A big excerpt is in order here:
"... being a movement conservative in good standing meant considerable career safety: even if you or the politician you worked for lost an election, there were jobs to be had at think tanks (e.g. Rick Santorum heading up the “America’s enemies” program at a Scaife-backed think tank), media gigs (two Bush speechwriters writing columns for the Washington Post, not to mention the gaggle at the WSJ and Fox News), and so on. 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. "
Krugman makes a point here that is largely being missed in the herd-like postmortems being put out there on the Cantor defeat. Liberals and Democrats have long been awake to the bankruptcy of principle and commitment to "real conservative" policies at the top of the GOP. The Cantor defeat suggests that significant numbers of average Republicans are beginning to wise up as well. The evidence for this shift has been apparent for several years now. I began to notice it when Tea Partiers began relating to the GOP as "them" rather than "us," -- they began treating the Republican Party with almost as much contempt and fury as they directed at the Dems. Cantor's opponent, Bart has showcased for all these disaffected voters how to take down even the most entrenched "establishment" leader -- many of these folks have been just as blatantly feckless and self-promoting as Cantor. Remember: Bart spent only about $100K on his race while Cantor spent close to $5 MILLION -- and Cantor lost by almost 10 points! If Bart can walk to victory in this fashion, none of the GOP leadership can rest secure. Right-wing polling groups like Rasmussen will be raking in the cash in the coming months.
A related (and more important) point: for those old-style "establishment" Republican law-makers running in November (even those that get through the primaries), will the activist base turn out for them both as volunteers (the real muscle and bone of winning campaigns) and as voters in the numbers required? Or will they just say "f--- you!" and stay home? The GOP establishment candidates MUST have these people turn out to have any chance of taking back the Senate or of winning the presidency in '16.
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