However, the unfortunate reality of the situation is that Pat Hughes is the only one able to get his message out. No one has heard of Arrington or Lowery outside of their home towns. A bunch of so-called conservative "leaders" had a little closed door meeting and decided Hughes is the one, so rather than pick the best conservative they decided to go with the guy that had the "most money" and shoved everyone else to the sidelines. I don't agree with that decision (as Phil noted, the ideal situation would be to have a statewide conservative straw poll and get all the Senate candidates to agree to drop out and throw their support behind whoever wins, but the Hughes people didn't want to do that because they were afraid they'd lose). And quite frankly I'm sick of the conservatives in Illinois who keep beating the "wealthy outsider = victory" dead horse.
Still, we do have to face reality now that Hughes is likely to get the most votes because of the bullying efforts from our conservative "leaders". With Eric Wallace out of the primary (though not out of the limelight because he's gearing up to run as an Indy against Kirk in the fall if the RINO wins the primary), national leaders have begun to coalesce behind Hughes as well. Unless the situation chances drastically, Hughes is probably going to pose the biggest threat to Kirk.
As spintreebob noted the best thing Hughes has going for him now is that he's not Mark Kirk. To Hughes credit, he's done an excellent job researching Kirk's record and is able to articulate to the public the truth about how Kirk is really a liberal extremist and backstabber. His message is spot on. Hughes has been less successful at promoting himself to the public and has made several mistakes early in the campaign that are typical of first time candidates. Right now the Kirk people can argue Hughes isn't ready for prime time. Let's pray he improves and gets his act together for the rest of the primary.
Yes have multiple candidates splitting the conservative vote but I don't see the situation comparable to 2006 when Oberweis had lost multiple times in a row yet a bunch of conservatives were demanding we all vote for him anyway to "stop Topinka" because he had the most name recognition, nevermind the fact he would have been steamrolled by Blago in November and been as helpful in advancing the conservative cause as Keyes was, morale victory of "beating Topinka" aside.
Hughes isn't likely to hurt us at the top of the ticket the way Oberweis would have, and I doubt any of the Hughes supporters will start a sleazy whisper campaign claiming anyone who doesn't like Hughes is a "Kirk plant" the way Obie's fan club did with that "Bill Brady is a Topinka plant" garbage (which yes, many Oberweis supporters STILL rehash as an anti-Brady argument FOUR YEARS LATER, in spite of spintreebob saying everyone has "gotten over it". I'll believe it when they stop the conspiracy theory stuff and just own up to the fact Brady was the better conservative candidate in '06). Ask Impy, you still hear the "Brady is bad cuz he's bed with Topinka" argument on a regular basis.
Bottom line is I'm probably going to end up voting for Hughes in February, but whether he can "beat Kirk" depends on whether Hughes can get his act together.
BB,
Agreed, Hughes is the only option now. Arrington and Wallace are young. They should lay groundwork for their futures.
Hughes has several things to learn. He can’t do it all.
1) Knowing the details of how Kirk voted and what Kirk said should be left to surrogates for now. Hughes should not bother himself with those details. Maybe in the last week of the campaign this needs to change. but for now, the rest of us should beat up on Kirk, especially on the details.
2) Hughes needs to develop an articulate position with articulate rationale for those positions. Taxes, spending, Thomson, healthcare, climate change, etc, etc. In an interview he can’t tell the Carol Marin’s of the media “I don’t know. I’ll have to study it.” on so many issues as he has with friendly interviewers on talk radio.
3) Most importantly, Hughes needs to become campaign savvy. Tom Roeser had Hughes as a guest on WLS Sunday night and threw softballs at Hughes. The progressive guest Joe Moore went out of his way to help Hughes by articulating the liberal position. Not only was Hughes unable to converse on the topics, Hughes got defensive with Tom and was clueless that Tom was lobbing softballs at him in an attempt to help him.
Hughes needs to be able to discriminate between softballs, hardballs and curve balls. Maybe he and Sarah Palin could go to the same training class. Groups like CLI-Campaign Leadership Institute are giving these classes all the time precisely for the likes of Hughes.