Last night I attended a reception with Virginia Congressman Eric Cantor, the second most powerful Republican House member, a solid conservative, and the only Jewish Republican in the House (and one with a southern accent).

I have a positive opinion of Cantor, and back in August I wrote that he was one of my favorites to take McCain's VP job. Now he's a rising GOP star, and the Democrats know it.

With that said, I wasn't thoroughly impressed with his (admittedly informal) talk at the reception. In short he made the following points:

1. The GOP has to rediscover fiscal conservatism (this was the best point of the night).
2. The GOP can't let itself be the party of the corrupt.
3. The GOP shouldn't be the obstructionist party, it should be constructive.
4. Blindly following Reagan's moves isn't necessarily what we should do. The genius of Reagan is that he identified the issues of the day and applied conservative principles to them. We should do the same now, for example with health care.
5. The GOP needs to reach out to the young.

Ok, fine and dandy. Nothing exceptional, nothing specific.

So afterwards, I talked to him briefly and asked him his thoughts on the battle of principles within the GOP and its implications on GOP primaries. I won't go into detail, but suffice it to say that I was a little disheartened that one of the conservative stars in Congress didn't seem passionate about bringing in more conservatives at the cost of unseating liberal Republicans.

Now he was receptive and kindly asked me for my thoughts on the matter, which I offered (though admittedly not with the persuasiveness of my recent column on the matter). But at the end of the day, if we can't count on conservatives like Cantor to help shape a more conservative Republican caucus on the Hill, can we count on anyone?