Posted on 02/03/2010 6:54:49 AM PST by Daniel T. Zanoza
The final vote totals aren’t in yet, but folks you have to understand in Illinois it’s par for the course. By the way, where are some of those uncounted votes sitting? In a warehouse on the west side of Chicago, according to Cook County Clerk David Orr and, of course, absentee ballots haven’t been counted yet. Remember the City of Chicago’s motto is “vote early and vote often” and even the dead are invited to cast a ballot.
However, most stunning is U.S Rep. Mark Kirk’s margin of victory in the Illinois GOP primary for the U.S. Senate. It would be extremely interesting to look at the demographics involving this contest which included five other candidates who were far to the political right of the eventual nominee.
Just who voted for Kirk? Did the Tea Party people vote for a man who voted for Cap and Trade and flip flopped on the issue just to curry favor with fiscal conservatives? Did ill-informed pro-family voters cast their ballots for Kirk because they didn’t know he was only one of a handful of Republican Congressman to vote against a ban on partial birth abortion? Or was it simply a situation of let’s support the obvious winner? In any case, Illinois is stuck with a candidate who makes the term Republican In Name Only (RINO) sound like a compliment.
THE PRO-FAMILY DEBACLE
The pro-family candidates who were running for the nomination to the U.S. Senate were doomed from the beginning. A small group of Chicago power brokers decided who social conservatives should vote for. They picked a poor candidate—Patrick Hughes—who only voted in one Republican primary in recent years and was touted to be something he wasn’t...a dynamic candidate. To add insult to injury, the individual who called the coalition together (who originally endorsed Mr. Hughes) quickly jumped on Hughes’ payroll.
The good people who firstbacked Hughes almost assuredly did not know this was the case, so this campaign failed to pass the smell test from the beginning.
Putting aside uncounted absentee ballots, with 99% of precincts reporting, Mark Kirk had garnered 57% of Republican votes cast in Tuesday’s primary. Pat Hughes received 19%, Don Lowery 9%, Kathleen Thomas 7%, Andy Martin 5% and John Arrington 3% of votes cast. A quick look at these numbers indicates if Arrington, Lowery, Martin and Thomas all would have jumped on the Hughes bandwagon, he still would have lost by a landslide.
The fact is Hughes ran a poor campaign and those who endorsed him early on have no one to blame, but themselves for Hughes’ demise or Kirk’s victory. Plus, there’s the north of I-80 factor that played a significant part in the reluctance by downstate Republicans to back Hughes. The further south of I-80 one lives, the more the anti-Chicago sentiment is prevalent, palpable and pervasive.
Subsequently, Kirk’s huge victory is a mystery. Is Illinois that far to the political left? Will Tea Party people and the pro-family movement support Kirk in the general election? Is Illinois another Massachusetts and Mark Kirk another Scott Brown? Hardly. Only time will explain this mystery. But this writer doesn’t have the answers or at least not all of them.
SOME FINAL THOUGHTS
There will be some who will surely claim this writer wasn’t visited invited to participate with the group of nine who “anointed” Pat Hughes as the chosen one. This writer would not have participated in this process, if asked to for the reasons stated above.
Second, it might just be that Illinois Republicans, like New York Republicans, aren't as conservative (on the whole) as Republicans in other states. While I'm certainly not happy with Kirk---a marginal vote on important issues at best---he almost certainly would have been a vote for a conservative judge of we get a president who can appoint one. Otherwise, you can cry in your soup or elect him and attempt to pressure him every minute into doing what the voters really want---but is that message clear in IL? I think not.
Bottom line: sometimes your options are limited. Is he better than Burris (now) or whomever the Dems run against him later? Without question.
Kirk is just another RINO - he is not a true conservative and is in fact quite liberal on social issues. He never returned any correspondence when asking for his position on abortion. He was probably trying to fly under the radar on this one.
Voted for cap and trade.
When will the Illinois GOP put up a decent candidate?
I don't like kirk but anyone was free to run, if a conservative ran and didn't win, it's too bad.
The question for Illinois voters is, now what do you do in the general election.
Although a RINO i truly hope this guy wins the seat in IL. The libs went crazy when Teddys seat went GOP imagine what they will do if they lose Obamas
The size of his victory will only embolden Kirk to become another Lincoln Chafee.
Well said.
The tea parties aren’t going away. They need to ride his sorry butt from day one.
It is precisely this victory of pragmatism over principle that earned us our well-deserved reputation as virtuosos in the latrinal art of “Chicago Politics.” If we continue down this road of always justifying our failure to elect people of principle to office, we will never get the juice to change. And yes, I will stand on it: A man who thinks it is OK to suck the brains out of babies is NOT a man of principle, no matter how you dress him up. There is no more basic constitutional, moral, ethical issue that the right of a person to live, to live freely, and to pursue the happiness of that life they hold. To deny that right, and especially in so brazen and disgusting an act of barbarism as partial birth abortion, reveals a person void of a fundamental respect for human personhood, without which there can be no reliable expectation of justice.
