Cantor’s defeat leaves a hole. Now who will be the House GOP’s Wall Street guy? Normally, that job could fall to the Financial Services Committee chairman. But the man with that gavel today, Jeb Hensarling, is notably a lukewarm fundraiser — a fact that has stunted his ambitions for a party leadership job. More importantly, Hensarling’s free-market views put him at odds with the financial sectors on 2014’s most pressing issues before his committee: Fannie Mae, terrorism insurance subsidies, flood insurance subsidies and export-financing subsidies.

So what’s the GOP to do about Wall Street?

Maybe Republicans should take a cue from the voters of Virginia’s 7th District and forget about the big banks and the hedge funds.

Cantor’s closeness to Wall Street was supposed to be a strength. It proved a liability. This is true for the GOP as a whole. Bush bailed out Wall Street, which helped push the Democrats to victory in 2008. Mitt Romney sidled up to Wall Street, and Democrats used that fact to drag down the GOP in 2012.