This new ad from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is raising some eyebrows inside the beltway. It's called “Snapshot of the Leader :: 9 am - 10 am," and features still pictures of "Cantor's daily routine from October 2011."
The video features some low-key, guitar-driven music. In the voiceover, Rep. Cantor says things like:
"I think it's better for all of us to try and pull together and root for America as one. And we need to pull together and bring out the best in our people so that we can succeed."
That all sounds well and good, but it sort of flies in the face from this passage of New York magazine's excellent recent profile of Cantor:
Having sufficiently cleansed himself of past sins, Cantor, with his finely tuned political radar, then picked up on—and, in turn, helped initiate—what has become the Republican Party’s most profound cultural shift: its belligerent intransigence. Cantor, as one prominent Republican told me, “is not a tea-party guy. He’s a business guy, a business Republican.” But he has managed to successfully elide this difference and, perhaps more than any other Republican in Congress, has politically positioned himself to take advantage of the GOP’s new obstructionist ethos. “Cantor comes from the more contemporary [Republican] school that says cooperation is a dirty word and compromise is an unpardonable sin,” says Obama adviser David Axelrod. “I think he’s a very ambitious guy who’s reading the direction of the Republican Party, and he’s trying to ride that wave.”
As for the ad, it seems to be a bit over the top for a Congressman merely running for re-election. But Cantor's office has, just in the past few weeks, refuted speculation that the Virginia Republican is quietly campaigning to be a potential vice presidential candidate. We'll continue to watch and wait to see if that turns to be true.