Washington – House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) is taking a pass on the House Tea Party Caucus.
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The second-ranking House Republican told POLITICO on Tuesday that he’s not joining the group started by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) because he sees it as more of an organic, grass-roots movement rather than a Washington entity.
Cantor praised Bachmann for providing “another avenue for people to have their voices heard” but said he thinks the tea party is better left outside Washington.
“I met with several of groups that operated under that moniker in Virginia; they’re not all uniform,” Cantor said in his third-floor Capitol office. “That’s part of the beauty of the tea party movement; it’s organic. And it’s certainly not Washington. So I think it’s better left with the people.”
House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence of Indiana is the highest-ranking and only GOP leader to join the caucus thus far. Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) also declined to join the Tea Party Caucus.
The group’s first meeting is Wednesday morning.
The tea party of late has been plagued with its own problems, such as allegations of racism and anti-Semitism. Cantor, the only Jewish Republican in Congress, said he doesn’t condone billboards like the one in Iowa that compared President Barack Obama to Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin.
“I think that certainly those in your profession, not you but some, who certainly want to portray individuals in the tea party as extreme or fringe, but if you look, anecdotally through my experience having met with several, if you look at the public polling about who is involved with the tea party, it’s not,” Cantor said. “The tea party is born out of this deep-rooted frustration of lack of leadership in Washington and two a real anger at the fiscal mismanagement here.”
At least someone has admitted that washington does not belong to the people!
Again with the “allegations of racism and anti-Semitism”. Poliitico is spinning this for all it’s worth. The allegations are a pure blood libel, deliberately invented and maliciously spread by the “progressive” journalists whose antics were uncovered today with the Journolist leak. There is no racism or antisemitism in the tea party movement; if there were some we’d have heard of it by now, and the Democrats would have had no need to make up incidents.
Saul Alinsky is alive & well in the Socialist Liberal Democrat Workers Party & he has gotten into the tea party. There is no PROOF of racism in the tea party despite Breitbart’s offer of $100K for video proof. So far, after may months, no one has collected. Gee what a surprise.
Just because someone disagrees with the Obama Regime DOES NOT make them racist!!!! Its not my fault he is black!
Shhh, if he is half white he can’t play the race card. Next thing you’ll tell me is that he has no slave or Jim Crow background
Good for Eric Cantor. He has basic common sense and wants what’s good for the country. (Also what’s good for Eric Cantor.) The Tea Party movement is a minority – in the same way the New Left was a minority in the ’60’s. It gets attention because it knows how to play the media. Cantor is wise not to get identified with it, especially if he sees himself as a mainstream Republican.
I support the Tea Party in its quest for less government, but I also respect and support Rep. Cantor. He has been a wise and well-informed leader of the fight to restrain this administrtion from mortgaging our children’s future for their wealth-redistributiob agenda. I am concerned that his choice not to join the caucus will be played in the media as a rejection of the Tea Party. Then again, perhaps it is better off “outside Washington”. I have advocated the Tea Party take up anti-corruption as a unifying theme where so many other causes are divisive. Real campaign finance reform, to keep rascals out, and term limits, to limit their malfeasence, are the most promising ways to clean out the Washington mess. Meanwhile, Eric, keep up your good work for fiscal responsibility.