Kid Icarus.

“In the pundit rush to assign a ‘why’ and a ‘how’ to Eric Cantor’s surprising loss in Tuesday night’s primary, there have been a lot of theories thrown about…[T]he more convincing explanations are the ones that, trite as it may seem, are based on some variation of Cantor having gone Washington/gotten too big for his britches/lost sight of the little people back home.”

Examining the various reasons for Eric Cantor’s unexpected fall last Tuesday — like many, I spent the evening mainlining the sweet, sweet schadenfreude via Twitter — DKos’s David Jarman argues it all comes down to hubris. “The climb through the ranks through treachery and intimidation, and then the sudden realization when you’re at the top that you’ve burned through all your allies, is almost allegorical.”

For my part, I’d argue the primary reason for Cantor’s petard-hoisting was best explained back in 2007 by August J. Pollak (which I also posted in 2010.) Play with matches, eventually you’ll get burned.

Barton Fink.

“According to a GOP leadership aide, Barton met with House Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio) and Minority Whip Eric Cantor (Va.) Thursday afternoon, and was told, ‘Apologize, immediately. Or you will lose your [subcommittee] position, immediately. Now that he has apologized, we’ll see what happens going forward.“

Republican Rep. Joe Barton, the Ranking Member of the Energy & Commerce committee, decides to use the out-loud voice and genuflects before BP’s Tony Hayward, causing all kinds of messaging trouble for Republicans today. (Then again, if they had a problem with Barton openly professing his fealty to his biggest donor, maybe they shouldn’t have put it in today’s talking points.) In any case, this one was right over the middle of the plate for the WH today. [Pic via Greg Greene.]

GOP, meet 4chan.

“We need to train an army of Ninja Cats. Cats are natural born hunters and predators, and it is known that they indeed have 9 lives, many more than the typical human life (being one). They are also excellent at hiding themselves and would be ideal for sneaking into countries and assassinating communist leaders to lessen the ever growing threat of communism, finding key terrorist leaders and shattering the global terrorist network.”

As a highly entertaining Reddit thread well put it, “House Republicans turn to the Internets for suggestions on new legislation. Internets reacts exactly how you’d expect.” The lack of their own ideas aside, the fact that nobody on the GOP saw this egregious messaging #fail coming from a mile away speaks volumes about their Internet savvy. Series of tubes! (FWIW, here’s the counter-argument — More than anything, it’s a list-builder.)

Den Down.

And another GOP scalp (chalk this one up to Foleygate): Dennis Hastert — who’s inexplicably the longest-serving Republican Speaker in US history (Joe Cannon is 2nd) — is leaving the Republican congressional leadership. Current contenders for his position include former Majority Leader John Boehner, Mike Pence, Eric Cantor, and Joe Barton.

Blunt talk.

“‘Clearly, Blunt has demonstrated great leadership; Cantor has, too,’ Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) said. ‘Are we saying we don’t trust anyone in our leadership? That makes the case that everybody in Washington is on the take, that we’re all corrupt.'” Yeah, that sounds about right…Sensing electoral doom in the growing public perception that the GOP is rife with corruption, Boehner and Shadegg contemplate joining forces to knock off Boss DeLay’s heir apparent, Roy Blunt, in the House leadership race.