by Christopher Manion
I still remember the day - June 2, 1964.
My new banjo arrived in the afternoon (on Railway Express - this was pre-Woodstock, remember), and late that evening, the news came in that Barry Goldwater had won the California primary, defeating New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller by two percentage points.
I'm still playing that banjo, and that election is still changing history.
On June 10, another earthquake hit, this time shaking the Seventh Congressional District of Virginia to its core.
And it's going to make history too.
Last week, Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who had been tipped as the natural successor to House Speaker John Boehner, was soundly defeated by Dave Brat, an economics professor, for the Republican nomination.
I remember when Democrat Majority Whip John Brademas - my Congressman - lost his longtime seat to a Republican businessman who, like Brat, was a political novice in 1980.
It was a pretty big deal, but Brademas' loss was drowned out by the the Reagan victory, a political earthquake that would never have happened without that California primary 16 years before.
Like Cantor, Brademas was accustomed to being reelected almost automatically - until he wasn't.
If past is prologue, the defeat of Cantor by a political unknown does not augur well for the Republican Establishment - or for the Democrats: it's hard to tell, on any given day, which of them hates conservative upstarts like Brat the most.
Suddenly, there’s a fight in the conservative movement over … Jeff Flake. 
