JUNE 11, 2014

     Republican Congressman Eric Cantor of Virginia, the Majority Leader in the Republican-controlled House, has lost a primary in Virginia and therefore lost his seat in Congress when the new one meets next year.  People are talking.

     Traditional, moderate Republicans always travel these days looking behind them to see if ultraconservatives are after them.  With Cantor, they were.  The Washington Post reports he lost to "an obscure professor with tea party backing."

     The ultra-right poses several questions for the rest of the party.  Can they beat you, as they did Cantor?  Can they force you to join the Democrats to survive?  Are they the GOP's wave of the future, and so on?

     Party activists on both sides will try to answer these and other questions this election year, which will make it more interesting than it would otherwise have been.