ILLINOIS U.S. SENATE CANDIDATES DEBATE TONIGHT (Running AGAINST Dick Durbin)

All third party candidates for the U.S. Senate in Illinois have confirmed their intention to participate in a debate on MillerPolitics.com.

The debate will take place on Saturday, October 11th, at 7:00 p.m. central time. Candidates expected to participate are Larry Stafford of the Libertarian Party, Kathy Cummings of the Green Party and Chad Koppie of the Constitution Party. To listen to the debate, log onto: www.blogtalkradio.com/millerpolitics

This week the two major party candidates for U.S. Senate, Democratic incumbent Sen. Dick Durbin and Republican Dr. Steve Sauerberg debated twice, but Stafford, Cummings and Koppie -- all of whom will appear on the ballot -- were excluded.

“I look forward to this debate and I am grateful to Miller Politics.com for hosting it,” said Stafford. “I feel it is unfortunate that, after all of the hard work and money spent by the other candidates to secure a place on the ballot, we have not been able to express our ideas to the voters of Illinois in a debate format,” he added.

The debate will be moderated by Ben Miller, the editor/operator of MillerPolitics.com. The three candidates will be asked the same questions as Durbin and Sauerberg were asked in the debates earlier in the week.

Sauerberg and Durbin did not return phone calls to comment or participiate in this debate.

This post is an excerpt from an email I received giving me the heads up about tonight's U.S. Senate debate. It will certainly be refreshing after Steve Sauerberg's supporters were cheering Dick Durbin-lite (a.k.a. Dr. Sauerberg) for repeat vanity posts.

Did they listen to the same debates I did? Sauerberg did NOT "take Durbin apart", quite the opposite, he AGREED with Durbin most of the time and wimped out when Durbin complained about Sauerberg's ads. Most telling was Sauerberg's answer to abortion was that the U.S. Senate can do nothing and he'd worked to reduce abortion by volunteering at "crisis pregnancy centers" -- and Durbin THANKED for him for his efforts and complimented this strategy on "working together to make abortion rare". Sauerberg likewise said Durbin has done an "excellent job" on veterans issues. Right.

Sauerberg is a joke and it amazes me some freepers still back the guy. He's NOT going to win and by supporting him, all freepers are doing is encouraging the ILGOP establishment to shove more RINOs down our throats.

Actually Sauerberg's so bad that Maverick McCain looks like Jesse Helms in comparison. For example, after he won a divisive primary, McCain at least threw conservatives a bone and picked Palin as his running mate. After Sauerberg won a divisive primary, he picked the spokesman of the Log Cabin Republicans (a rabid conservative hating, outspoken gay marriage advocate) to be his spokesman. It's as if Sauerberg is TRYING to get the 45% of Republicans who opposed him in the primary to vote against him in November.

Amazingly, there are quite a few freepers who try to argue the guy is a conservative. Right, and I'm the easter bunny.

>> I'm no Sourburger fan but I didn't seen anything "divisive" about the primary ... there was no credible consevative even competing. The only competiton was crackpot Andy Martin and not-ready-for-prime-time Psak. <<

Well, the fact is Sauerberg only got 55% of the primary vote when his opponents were obscure candidates with no campaign funds who had never held office. That says more about Sauerberg's weakness to appeal to Republicans than it does about Psak and Martin.

One thing you seem to overlook is that the ILGOP and all their local affliates deliberately listed Sauerberg as the ONLY "U.S. Senate Candidate" during the primary (on all their emails, website info., mailings, etc. to party voters), even though they listed EVERY Republican Presidential candidate. Then you had Sauerberg and his staff arrogantly referring to him as "THE Republican candidate for U.S. Senate" before he had won the nomination, acting as though his opponents didn't exist, and refusing to debate them.

Finally there is the fact that every big name Republican in this state "endorsed" Sauerberg when he announced and nobody had the faintest idea who he is. This was unprecedented. Can you think of another example in the modern political history of this state where an unknown person who has never held office, announces for the highest legislative office in the country and immediately gets lockstep support from every major official in party? That was completely unprecedented and a clear effort by the state GOP to anoint Sauerberg. Jack Ryan's primary campaign was 10x better in 2004, and he never enjoyed that kind of monolithic party support for the nomination.

Sauerberg and his handlers really ticked off a huge percentage of the GOP base during the primary season. Since winning the nomination, he's done the exact opposite of what McCain did to "unite" the base -- he's done everything in the book to alienate Republican voters even more. It's like this guy wants to lose to Durbin.

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