Walsh emerges as first potential primary challenger to Kirk

CHICAGO - Former Republican congressman and conservative radio host Joe Walsh says he's "seriously looking into" a primary challenge to U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk next year. He told Illinois Review he will decide within the next two months.

Citing Kirk's lack of support for Jim Oberweis' 2014 challenge to Dick Durbin, Walsh told the Daily Herald: "As far as I'm concerned, he [Kirk] left the Republican Party."

The usual political pontificators speculate that Walsh is merely looking to boost ratings, and will ultimately not run. "It's about him and promoting himself and promoting his positions. He's just not viable,” said former professor Kent Redfield.

Kirk, who is a top Democrat target in 2016, suffered a stroke in 2012, which has left him with slurred speech, difficulty concentrating, and bound to a wheelchair much of the time.

Walsh argues that Kirk has used his stroke to garner sympathy and scare away other potential primary challengers. “I think because of his overall physical condition I don't know anyone else who would consider challenging him and that's just plain wrong,” he said. “If you privately talk to people who would ordinarily primary him, they'd all say ‘he's got no business running, but I can't challenge him, look at who he is, people are going to say I'm mean spirited because I'm challenging him.'”

Walsh believes Kirk's health is part of the reason he shouldn't run and will likely lose if he's the GOP nominee. Kirk insists he's running, and told The Hill “Based on the polling, I'd say a Republican candidate would be very foolish to come up against me… that'd be a pretty stupid move.”

It’s not as simple as that, as you know. Duckworth would have to be the preferred choice of the Combine to defeat Kirk. At present, it serves their interests to keep one foot in the majority party with Kirk and the other as the Minority Whip with Durbin. Duckworth would upset the balance, since she would then become the juniormost backbencher in the minority.

Only if Walsh upset Kirk would the Combine bring their forces behind Duckworth (in the same way they did in 1996 when designated Republican winner Bob Kustra was upended by Al Salvi and they were forced to come behind Durbin, initially a designated ringer).

I completely disagree with the notion that the combine acts with one mind in any election where both nominees are acceptable to them. Their aim to be covered on both sides.

Democrat combiners are still democrats through and through, Republican combiners are still, to a much lesser extent, still Republicans, the more conservative ones at least, like Hastert. They (dem combiners) only help the Republican win the general on the rare occasions when the dem is a non-combiner. (Dan Walker, who won in spite of them in 1972, Poshard?)

Make no mistake, combine democrats would prefer to replace Kirk with a combine democrat, they want their party to have a majority again in the next couple of cycles, IL is a seat they need. The IL seat will be probably the #1 rat target and the dem combiners will not be on the opposite side of the DSCC. If they want Kirk to win they would be discouraging strong candidates from running. If Suckworth, Foster, Madigan, Bustos, ect all pass on the race, then that would qualify as evidence that they want Kirk to win.

And they (dem combiners) may be (mostly, not on unions, which is why they wanted Dillard to win the primary even though he was overall more conservative) cool with Rauner but they preferred Quinn (any notion he was a independent of the combine went out the door when he was not primaired, he got fully on board after his close call with Hynes in the 2010 primary), Rauner got less than a third of the vote in Cook County (5 points better than Brady, the kind of gain you would expect for a social liberal to get from solib RINOS who voted for Quinn over Brady), if they (Dem combiners) wanted to ensure his victory they could gotten him more votes in Cook than that.

They (dem combiners) also preferred Alexi! in 2010. Which is why he nearly won. Kirk got 31% in Cook.

They (dem combiners) also preferred Michael Friechs in the Treasuer’s race over combine RINO Tom Cross, which is why they stole it for him via late counting in Cook Country weeks after the election (please).

