Apparently there is no amount of obstruction, flame throwing, name calling, lying, fearmongering or other bad behavior for a Republican member of Congress to finally be labeled a right-winger if Representatives Eric Cantor and Mike Rogers can be called "moderates."
From this week's Fox News Sunday, Faux "news" regular ConservaDem and former Congresswoman Jane Harman is very sad that Cantor and Rogers will no longer be members of Congress and actually told host Chris Wallace that we'd be "more vulnerable" without them there.
WALLACE: You know, for all the talk, George, about the Tea Party, this big victory, making huge inroads in the Republican Party, as I discussed with the two members of Congress, it looks like an even more moderate member, the number three man, Kevin McCarthy, is going to move up to either number two man and he may also get a moderate taking his number three slot. What happened?
GEORGE WILL: You keep using the word moderate. You're going to get all these people in trouble, Chris.
WALLACE: No, no, no, relatively speaking moderate. But I mean, you know, obviously that one of the concerns with Cantor was he was seen as insufficiently conservative.
WILL: Well, I'll give you an example. Cantor loses at 8:00 in the evening Tuesday. By 3:00 in the afternoon Wednesday, when the stock market closes, Boeing has lost 2.3 percent of its value. Why? Because one of the issues nothing will get done, I'll tell you something that may get done now because of this, and that is de- authorizing, refusing to reauthorize the export/import bank, which is known in Washington for very good reason as Boeing's bank, and has become a symbol to people like David Brat of crony capitalism, not without reason. Another time line.
WALLACE: Let me just ask about the connection of that. Why is Cantor connected to ...
WILL: Cantor is the nexus between the Republicans and the House and the Wall Street, and the financial community generally, and he was a supporter of reauthorizing the XM bank and I think the export/import bank this will stun you as counterintuitive, played as larger role in that election as immigration did and they were all part of the same (inaudible) of issues that said this man is an insider not paying attention to normal people.
WALLACE: So why does it look like an insider is going to win for majority leader and may win for whip?
WILL: Well, for majority leader, this is a relational place, the House of Representatives, and Mr. McCarthy has good relations with everybody, and as I say, when you call him a moderate, smile when you say that.
(LAUGHTER)
WALLACE: So if this happens, Congresswoman Harman, isn't that going to be harder for Nancy Pelosi to continue to make that argument about these guys are going hard right if you end up with Kevin McCarthy or Peter Roskam. These are names that a lot of people don't know, but they're certainly seen as establishment, they are not the Tea Partiers by any stretch
HARMAN: Well, let's start with Mike Rogers who gave a splendid interview on this show 15 minutes ago and who is retiring. Why is he retiring? He forms -- performs in a bipartisan way as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Dutch Ruppersberger, the Democrat and he worked together. A guy like that leaving Congress and leaving and he happens to be Republican is a really bad signal for the ...
WALLACE: Why did you retire?
HARMAN: Let me ...
(LAUGHTER)
HARMAN: I got a better job offer. The American Senate is ...
WALLACE: Who said he didn't get a better job offer?
HARMAN: He did, but the business model of Congress is broken. The goal in each party is to blame the other side for not solving the problem, and who loses? The country loses, and American foreign policy loses. We just talked about the threat to America from this new ISIS organization, the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq, and if we don't have a smart, strategic view of this, Congress should be on board with this, we are vulnerable, and we are vulnerable because Eric Cantor and people like Eric Cantor are no longer going to be in our congress.
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