Two things come to mind:
1) The Tea Party movement wasn’t as involved in this one.
2) Fine, let the rinos finance this campaign. Get them to motivate the base. We’ll see how that goes.
Another problem was the early date for the Primary (according to what had to be the Hughes campaign on Sean Hannity). Illinois moved the primary date up big time in 2007/2008 for the Presidential primary, and then simply did not move it back to normal. This circumstance favored Mark Gurk.
No - THIS is the type of area that conservatives UNITED should RUN a candidate to oppose BOTH the Dem and the Republican in the general election.
Properly chosen, a much more conservative candidate in this area can allow the Dem and Gop to split the liberals and garner sufficient conservatives to take a 38% victory - much as Buckley was able to do in his 1970 NY Senate victory on the conservative ticket.
This is a good example of the place for Tea partiers to concentrate effort and money outside the GOP.