Laura Ingraham Helped Propel Dave Brat's Campaign — #VA07

Laura Ingraham slams sham tea party "patriot" Jenny Beth Martin at the clip below.

And boy, Ingraham really racked up the creds with this insurgent win out of Virginia's 7th congressional district.

Even the far-left New York Times pumped and praised her impact on the race, "Potent Voices of Conservative Media Propelled Cantor Opponent: David Brat Was Aided by Influential Figures Like Laura Ingraham":

If Eric Cantor needed evidence that his political career was in real trouble, all he had to do was look outside his living room window one night last week. At a stately country club about half a mile from his home in the affluent Richmond suburb of Glen Allen, so many people had come to see the radio talk show host Laura Ingraham stump for Mr. Cantor’s opponent in the Republican primary, David Brat, that the overflow parking nearly reached his driveway.

Ms. Ingraham was so taken aback at the size of the crowd — inside the clubhouse, hundreds of people crammed onto staircase landings, leaned over railings and peered down at her from above — she wondered aloud what was really going on.

“We all looked at each other, saying, ‘He could totally win,'” Ms. Ingraham said in an interview. “I’ve had two moments in American politics in the last 15 years where I knew there was a big change afoot. One was when I left the Iowa caucuses in 2008. I walked out of there and said to a friend, ‘Barack Obama is going to win.’ And the other was when I left that rally last Tuesday.”

Few people did more than Ms. Ingraham to propel Mr. Brat, a 49-year-old economics professor who has never held elected office before, from obscurity to national conservative hero. And few stories better illustrate how his out-of-nowhere victory was due in large part to a unique and potent alignment of influential voices in conservative media.

Crucially, voices like Ms. Ingraham’s combined with shoe-leather, grass-roots campaign work by a highly organized local conservative movement to fill a void left by the absence of support from national Tea Party organizations and boldface Republican Party names.

Mr. Brat may have been turned away when he asked for financial support from well-funded conservative groups, and he was largely ignored by the national and local news media, which considered Mr. Cantor, the No. 2 Republican in the House, a shoo-in. But he was a known quantity to the loyal audiences of radio personalities like Ms. Ingraham and Mark Levin, a Reagan aide and a revered figure in the conservative movement, and Breitbart.com, the website founded by the provocateur Andrew Breitbart.

Together, Mr. Levin and Ms. Ingraham reach nearly 10 million people each week. And the Breitbart sites log 60 million page views each month. Those audiences are heavy with engaged, politically motivated voters who turn out in Republican primaries — the kind of voters who came out for Mr. Brat on Tuesday.  “Of the 70,000 voters yesterday in Virginia, I am sure 95 percent go to Drudge, Breitbart, Mark Levin or Laura Ingraham every day, multiple times a day,” said Stephen K. Bannon, who wears many hats as a radio host, a filmmaker and the executive chairman of Breitbart.

More.

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