Maybe it's the stupidity, stupid

Headlines blare that U.S. House majority leader Eric Cantor lost a primary election to a more extreme tea bagger and pundits lined up to give it all meaning. Can the Republic stand?

It's called an upset, but that's just blown dust like in sports when the team the experts didn't pick ahead of time wins the actual game. And calling the winner an unknown, mostly because the press which holds the key to known or unknown, simply paid him no attention having all but ignored the primary,  tacitly acknowledging Cantor the winner a long time ago.

Cantor, who reportedly spent something like $5 million to his opponent's $300,000, had polls showing him winning with as much as 62 percent of the vote. The pollster he believed was the same one who predicted Romney would win in 20012.

Lots of reasons have been offered for the loss. Cantor wasn't extreme enough for the tea baggers; Democrats crossed over figuring it would be easier to defeat the tea bagger in the general election; Cantor's stand on immigration wasn't in line with his constituents' thinking. A day later at least one pundit gang decided the vote was all about universal dislike for immigration reform. While it is an important issue, it's also difficult to believe a majority of voters are all that concerned over an idealistic progression.

And once they tired of giving us why this happened, those pundits quickly moved to the future. What's it going to be? Is the party of tea baggers stronger than expected, reports of its demise premature? Some went so far as to say it is the end of the Republican party as we know it. Already polling for November even though nobody even knows exactly who this candidate is, let alone his Democratic opponent who, as it turns out works for the same small college in Virginia. It's all lip flap, news people, like sports reporters, trying to report the news before it happens. Isn't that why they play the games? Because predictions are not always correct?

They all lay out logical and some illogical reasons for the results: this leads to this, leads to this, sort of thinking. They seldom go past two levels though, all in someone's form of logic leading to why the Republican leader lost, what it means and who will win in November. Along with that is the speculation about how this will destroy Congress. Doubtful.

Maybe electing a tea bagger to replace Cantor is all right. The new guy will be low on the seniority scale with nowhere near the influence and power his predecessor held. But that's a false hope. The GOP will drag out some other flabbermouth to fill the position and we will be right back where we started, logic or no logic.

Years ago on a college political science exam, I analyzed a campaign and its result, presenting my theories based on what to me was sound logic given all the information available and brought the whole thing to a nice, neat logical conclusion.

When the exam was returned with a grade, obviously made by a graduate student teaching assistant, I had received a much lower mark than I expected. Next to my carefully crafted essay was the curt note "there is no logic in politics."

My first response was anger; why even bother teaching political science if it is all irrational mayhem? How else are we expected to analyze something like an election without using logic to find logical answers. How will we ever understand what happened? What else is there?

But,  now, looking at the Cantor defeat and watching all these analysts scramble around looking for the logic in it, well, it appears the only logic is what you choose yourself, your own opinion of what happened. And there never will be a complete answer. Just look at that pollster who got the result prediction so wrong. You would have to interview every voter in that district to find answers, that's right, plural, because there will be no single one. Two voters are upset about immigration reform; one wants to save Social Security; one guy's wife's second cousin was once in a bridge club with Cantor's wife; one other is a friend of Kevin McCarthy who is the most likely replacement; and five more are just plain angry with the GOP in general, for among other things, wanting budget cuts all over social programs, but spending millions on sure-to-fail attempts to repeal Obamacare or try to pin Benghazi on the president; seven women who believe their health is their own business and not politicians'; and one is a pissed off lobbyist for an environmental group because Cantor has fought every effort to address climate change. 

And while people try to get an answer neatly folded into some cubbyhole where it fits, perhaps it takes a step back to view a larger picture.

I haven’t seen a comment yet that says maybe we are all  fed up with Republican shenanigans in Congress and the standstill government and want to get those Repubstructionists like Cantor out of there, even if it means electing yet another tea bagger to take his place. Maybe we are just pissed off and in this case the evil you don't know is most likely better than the evil  you know. One thing is for certain the one you don't know is not going to have anywhere near the power of the one he is replacing.  That's of course if the new evil can defeat another unknown who is losing in the polls when the actual election comes around in the fall.

Maybe it was just because he's a dick