Conspiring to take down “The Donald.” Can GOP pull it off in next 100 days?

TRUMP: A conspiracy to deny the nomination

This truly is an election cycle that makes no sense.

The oft-cited difference between the two major political parties in this country is that the Republicans know how to strong-arm their members to get things done, whereas Democrats often let their differences split them up into factions that keep them from uniting.

SO WHEN IN 2016 we have situations where each presidential primary has a candidate determined to gain themselves the nomination at the expense of the political party establishment, you’d think we’d have radically different results.

But this year, it seems that the Democrats are the ones who are capable of keeping some semblance of order to making their presidential pick – Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont may have a faction of supporters who say they’d NEVER cast a ballot for Hillary Clinton.

But the Democratic establishment is such that Hillary has a significant lead in achieving the delegate count she needs to gain the party nomination when they all convene in Philadelphia later this year.

The Sanders people, many of whom are younger folks who don’t quite comprehend the ways of electoral politics, will whine and scream all they want. But it doesn’t seem likely they’ll prevail.

WHICH NORMALLY IS what we’d expect from the Republican side of the aisle. But it certainly isn’t happening here.

Because it’s pretty clear that the last thing the Republican political establishment wants is the notion of Donald Trump as their presidential nominee. The man is a political and personal buffoon with the potential to scare enough voters into the arms of Hillary Clinton to make up for the youthful radical types who claim there’s no way they’d ever vote for her.

CRUZ: More 'rational' Republican choice?

But the garish New York real estate developer is well on his way to gaining the delegate count that would make his nomination at the Republican Convention in Cleveland a mere formality.

Which is why I found the New York Times to be amusing with their weekend report about how the GOP top dogs are plotting amongst themselves to figure out ways that Trump can be denied the presidential nomination.

PERSONALLY, I FIND it even more scary that the Republican idea of a better alternative to Trump is that Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, gets the nomination. He’s got his own ideologue streak and would be likely inflict some serious harm on our society,

CLINTON: More rational choice for real people

As opposed to Trump, who really isn’t an ideologically-oriented kind of guy! He’s just an over-bloated ego, and one who never really took the time to study the society around him.

Because, after all, it’s all about himself! The rest of us just need to adapt ourselves to his way of thinking – is about the way he sees things.

As reported by the Times, it’s going to be a 100-day strategy beginning with the Wisconsin primary next month, and running into the summer. Turn the other presidential hopefuls into the credible candidates who will start winning primaries and caucuses.

SO THAT BY the time that process is done in mid-June, nobody has enough delegates to make the GOP convention an over-glorified pep rally in their honor. Then, it becomes a matter of twisting and turning enough arms of delegates until someone else, anybody else, gets the presidential nomination.

There’s talk of bringing in people not currently in the running (or perhaps resurrecting someone like former Texas Gov. Rick Perry who dropped out of contention months ago). Some pretty serious conspiring just to overcome the fact that the Republican Party has been too weak to kill off a political amateur like Trump months ago.

Personally, I’m inclined to agree with Trump on one point – that if he now were to fail after all the support he has gained, it would be perceived by his supporters as a plot and they’d figure out some way to revolt. He’s right.

If the Republican Party were truly capable of denying Trump the presidential nomination, they’d have figured out a way of carrying out such action months ago.

IT MAY BE too late to do much to stop the idea of Trump from being a factor, particularly since his followers are definitely the type of people who won’t be bothered to vote if their beloved nit-wit doesn’t make the final ballot.

STEVENSON: Let nation experience '86 Ill. chaos!

There’s even some speculation that Republican establishment types may put together a third political party or back an independent presidential choice. We ought to ask Adlai Stevenson III how that works – remember his own “Solidarity Party” Illinois gubernatorial bid of 1986 when Lyndon LaRouche followers hijacked his Democratic Party nomination by choosing waspy-sounding running mates over Democratic establishment types like “Sangmeister” and “Pucinski?”

