House Republicans are set to elect new leaders Thursday in the wake of Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s shocking primary loss. But while Cantor’s defeat was a seismic event that signaled even the highest ranking Republicans are vulnerable to conservative challenge, it’s unclear how different the House GOP will actually look after the votes come in.
The race to replace Cantor is in some ways an ideological proxy for the David vs. Goliath race that eliminated him in the first place.
The strong front-runner is Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., the current majority whip and a longtime ally of Cantor. Cantor and McCarthy, along with Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., branded themselves as the “young guns,” part of a new generation of Republican leaders ready to remake the party for the post-Bush era. In this power trio, Cantor was billed as the “leader,” Ryan the “thinker,” and McCarthy the “strategist.”
McCarthy is an old-school political operator, the kind who carefully builds support behinds the scenes, maintains a network of influential lobbyists and keeps close tabs on individual members’ needs and interests. Years of backslapping and fundraisers give him a solid base of support to start the race – in fact, it was enough to convince experienced rival Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, to drop out of the leadership race last week after gauging his support.
Based on his lengthy tenure in leadership already, McCarthy would be unlikely to rock the boat significantly. That’s left some Republicans pining for a more ideological option with closer ties to the tea party wave that washed out Cantor last week.
Enter Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID), a rising star in the GOP’s conservative class of 2010 who enjoys a national profile with the grassroots.
Labrador threw his hat in the ring after Sessions dropped out, pledging to provide a more principled conservative alternative. He’s considered a major underdog.
“McCarthy’s support is pretty soft,” Labrador told The Washington Post. “Even the people who say they’re supporting him are not strongly supporting him. I have not had many people say they’re 100% excited about Kevin.”
Tea party advocacy group FreedomWorks is backing Labrador, and he has the strong support of a small group of quirky libertarians like Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., and Rep. Thomas Massie, R-KY, who have clashed with leadership in the past.
But Labrador’s candidacy could set the tea party movement back, as well, if it fails to garner significant support.
Last year a group of tea party Republicans, including Labrador, tried to stage a coup against Speaker John Boehner at the start of the new Congress. While the plot foreshadowed the difficulties Boehner would have lining up his party during the shutdown fight, it was also an embarrassingly mismanaged failure. At one point one of the coup leaders, Rep. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, was photographed on the House floor going over a purportedly top secret list of supporters on his iPad, the names clearly visible to reporters.
Labrador, who has struggled this week to contain a civil war within the Idaho GOP back home, may not be an effective enough organizer to seriously threaten McCarthy. But, as Labrador notes, he does have one advantage he didn’t have in his quest to overthrow Boehner — a secret ballot.









