin's meteoric rise in the GOP describes how McCain's "soul mate" roiled the previously non-partisan arena of Wasilla town politics by introducing wedge issues having little to do with sewers, schools or municipal bonds—issues like guns, abortion and religion. And she got personal about it, too, according to her opponent, three-time incumbent Jeff Stein. Stein told the Times: "I’m not a churchgoing guy, and that was another issue: ‘We will have our first...

Continue reading