Then again, there’s also the similarity between that election cycle and Trump – in that there is evidence that some Trump delegates failed to get chosen because their names sounded “too foreign” to the majority of those who like the idea of an amateur like Trump living and working in the White House.

And it may well be the Democratic operatives who get the biggest laugh of this situation, since it’s usually themselves who suffer from such chaos and inability to get things done.

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Rival states take their pot-shots at Illinois, Land of Lincoln fights back!!!

It’s not at all odd to see the states of the Great Lakes region compete amongst each other to gain some sort of edge in the public eye – I’m old enough to remember those “Gov. Thompson (as in Tommy, not Jim) Welcomes You to Wisconsin” signs that used to greet people driving north on Interstate 94 out of Illinois.

We don't always play nice w/ each other

Or all those “Illinoyed” billboards that Indiana used as part of a state campaign to try to encourage businesses to relocate to the Hoosier state.

IT WORKED IN terms of drawing some small companies across the border – to parts where they’d still be close to Illinois and the Chicago metro area, which was the source of their real business.

But it never managed to draw anything huge away from Illinois – after all, no matter what the lower tax rates would be, you’d still be in Indiana. “You get what you pay for” is the rule that ought to apply here.

The point of this recollection is that it’s not new for the Midwestern states bound together by their proximity to Lake Michigan and the other Great Lakes to see each other as rivals.

So perhaps it shouldn’t be odd to learn that the Whole Foods chain of high-scale supermarkets is making a move of its distribution center that provides goods to their Chicago-area stores.

THAT DISTRIBUTION CENTER had been located in Munster, Ind. – a municipality located right on the Illinois/Indiana border across from suburban Lansing.

EMANUEL: A late Valentine's Day gift?

It’s now moving to the Pullman neighborhood in Chicago proper – a site that offers one major asset that Munster could never have competed with. The Pullman neighborhood is right on the Bishop Ford Freeway, which leads into the Dan Ryan Expressway.

In fact, the site of the new center to open in 2018 will be right on the freeway. It will be easy for Whole Foods trucks to hop right onto the highway, then go anywhere in the Chicago metro area to make deliveries of goods to be sold in their supermarkets. As opposed to now, where those trucks have to fight their way through the traffic mess that often is the Borman Expressway (we really do need the Illiana to be built) before they can get into Chicago.

There may have been some sort of tax break that Munster could have offered through the fact that Indiana does hit its businesses with lesser rates. But they also can’t offer the amenities that a Chicago or Illinois can. You pay more, but you also get more.

Strengthening Midwest presence with Chicago

I’LL ADMIT IT probably was a bit cold for Mayor Rahm Emanuel to be seen snickering and to refer to the move as a “late Valentine’s Day (gift) to Indiana,” but it certainly wasn’t any more colder than the trash talk that the surrounding states usually spew – often by trying to portray Chicago as some sort of hellhole that draws everything down.

Which, to me, often sounds like the petty whining of places that realize they can never match Chicago’s many amenities.

Now I don’t mean this as an Indiana-bashing session. Heck, I do work for one of the daily newspapers in Northwest Indiana and often spend time in Gary itself. Which for the record is a place that has so much potential, but can’t seem to get itself together for so many reasons – many of which are beyond its control.

There are times when I think Lake County and the surrounding areas of Northwest Indiana ought to just de-annex from the land of Hoosiers and become a part of Illinois. Maybe our people could make Gary succeed – rather than the Indiana officials who, at times, seem obsessed with the idea of holding that city down.

Could we do better with it?

BUT IT’S NOT likely there will be any shift any time soon of the Illinois/Indiana border from its current location between Chicago and Hammond to some place east of Valparaiso.

But our state may have accomplished something greater for the public image. For it seems the advertising professional who created that “Illinoyed” campaign for Indiana state government now works for Illinois.

Crain’s Chicago Business reported the newly-created Illinois Business and Development Corp. hired Kelly Nicholl – who as it turns out never gave up her condominium in downtown Chicago, even while working out of Indianapolis.

Illinoyed no more?

