Maybe the biggest lesson that Republicans can take away from the stunning primary defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is that anyone that the Wall Street wing of the party loves is probably poison for everyone else.
Cantor is a decent man and a reasonable voice, which is why so many on the street loved his politics. And now the finance guys are freaking out because it looks like he was taken down by the Tea Party types who’d just love to see the likes of Goldman Sachs go down in flames. They still blame the bankers for the excessive risk-taking that gave us the 2008 meltdown, and Cantor was the bankers’ friend.
But the key takeaway is that Cantor’s just one of a long line of Wall Street favorites who have turned out to be duds on the national stage — a fact that makes the financiers’ influence in picking top GOP candidates all the more appalling.
Aside from money, what do these bankers and financiers have? Given all they did to create the 2008 crisis and the economic hardship that followed, they’re understandably despised by many Americans in both parties.
And they sure have lousy political judgment. I can’t tell you how many Wall Street types, including Republicans, told me back in 2008 that Barack Obama was a “moderate” — then were shocked when he delivered nonstop, full-on liberalism.
Wall Street’s next great hope, in 2012, was Mitt Romney, who like Cantor is reasonable and smart (he did a great job running a large private-equity firm). Romney raked in huge sums from the biggest Wall Street players suffering buyer’s remorse over Obama.
Problem was, Romney never displayed an ability to connect with people outside the financial business. So the guy who did understand the economy got trounced by an incumbent whose economic failures were (and are) manifold.
Cantor was also a favorite of the fat cats (his wife used to work at Goldman), and they treated him as if he was headed for the White House. He got big donations from the likes of Blackstone Group and Goldman; he was personally friendly with Goldman chief exec Lloyd Blankfein, and I’m told he was often on the phone with high-profile financier and GOP fund-raiser Ken Langone.
Yet insiders will tell you Cantor failed to do enough of the small things needed to keep his House seat safe, like spending enough time in his Virginia district (he apparently likes the Hamptons). Plus, he was seen as part of the ruling class in Congress — a bunch with even lower approval ratings than the president.
Of course, the Wall Street crew hasn’t learned its political lessons. Many, like Langone, are said to be still banking on New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for 2016, despite the Bridgegate fiasco and the fact that he’s done only a bit more to really change New Jersey than Democrat Andrew Cuomo has done to change New York.
Plus, the Christie-Wall Street blindness goes both ways. Right after hedge-fund impresario Steve Cohen’s firm pleaded guilty to insider-trading charges last year, the trader was welcomed at the newly re-elected Jersey governor’s swanky celebration party.
Meanwhile, Langone is trying to gin up support among his Wall Street friends for “Republicans for Cuomo,” an outfit that’s supposed to make New Yorkers think Andrew Cuomo isn’t really all that liberal. Yep: Cuomo may have embraced the agenda of the far-left Working Families Party, but the money men are supposed to support him against a smart, centrist, under-financed GOP challenger Rob Astorino.
Listening to Langone’s pitch might be good for the business interests of the New York fat cat crowd, but it’s bad for the rest of us — just check the unemployment rate, particularly upstate.
Back on the national level, after Cantor’s defeat and amid Christie’s troubles, these guys are poised to stampede to Hillary Clinton, joining Wall Street Dems like Larry Fink of Blackrock, who figure a vote for Hillary is a vote for the third term of her Wall Street-friendly husband — the guy whose banking-deregulation and anything-goes-mortgage policies put the country on the path to the 2008 crisis.
Bottom line: When it comes to choosing political leaders, listening to Wall Street is a sure recipe for disaster. Given the track record of most of these people, the rank-and-file voter is better off tuning them out.
Charles Gasparino is a Fox Business Network senior correspondent.