"Eric Cantor . . . reminds some people of why they were glad to leave high school behind" (Hendrik Hertzberg)

Eric Cantor: Not a GOP heretic after all,
it turns out, "just a run-of-the-mill martyr"

by Ken

New Yorker senior editor Hendrik Hertzberg, following hard upon a blogpost called "Answer Me These Heresies Three," in which he had some fun with GOP presidential contenders Rick Santorum (caught paying tribute to superior European social mobility), Herman Cain (burbling incoherently about something or other), and Mitt Romney (defending Massachusetts's Willardcare against a ritual attack from the aforementioned Rick Santorum), posted a follow-up that seemed poised to stretch his original choice of three (count 'em, three) heresies (the number inspired by Monty Python and the Holy Grail: "Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count . . . ").

Thanks to a late save, though, HH manages to disqualify his new contender from the "Republican heretic" ranks, and the mystical harmony of threeness is preserved.

From HH's newyorker.com blog:

October 24, 2011
HERESIES, CONT’D: FOUR SHALT THOU NOT COUNT
Posted by Hendrik Hertzberg

A week ago, Eric Cantor, who reminds some people of why they were glad to leave high school behind, went on Fox News Sunday and said the Fox News/Republican Party unsayable:

We agree that there’s too much income disparity in this country.

Expanding on this remarkable admission, the House Majority Leader added that “we”, i.e., Republicans and Democrats alike,

know in this country right now that there is a complaint about folks at the top end of the income scale, if they make too much, and too many don’t make enough. Well, we need to both go encourage those at the top of the income scale to actually put their money to work to create more jobs so that we can see a closing of the gap. You know, we are about income mobility and that’s what we should be focussed on to take care of the income disparity in this country.

Adepts at code-breaking will understand that “encouraging those at the top of the income scale to actually put their money to work” is Cantorspeak for cutting rich people’s income taxes, gutting environmental and financial regulations, and, probably, abolishing corporate taxes, capital gains taxes, and inheritance taxes altogether. Still, good for Cantor for recognizing that the “complaint” is valid. (And good for Occupy Wall Street for doing the complaining.)

Not only that, but Cantor was all set to give a lecture Friday afternoon on that very formerly taboo subject, income inequality (or “disparity,” as he prefers to call it), at Wharton, the University of Pennsylvania’s business school. Around lunchtime, he suddenly bailed out, so to speak, after learning that the speaker series of which his lecture was to be a part is open to the general public, riled-up Occupy fans and business-school students alike.

Cantor, therefore, is not really a fully qualified heretic [You can disregard this link; it's just to the earlier "Heresies Three" post -- Ed.], just a run-of-the-mill martyr.

Update: Tim Noah reads the prepared text of the speech Cantor was going to give, and suggests that its cancellation was an act of euthanasia.

Thanks to Mr. H anyway for his charming image of Majority Leader Cantor as the ghost of high school past, and also for calling attention to the incident -- which I'd been meaning to take note of -- of Majority Leader Cantor's panicky pullout from the Wharton School speech upon discovering that he wouldn't be addressing a private audience of friendlies.

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