How Eric Cantor Can Turn Around His Legacy

If Eric Cantor's story ends today, history will remember him only as "the highest-ranking Republican to suffer defeat in a primary," Juan Williams observes at The Hill. But Williams thinks there's a way Cantor can use his final days to rescue his legacy: He can revive the Voting Rights Act, which the Supreme Court gutted last year. Cantor is one of the only House Republicans to publicly support the VRA, and earlier this year traveled to Mississippi and Alabama to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the civil rights movement's "Freedom Summer."

After an emotional meeting with the brother of slain Jewish civil rights worker Andrew Goodman, Cantor told Williams that he and his son had gone on a previous civil rights pilgrimage through the South, calling it a "profound experience" that made him "a better person." Now the gears are moving in the Senate to fix the country's voting laws, with Democrats blaming House Republicans for gumming up the works. "The stage is set for Cantor to change the narrative," Williams writes. "If he did so, he would exit the political stage as a hero." Click for his full column. (More Eric Cantor stories.)