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Here’s a prediction: when all’s said and done and the debt ceiling fight is finally over, Eric Cantor is going to be a lot further away from becoming Speaker of the House than he was six months ago. Every days he’s looking more and more like a petulant child playing media games and less and less like a principled statesman working in the best interests of the country. He thinks he’s being clever and savvy, but the rest of the country is seeing a grasping, opportunistic politician who thinks that posturing for Fox News is more important than facing up to serious problems. He’s setting his career back a decade.

UPDATE: Greg Sargent points out that Democrats are apparently doing everything they can to speed up Cantor’s demise. Harry Reid lit into him pretty harshly a few minutes ago, but Greg isn’t sure this is going to hurt Cantor: “If his intransigence on revenues is earning him high profile criticism from Beltway journalists and from the Senate Majority Leader and even the President, this will only turn him into more of a crusading anti-tax hero in some people’s eyes.” Maybe so. But unless he changes his tune pretty quickly, I think he’s losing the support of all but the hardest of the hard core.