08 May, 2013

Eric Cantor's Dilemma - NYTimes.com

Eric Cantor's Dilemma - NYTimes.com: This means that to do anything genuinely innovative on policy, Eric Cantor (or any other member of the leadership) doesn’t just need a majority or a supermajority of his own caucus: He needs almost every single vote, which he can’t get so long as there’s a political premium to being “purer” than the leadership for conservative representatives from safe-as-houses districts. And of course the Catch-22 is that this problem would diminish if the G.O.P. had a larger House majority — but it’s hard to win a larger House majority if your policymaking is held hostage by a “no retreat, no surrender, no innovation” rump.