Cantor’s Ultimate Shutdown

More than anyone else, it was Eric Cantor’s idea to shut down the federal government last year. His thought was to keep the government shut through this fall’s election so that the country would fall into a depression, but instead it was closed only for part of October and did not quite cause a recession. In today’s election he lost his bid for a new term. The view of the House Republicans as intentionally sabotaging the country by shutting everything down must have had a part in the loss — especially when you consider that the winner was an economist, and the incumbent outspent the challenger by more than 10 to 1. The election was not even close — at the latest report, only 44 percent of Republican primary voters voted for Cantor.