The Economics Professor Who Beat Eric Cantor Last Night Couldn't Answer A Question About The Minimum Wage

The morning after his stunning victory over House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Virginia congressional nominee Dave Brat struggled with one of his first interviews in the spotlight of national television.

Brat, an economics professor at Randolph Macon College, ducked a question about raising the minimum wage and seemed generally reluctant to talk about policy issues during an interview with MSNBC's Chuck Todd.

During the interview, Todd asked him whether he thinks there should be a minimum wage.

"Um, I don't have a well-crafted response on that one," Brat said.

"All I know is if you take the long-run graph over 200 years of the wage rate, it cannot differ from your nation's productivity. Right? So you can't make up wage rates. Right? I would love for everyone In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, or children of God to make $100 an hour. Right? I would love to just assert that that would be the case but you can't assert that unless you raise their productivity and then the wage follows."

Todd followed up by saying it "sounded like" Brat was making the case against a federally mandated minimum wage. Brat ducked his follow-up question.

"Hey, Chuck, I thought we were just going to chat today about the celebratory aspects," Brat said. I'd love to go through all of this but my mind is just - I didn't get much sleep last night."

Here's the clip: