Why You Should Be Glad Eric Cantor Lost His Primary

Screencap via YouTube user LSUDVM

For those of you who don’t know, Representative Eric Cantor, majority leader and second-most powerful Republican in the House, has just fucked off into that good night at the behest of Virginia voters. If you feel like you hardly got a chance to know Cantor in the first place, that's because there's really nothing to know about him as a person. He's a politician who “reportedly has no hobbies, but enjoys James Bond movies.” Wow, what a personality. Gallons of ink will be spilled about his shocking upset, the more conservative dickwad that just took his job (assuming the Democrat doesn't win the general election), and what this means for the future of the Grand Old Party.

For now, though, let's recap Cantor's monstrous time in power by shining a little light on some of the worst things he did while in office.

He Was In Bed with Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff

Former House Majority Leader Tom Delay was found guilty of money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering in 2010 but (of course) won an appeal after two Republican judges claimed there wasn’t enough evidence, even though a jury in fucking TEXAS,of all places, disagreed. Jack Abramoff was the poster child for lobbyist influence in government with one notable exception: He was actually convicted of his crimes. He was the centerpiece of an historic corruption investigation, and his shady dealings with Indian casinos lead to him serving almost four years of a nine year prison sentence. In 2003, DeLay and Cantor signed a letter to protect the interests of one of Abramoff’s clients—you guessed it: an Indian Casino. Not even a year later, Abramoff hosted a hundreds-of-dollars-per-plate fundraiser for Cantor.

He Thought Science Research Money Was All Going To People Playing World of Warcraft

Image via Flickr user Carl Johan Crawfoord

Eric Cantor isn’t an idiot, but he’s a dumbass. In 2013, Cantor blasted the National Science Foundation on Twitter and his blog, using technology to lambast the scientists that created it. (Oh, also, he’s probably gonna have to change his Twitter handle soon—Republicans probably don’t want a loser to have the title of @GOPLeader).

He mistakenly thought a $1.2 million NSF grant was going to “pay seniors to play World of Warcraft.” While that would be rad, since seniors would finally have something to talk to their grandkids about at Thanksgiving, he was way off the mark. In an interview with the Daily Caller, grant recipient and associate proffessor at NC State Jason Allaire said, plainly, that “the NSF study has nothing to do with WoW.” Now, the money does have something to do with video games, specifically “improvements in cognition due to playing digital games,” and that has drawn a lot of interest from Cantor’s buddies in the United States Military. After all, drones are basically the world’s most realistic first-person shooters.

He Was One of the Primary Players In Shutting Down the Government

Image via Flickr user Starbuck77

Starting back during the debt-ceiling debacle in 2011, Cantor showed a personal vigor for being Obama’s nemesis. His work to interrupt the bipartisan negotiations between Obama and Boehner is lauded by many, especially his eventual Brutus, the Tea Party, as the reason there was no compromise.

Yet his most dastardly work came in the fall of 2013, when he passed a truly Orwellian resolution the night before the October shutdown.

House Resolution 368 amended the existing rules naming Eric Fucking Cantor as the only member of the House of Representatives who could call for a vote on anything that wasn’t agreed upon in Congress. This being 2013, that meant anything, especially ending the government shutdown. Before he and his cronies got that resolution passed, any member of Congress could bring anything to the floor for a vote, because they are in Congress and that is their job. Multiple journalists and talking-heads remarked that this extended the disastrous shutdown because Cantor’s refusal to play ball went against the majority of Congress’s desire to reopen the government. That’s right, because of Cantor’s dickishness, he stopped members of his own goddamn party from being able to vote.

So fuck off forever, Eric Cantor. I hope you enjoy the worst punishment any white male leader can get in America—being given millions of dollars to talk on TV about the country you helped fuck up. But hey, at least now you’ll have time to brush up on those James Bond movies, you boring piece of shit.

Follow Josh Androsky on Twitter.