First, the very serious people inside the Beltway are freaking for a number of reasons:

• The results sh%$ on their “tea party is dead, and the Republican adults are back” meme.
• David Cantor was “people like them”, in that he was a soulless apparatchik climber.
• Freaking out is what they do.

As to the significance, I think that this is all about, as TBogg so eloquently, “All things considered, Eric Cantor probably lost because he’s a dick.”

On a slightly more serious note, Cantor did not take his constituents seriously.

To paraphrase Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill story goes, Cantor never asked for their votes.

The Beltway consensus is that it was all about immigration, but as TBogg, and many others noted, immigration reform was supported by nearly 4 to 1 in the district, and that same night, Lindsay Graham not only won his primary, but did so in a large field with enough of a margin to avoid a runoff.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think that Cantor being Jewish had much to do with his loss, with a margin over 11% in a district that he had dominated before, but I do think that some of the advertising did seem to invoke this (though note that in the article, Salon solipsistically posits that it was anti-Silicon Valley sentiment).

Looking at the ad, where he’s hanging with Mark Zuckerberg, I feel compelled to invoke Mr. Subliminal.

You have an ad with the picture Cantor a guy with a Jewish name who looks stereotypically Jewish, and accuses him of giving their jobs to foreigners, and I wonder if this is not a sly reference to his religion.