Republicans as the Klan and “evil?” It makes about as much sense as most of the Obama socialist rants we hear

It seems that Slim Coleman, the outspoken activist who now calls himself a pastor, is going about trying to stir up support for Gov. Pat Quinn by bringing up talk of the Ku Klux Klan and forces of evil within the Republican Party.

What would Harold think of one-time ally?

To listen to Slim (whose mother named him “Walter”), the reason people shouldn’t vote for Bruce Rauner is because having a Republican Party person as governor would add strength to those forces out there who use the GOP to promote ideas that do, at times, border on racist and hateful.

THE CAPITOL FAX newsletter out of Springfield seemed to find it odd that most of the reporter-types who covered the Quinn stunt that had him being endorsed by many clergymembers (including Coleman) didn’t highlight this element.

I wasn’t at the event; I heard audio off of WBEZ-FM. But I’d wonder if it is because those of us who have been around this city for any length of time know that Coleman is capable of spewing just about anything.

The activist who was allied with Harold Washington when he was mayor and was a co-hort of former Alderman Helen Shiller when the Lady from Uptown was one of the few people who would speak out against Mayor Richard M. Daley has such a record of trash talk that this moment isn’t even in the Top 10, so to speak.

It is the kind of nonsense comment best ignored by sensible people. As for the fact that Republican Party officials are now trying to claim they’re being victimized, they come across as crybabies.

PERHAPS I’D TAKE these party officials a little more seriously if they tried to do anything about all the nonsense rhetoric we’ve been subjected to throughout the years about President Barack Obama’s socialist attitudes.

OBAMA: Socialist talk just as silly?

Or all the times any dink who wants to rant about Democrats resorts to talking about Lenin, Marx and Communism. Usually, their diatribes devolve to the point where it’s obvious most of them don’t have a clue what communism or socialism really are.

So when Coleman came out this week and talked about how the Ku Klux Klan of the early 1960s evolved into militia movements and how some of them get politically active with the Tea Party types that are now taking over Republican Party organizations all across the country?

That’s kind of a long-winded attack by Coleman, and one that is way too easily deflected.

IF THERE’S ANYTHING about this that truly surprised me, it is that Coleman is now an ordained minister. And that he has ties to the Methodist church that offered sanctuary to Elvira Arellano – the Mexican woman who hid in the church for just over a year to try to avoid deportation.

RAUNER: Do some backers have nasty motives?

The point being that to try to think of Coleman as merely a pastor who spends his time reading the Bible and trying to decipher its greater truths would be misleading.

He’s an activist who throughout the years has always shown a willingness to play political hard-ball, largely because he wants the attention. Ignoring his rants would truly be the best way for Republicans to respond to him.

Because I’m sure that Coleman is enjoying the thought that he has provoked newly-named Cook County Republican Chairman Timothy Schneider to a response. Although maybe he's less impressed by the fact that Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., for whom he does some work, feels the need to dish out an unnamed punishment, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

THE ONE THING people shouldn't want to do is to lower themselves to a hostile level. Because there are people of a certain age who remember how then-Alderman Edward R. Vrdolyak once went on the attack against Coleman so as to reign political blows on Washington.

VRDOLYAK: Dishing it out to Slim

Remember that Vrdolyak said Coleman was “the funeral director for the Nazis?" Because he permitted the wake of a neo-Nazi who was trying to get out of that movement to be held at the headquarters of the activist group he was heading up back some 30 years ago.

The sad part of our political people is that they all too often devolve to trash talk, and that neither political party has a monopoly on stupidity.

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