I don't normally take issue with Paul Krugman, and I heartily wish I could buy into his take on the Cantor defeat, but I don't think the evidence is there:
In other words, being a hard line conservative, which to be fair involved some career risks back in the 60s and into the 70s, became a safe choice; you could count on powerful backing, and if not favored by fortune, you could fall back on wingnut welfare.
And Eric Cantor, who got into politics long after the Reagan revolution and for the most part made his career post Gingrich, came across very much as a movement conservative apparatchik. He took very hard line stances, but never seemed especially passionate; he was, arguably, basically a careerist, and as such was fairly typical.
Maybe that’s what the primary voters sensed.
Whatever the reason, it turns out that being a movement conservative apparatchik is no longer a safe career choice. This is a very big deal. Conservatives, as I said, will always be with us. But the structure that shaped them into a cohesive movement is now starting to unravel, at a time when movement progressivism — which is much less cohesive and much less lucrative, but nonetheless now exists in a way it didn’t 15 years ago — is on the rise.
We'll probably find that there were local reasons for Cantor's fall, but the fact of his fall does not bode ill for movement conservatism, or even for Cantor. He will be on wingnut welfare as soon as he leaves office, so there's no change there. He will make more money than he did as a Congressman; or at least he will make more money legally than he did. He will be replaced by a man who will be as subservient to the puppet masters as was Cantor, assuming the Republican wins. The puppets may change, but the people pulling the strings remain the same, and as long as the puppets perform to their liking, the show will go on.
I note that a number of commenter's on Krugman's website have made the same point.
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