Eric Cantor's loss and the populist backlash.

• Author: Conniff, Ruth
• Position: COMMENT - Column

The surprise defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor by a relatively unknown Tea Party candidate in June shocked the Washington, D.C., establishment.

Most of the coverage of Cantor's opponent has focused on the Tea Party's virulent anti-immigrant rhetoric, and on the alarming power of a rightwing Republican base that saw Cantor as "too liberal."

"It is incredible to me that Eric Cantor moved from the singular, highest-profile, most-important political figure on Capitol Hill stopping the President's agenda to the guy who was the chief compromiser with the President," John Murray, a Cantor strategist and former aide, told The New York Times. "The disconnect there is insane. It's so out of whack with reality."

Or, as Jon Stewart put it:

"What?!!"

The "pro-life, Obamacare-repealing, President-obstructing, debt-ceiling default-risking, tax-loophole-embracing, government-shutdown-ing Eric Cantor" too liberal? Stewart riffed. "I imagine you could've said Eric Cantor was too liberal pre-Enlightenment. Certainly, during the Middle Ages, Cantor's views on accepting gravity would be considered dangerous."

But liberalism was not really Eric Cantor's problem.

Nor, it turns out, was his tentative and partial support for immigration reform. According to Public Policy Polling research on election night, 72 percent of voters in Cantor's district support the current bipartisan immigration reform plan.

There is a more interesting angle to the defeat of Cantor, who was, as his opponent Dave Brat liked to point out, the "money guy" for the Republicans in Washington--very successful on the fundraising circuit, raising millions through his multiple PACs.

Brat won, despite a huge fundraising disparity, in part because of what he had to say about the corruption of the Republican Party, its coziness with big business, and especially the big banks.

In a speech to a Tea Party audience in Mechanicsville, he outlined the origins of the financial crisis in the United States:

"All the investment banks up in D.C., New York, those guys should have gone to jail," he told the group. "Instead of going to jail, where did they go? They went out to Eric's Rolodex."

That line elicited a burst of appreciative laughter.

Brat related an anecdote about a radio show caller who told him he'd never overcome Eric Cantor's money. Brat had just over $200,000 to Cantor's $5.4 million.

"The good news is money doesn't vote," Brat said. "People do."

Both Cantor and the Republican leadership...