It has been a week since Dave Brat’s stunning victory over sitting House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. It has been a week since one of the most massive earthquakes in modern political history.
The conventional wisdom is that Mr. Brat is now going to coast to victory.
That wisdom would be so wrong.
Despite the fact that the 7th District went for Mitt Romney by 57 percent in 2012, Mr. Brat is in serious trouble.
He has enemies on three sides. Two of the three enemies are expected. The third may be surprising.
Mr. Brat’s biggest enemy may not be Jack Trammell, the Democrat nominee. It may be his own party.
In 2013, the Republican establishment went into high dudgeon after the conservatives dared to take over the party. The conservatives insisted on conservative nominees who actually believed the Republican creed. As a result, the establishment did not give Ken Cuccinelli and the GOP ticket money they desperately needed and ultimately helped Mr. Cuccinelli lose a close election.
While some may be shocked to see the Republican Party lumped in as one of Mr. Brat’s enemies, that is the cold hard truth.
The Republican establishment and the Democrat Party as well as left wing independent groups all have the same goal.
If Mr. Brat loses, the narrative that all three groups will want to advance is the GOP cannot nominate tea party insurgents because they cannot win in a general election.
The Democrats and Republican establishment want this to be the narrative. They believe they can crush the tea party if that narrative is fulfilled.
The Democrat and left wing groups want to see the tea party crushed for one simply reason. If the tea party and conservative wing of the Republican Party is crushed, all that will be left will be Republicans who are big spenders and who are Democrat lite.
If the tea party wing of the GOP can be crushed, there will be no new Ted Cruz or Mike Lee coming up. If the tea party wing of the GOP is crushed, there will be no one with conservative economic ideas, like those supported by Mr. Brat, in the party.
If these three groups can defeat the tea party wing of the GOP, then the only question is going to be how fast is government going to grow and how quickly can liberty be eroded.
The Republican establishment now views the 7th Congressional District as an expendable seat that Mr. Cantor will no longer be the nominee.
Why not?
The district is very red. If Mr. Brat loses, the loss of that one seat will not cost the Republicans control of the House of Representatives and the Republicans could take that seat back easily in two years.
Because of his stunning victory, Mr. Brat is now going to be surrounded by Republican consultants and hangers on.
If they force him into a traditional campaign, Mr. Brat will lose the general election to the Democrat, Mr. Trammell.
If Mr. Brat is going to win the election in November, he must remember what brought him there. He ran an insurgent campaign to get the nomination and he now faces the Republican establishment, the Democrat Party and its nominee as well as independent left wing groups that will be working against him.
If Mr. Brat is to win this fall, he needs outside the box thinking and campaigning to ensure a victory.
The question now is, will Dave Brat be “Dave Brat’ed” this November?
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