In one more clear signal that the Tea Party is not dead, on Saturday, Tea Party activists ousted a top ally of Eric Cantor’s from a key Virginia chairmanship in Cantor’s own district:

Conservatives mobilized against Linwood Cobb – the powerful, incumbent 7th district GOP Chair who was working with Cantor’s top establishment consultants and political action committees to take power away from grassroots delegates – to elect Fred Gruber to the chairmanship.

The victory was surprising because Cantor’s district, in the state capital of Richmond, is home to much of the GOP establishment machinery that wards off such insurgencies.

The upset is a clear sign that conservatives are clear on the battle in front of them:

Patrick McSweeney, a former Chair of the Republican Party of Virginia who helped organize the efforts along with others like Jamie Radtke and Russ Moulton, told Breitbart News that in a “contentious” convention, Tea Party conservatives “were joined by other disaffected people in the District in showing their disgust with the heavy-handed way the Cantor machine had been attempting to control the Party.”

Cantor had a hard time hiding his contempt in the face of the defeat:

Cantor also spent time at the convention attacking his primary opponent Dave Brat, whom Gruber, the new district Chair, supported.

“It is easy to sit in the rarified environs of academia, in the ivory towers of a college campus with no accountability and no consequence. When you throw stones, you throw stones at all of us who are working every day to make a difference,” Cantor said, according to the Washington Post.

Facing boos and heckles, Cantor appeared unsure of himself, attendees said.

Unsure of himself, indeed. Rock on Tea Party.

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