It’s hard to tell if Eric Cantor’s testing a new message, or if this is the new Republican line on the Democrats and the state of affairs in the country, but Politico reports that, at the Christian Science Monitor breakfast this morning, the House GOP whip, said Democrats are “overreacting, as they often will, to crisis.”
But back to this morning. Cantor told participants that “Doing too much has huge, huge pitfalls,” better, in other words, to err on the side of doing too little.
Then, after praising Rush Limbaugh, he added that those pitfalls might propel Republicans back into control of the House in 2010–a feat that would require them, in historic fashion, to take at least 40 seats back from the Democrats.
Last week, Cantor did his part to stimulate the economy and calm the nation’s fears by skipping an Obama press conference to attend a Britney Spears concert.
Cantor himself has always been the picture of calm in the face of crisis. On October 22, 2001, in the wake of the September 11 attacks, he appeared on Hannity & Colmes and argued that the United States should “go after” Iran, Iraq and Syria, “because, if we are to win this war, we must go after the source of this international terror, which are the sponsoring states, because really, by definition, if you’ve got terrorists with a global reach, there needs to be sponsoring states behind them.”
We’ll report back with any reactions we receive to Cantor’s statements.
Late update: TPM alum Greg Sargent has obtained audio of Cantor’s statements. You can listen for yourself here.
Later update Here’s the full context of Cantor’s remarks on overreaction:
As far as Rush [Limbaugh], Rush has got ideas, he’s got following, he believes in the conservative principles that many of us believe in, of lower taxes of making sure that we turn back towards and focus on entrepreneurialism in this country, to promoting innovation, and not stamping that out by overreacting, if you will, which this town often does, to crisis.
This may be a backhanded critique of Democrats, but it’s less overt than the Politico piece reported–Cantor was boosting for Rush (who loathes Democrats) and was criticizing Washington (now controlled by Democrats), but did not say that Democrats per se over react to crises.