Durbin probably would have beaten Kustra, by a somewhat smaller margin than he beat Salvi. It was 1996, that was not a good year for Illinois Republicans. I find the idea that he gave up his House seat (which was the only thing we gained in IL that year) with the intention of taking a dive for Kustra to be preposterous. Dick Durbin was already a major player in the state rat party, their #1 downstate boy, not some glass-jawed chump serving no greater role than an insurance policy in case Salvi won the GOP primary.

An example of a “ringer” would be Uberdouche running against Durbin last year, GOP combiners clearly have zero intertest in opposing him. Uberdouche is such a megalomaniac he probably didn’t even realize it.

To the point, I didn’t say Durbin wouldn’t get anything out of being the designated Dem loser for 1996 (and I do believe Kustra was their designated winner, since with a GOP Senate majority at the time, they needed him to serve the role Kirk does now), he was likely to be positioned for a future run for Governor.

Durbin was occupying a House seat that was highly marginal (had Paul Findley, his anti-Zionist RINO predecessor not occupied it, allowing him to beat him, it’s unlikely Durbin or another Dem would’ve held it) and he was imperiled, especially in the ‘90s. Shimkus probably would’ve beaten him before long. He really had little to lose in leaving the House seat.

Where the Combine has more problems controlling outcomes is with the primaries (which is why they tend to use strong-arm tactics behind the scenes to keep candidates out). But in the general, I have no hesitation declaring they are in charge of what happens. I absolutely believe they fixed Kirk’s win in 2010 just as much as they fixed Brady’s “loss” and Rauner’s “win.”

These aren’t necessarily exclusively people holding office, and I’m sure many of those would not want the publicity. It’s not some group that also necessarily meets in secret and plots. We know Old Man Daley was a big part of it up until his death in 1976. If I had to pick the central ringmaster for the group (who is holding office), it would be Speaker Mike Madigan. Beyond that, you’d have to follow the money or the strings, and see where it goes, but it is deeply ingrained in both parties and the business community along with labor, political activists and (of course) “community organizers.”

>> I don’t think the democrats love Kirk and Rauner as much as we hate them. >> I don’t claim it to be Democrats loving them, this is about business and which individuals best serve the interests of the Combine. <<

Excellent point. There's a difference in what motivates the rank-and-file base of the Democrat voters (i.e. teachers unions, minority voters, welfare leeches, etc.) and what motivates the political elite controlling Democrat politics in Illinois.

Does the "average" Dem voter love Kirk and Rauner? Obviously not. As I've said, your typical Illinois RAT despises Rauner because he's rich and a successful buisnessman, no matter how much he agrees with them. A lot of the Dem activists I've seen on the internet absolutely despise Mark Kirk, and laughably see him as a George Bush clone, in much the same way the deranged left couldn't stand Joe Lieberman even though he does their bidding 95% of the time. The unwashed masses in Chicago are going to blindly vote "D" in the general election no matter who the candidate is. It doesn't matter if the Republican is actually more liberal or if the RAT is a rare example of a non-machine candidate.

But do the Democrat ELITES ("the richest 1%" as the left would say it) pulling the strings in this state love Rauner and Kirk? Absolutely. It varies depending on whats happening currently in politics (I think the combine no longer has any use for Kirk since his stroke, which is why a real Dem opponent like Duckworth will be "allowed" to run against him), and Rauner might have angered his combine masters with his executive order against unions. But the bottom line is that when the choice was Kirk or Alexi and Rauner or Quinn, I think the political elite in this state (Madigan and his pals) worked behind-the-scenes to ensure Kirk/Rauner was the winner, and even unofficially endorsed them in public. The fact it was combiner vs. combiner in the general election was a win-win for them, since even if they're preferred candidate didn't win the general election, they'd still have the other guy on their puppet strings as backup insurance.

The combine does help swing elections regardless of what the RAT base does. I have no doubt that Quinn easily won the black vote. But thanks to Meeks and others combiners pimping rich white guy Rauner, if Rauner ever got 10% of the black vote compared to the typical Republican's 5%, it would have had a significant impact.

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