This insanity must stop. It can be stopped. We must believe and act as though it can be stopped. Education of the electorate is central to this plan, and that is why we need a well-financed third party. We must find ourselves an independent megaphone and loudly preach principle over pragmatism until we get the attention of the entire Illinois electorate. We must eliminate or significantly reduce the “ignorance margin,” that spectrum of Illinois voters who do not tune in until 24 hours before the election, and who really are not doing their duty as voters. The right to vote is the right to express a well-informed opinion that is likely to do the Republic good. It is not the right to obstruct good policy formation through ignorance.
And those of you who are feeling lucky you are not part of the Illinois political culture, be warned: This nightmare we are living is the future of all who neglect their political process and leave it to the “professionals,” who take it for granted, who let the dependent class mushroom into vast hordes of takers and those who feel entitled to other people’s money. Where we are, you will end up, if you do not take your electoral duties seriously.
And the first step in that process is to let yourselves get genuinely upset with failures. You read me right. The failure to find and empower qualified leaders is not trivial. The lives and well-being of your children and grandchildren are at stake. It’s time for some deep angst over how to do better next time. Churchill, who did a creditable job leading an embattled population to a victory against overwhelming odds, put it this way (paraphrased): It is not enough to say, “We did our best.” Rather, we must do what is necessary to get the job done. Get upset, conservative Illinois; you have a right to be. Then let’s give it another go in the fall.
And you can “stop the insanity” by a) electing Kirk, b) electing a Democrat, or c) not voting and electing a Democrat. Care to explain the other option?
and when they are done riding his sorry butt, they should totally teabag him!
the tea parties have to get themselves better organized within the GOP and not get sucked into pyramid schemes like on faction was.
the tea parties have to get themselves better organized within the GOP and not get sucked into pyramid schemes like one faction was.
Go wash your mouth out with soap and never mention that putrid name on this fine site again.
But there are RINOs and there are RINOs. I could justify general election support for, say, the Maine twins or even Specter when he was Republican. But there are some Republicans that are so far left that they cannot be relied on for anything, whose policy positions are absolutely indistinguishable from those of a left-wing Democrat. I’m thinking Lincoln Chafee or Dede Scozzofava. At that point you can only say “why bother?”. I think Kirk is among the latter.
Ok, I understand. So you chose “C,” which is elect the Dem.
But you have not listed all logical options. Why? You read my post, right? I specifically advanced the idea of a third party solution. No, third party doesn’t solve for every race. But surgically applied to specific races, it has real potential.
Now, before you offer the knee-jerk “that’ll never work” canard, consider the true dynamics of NY23. You had a good (if uncharismatic) conservative Republican candidate who was deliberately excluded from consideration by the state party, BECAUSE he was conservative, in favor of a raging lib wearing an R, all for the supposed pragmatic value of bragging rights over the R label beating the D label. Politics reduced to branding wars.
Therefore, when Hoffman ran with the Conservative Party, he was really running as a Republican in exile. In Illinois, the conservative third parties are likewise composed of, mostly, Republicans in exile. Some of us have been told to our face we are not welcome participants in the Republican machine, primarily because we are too conservative, and will therefore never get the backing of the Combine. We are too conservative why? Because we actually still believe in those fundamental, inalienable rights to life and liberty, and the Constitution that guarantees the protection of those rights. It is as Reagan said. We have not left the Republican Party. It has left us.
That is why we need, above all, to establish a venue for political speech of the most penetrating sort. I believe the best mechanism for that, between now and November, is to mount a well-publicized third party campaign that will fully engage the people of Illinois in discussing and deliberating upon the core issues that make conservatism superior to its alternatives, not the least principle of which is the right to life.
So add this to your list: d) vote third party or independent on a premise that this is a redux of NY23, but with an earlier start and therefore a higher likelihood of success. Like the song says, if we can do it in NY, we can do it anywhere.
Ok, D is an option. But realize that it’s much different in a congressional race with a hugely unpopular candidate (even with rank and file moderates) than in a senate race with an apparently pretty popular candidate. So, in this case, D=C in reality. I do think third party movements can work in the right circumstances, but not when it’s pretty clear that the primary voters like the alternative.
It would be best if this scumbag Kirk loses in the general election, and I hope a conservative runs as an independent to help that happen. Personally, I’d rather be stabbed in the face than stabbed in the back. Sure, decent people would have to wait 6 years to correct the situation, but that would allow time to find a conservative candidate, or at least a genuine Republican. Kirk is no Republican. he just ran on the GOP ticket and the corrupt party machinery helped him out.
I knew Illinois was a toilet, but whew...! It’s worse than I imagined.
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