{"id":5853,"date":"2014-06-11T11:22:09","date_gmt":"2014-06-11T11:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/?p=5853"},"modified":"2014-06-11T11:22:09","modified_gmt":"2014-06-11T11:22:09","slug":"cantor-loss-deals-blow-to-campaign-reform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=5853","title":{"rendered":"Cantor loss deals blow to campaign reform"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The thought occurred to me this morning after I awoke from a good night’s sleep.<\/p>\n

U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s stunning loss Tuesday to tea party candidate Dave Brat in the Virginia Republican Party primary Tuesday might have dealt a serious blow to the cause of campaign finance reform.<\/p>\n

Why? Cantor outspent his Brat by something like 25 to 1<\/em> in a losing bid to keep his congressional seat.<\/p>\n

Cantor was the well-funded superstar within the Republican Party. He had it all: looks, brains, the “right” ideology,” a gift of gab, ambition. You name it, he had it.<\/p>\n

He also had money. Lots of it, which he spent lavishly to hold on to his House seat.<\/p>\n

None of it worked. Brat is a college professor who’s never run for public office at any level.<\/p>\n

Yet he beat Cantor by 11 percentage points in a shamefully low voter-turnout primary.<\/p>\n

What happens, then, to effort to limit campaign spending? The argument always has been that money buys votes, that it buys people’s loyalty, and that it gives deep-pocketed donors more influence than Mr. and Mrs. Average Joe in setting public policy.<\/p>\n

Dave Brat’s stunner in Virginia has just blown the daylights out of those arguments.<\/p>\n

Let that<\/em> discussion get fired up all over again.<\/p>\n\n

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The thought occurred to me this morning after I awoke from a good night’s sleep. U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s stunning loss Tuesday to tea party candidate Dave Brat in the Virginia Republican Party primary Tuesday might have dealt a serious blow to the cause of campaign finance reform. Why? Cantor outspent his Brat … Continue reading Cantor loss deals blow to campaign reform<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[818,849,1112,1262,1614,3917,4531,4964],"class_list":["post-5853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-campaign-fianance-reform","tag-capitol-hill","tag-congress","tag-dave-brat","tag-eric-cantor","tag-republicans","tag-tea-party","tag-u-s-house-of-representatives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5853\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}