Last week, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) praised activists at the Value Voters Summit, telling them they were, “fighting on the fighting lines of what we know is a battle for our democracy.” “People are beginning to wake up and see a country they don’t really recognize,” said Cantor. Approached by ThinkProgress at a public forum yesterday on health care, Cantor refused to answer whether he still believed that President Obama or his policies were somehow a threat to American democracy:
Q: You told tea party activists that they are on the “fighting lines,” that was your quote, of defending our democracy. Do you really think Obama is a threat to our democracy?
CANTOR: What I do think is that we’ve had an unprecedented 8 months in Washington of continued increase in bailouts [...]
Q: So just to be clear, our democracy is completely secure under Obama?
CANTOR: I think we need to be very, very cognizant of the drift that we are seeing towards more government takeover [...]
Watch it:
While Cantor appears to be walking back from his previous comments, Newt Gingrich echoed Cantor yesterday at a neoconservative revival conference. Gingrich proclaimed that the Obama administration is “waging a war against democracy.”
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