The weird thing that happened when Eric Cantor lost his primary is that the House Republicans
replaced Eric Cantor with basically the other Eric Cantor. His name is Kevin McCarthy. He
was the #3 to Eric Cantor's #2. And he was Eric Cantor's choice to succeed him. So you
have this moment where Eric Cantor loses in a primary because Republican voters in his
district reject him, and then just gets replaced by a guy who is like exactly the same. But
Kevin McCarthy wanted to show that he had heard the dissatisfaction of the Republicans
who ousted Cantor. And so what he did was he came out against something called the Export-Import
Bank. "I think that Ex-Im bank is one, something that government does not have to be involved
in." The Export-Import bank is an 80-year-old program that subsidizes foreign buyers of
American exports. So an Indian airline gets loan guarantees to buy Boeing's airplanes.
It usually passes with no problem, but right now -- and this is where it gets interesting
-- the Export-Import Bank has become the proving ground for a movement inside the Republican
party called the Conservative Reform. And what they want to do is they think that recent
Republican presidents -- when Republicans get a chance to govern they are not sufficiently
conservative. The accept the basic structure of the democratic welfare state. What they
don't do is build a new conservative state in its place. So what the conservative reformers
are arguing is that if conservatives are actually going to change the government, if they're
actually going to make it smaller and more free-market-oriented, then Republicans need
to learn how to fight big business. And the Export-Import Bank is the first place you're
really seeing them get Republicans to fight big business. It is supported by the Chamber
of Commerce. It's supported by the National Manufacturers Association. It's supported
by all the big business trade groups you normally think of Republicans as being very, very close
to. But in this case, they're beginning to lose the support of key Republicans. They
lost Kevin McCarthy now. They lost Paul Ryan. They lost Jeb Hensarling. Rand Paul is an
opponent of the Export-Import Bank. This is like for conservative reformers what the
Keystone XL pipeline is like for the climate justice movement. It doesn't solve the problem
on its own, but it's a win. And you build movements off of wins. For the first time
it looks like conservative reformers might be able to actually change how Republicans
vote on an important matter of policy. So this is a fight worth watching. Not because
the Export-Import Bank itself is such a big deal. There are good arguments on both sides
of that. But if it is flattened, if it is allowed to expire then we're actually looking
a potentially a different Republican Party. We're looking at a movement that began as
an intellectual idea become a real political force. And we're looking at the possibility
that the next Republican president might govern really different than the last couple.