Perhaps even she couldn’t bear the thought of being too close to the rest of Indiana, which will now be the target of Illinois’ attacks!

 

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EDITORS NOTE: For those of you who'd like to read the Hoosier perspective, WBEZ-FM's Northwest Indiana correspondent provides a comprehensive report.

Will a new police superintendent really change law enforcement mindset?

As someone who actually managed to cast a ballot to keep Anita Alvarez as Cook County state’s attorney, I wonder what it would really take to change the mindset of people working within law enforcement.

FOXX: Can she single-handedly change?

A good part of the reason why I didn’t jump on the Kim Foxx bandwagon was because I thought people were being absurd if they thought that Foxx could single-handedly “clean up” the attitude amongst some police in viewing black people as the natural subject for their harassment.

SO AS FAR as those people who earlier this week were chanting, “Two down, one to go” (referring to Alvarez and former police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, with Mayor Rahm Emanuel still their target), I think they’re dealing a little over-simplistically with this issue.

I comprehend the anger some feel about the shooting death back in 2014 of teenager Laquan McDonald (the one most of us didn’t learn of until late in 2015, and might not know about at all if not for THAT video recording). But I think we’re making a mistake if we think that it was individuals involved in creating the current law enforcement mindset in Chicago.

It’s not even unique to Chicago. It truly is a mindset I have found within many law enforcement types, regardless of which city they claim to “serve and protect” (or “serve and oppress,” according to the old joke). I still remember one police chief (not in Chicago) telling me how law enforcement attracts the kind of people who are our society's true elite in the way they view the world.

So long as the police in Chicago don’t experience a change, new State’s Attorney Foxx isn’t going to give us any significantly-different results.

KIRKPATRICK: Could be next police supt.

IT IS WITH all that in mind that I viewed Thursday’s announcement by the Chicago Police Department that they have narrowed down to three the number of people in line for the superintendent’s post.

Some think the significant factor is that interim Supt. John Escalante is NOT among the finalists – although I never really figured he would be. There are those activist types who are clamoring for a black person to be picked as the new head of the Chicago police.

Sure enough, two of the three finalists are black men. Which makes me wonder what happens if it’s the third person – a white woman who once was the head of police in Spokane, Wash. – who gets the job.

MARTIN: Old-school cops approved

Would there be a public outcry, and not just because a woman was put in charge of a so-called “man’s job!”

I DON’T KNOW anything about Anne Kirkpatrick or her qualifications, so I’m not criticizing her or endorsing her for the post. Although I do think it would take an outsider of a significantly different mindset to give our city’s police department the kind of jolt it needs.

Whether Kirkpatrick has that kind of “juice” is something we’d have to see. All I know is that just picking a black person for the post won’t change the mentality of the department.

Many black police officers I have encountered can be just as gung-ho and oppressive toward the masses as any other law enforcement official.

Heck, I still remember one-time police Superintendent LeRoy Martin, who got himself into verbal trouble for admiring the oppressive tactics of police in China, and made comments suggesting that the U.S. Constitution gave too much in the way of protection to the rights of criminal suspects.

NOT EXACTLY THE kind of talk the activist types would want to hear.

EMANUEL: Detracting attention from self?

Now I’m not saying that all black police officers think like LeRoy (who wasn’t even the first African-American to rise to the rank of police superintendent in Chicago; that was Fred Rice back in 1983, appointed by then-Mayor Harold Washington). It’s just that we need to think beyond the knee-jerk reactions some people will want to have with regards to the police.

The possible ramifications of who winds up getting this position will reverberate for years to come – certainly longer than the three more years that Emanuel has on his mayoral term.

Because in the end, it is the people who are in charge of the department who will determine the direction our law enforcement officers are headed – not anybody we manage to fire or dump on Election Day!

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EXTRA: ‘You’re only as smart as your batting average’ proven right yet again

For the record, it was .207 with 12 home runs and 44 runs batted in – not exactly the kind of statistics that a professional baseball club wants to have from the guy who's expected to be the big bat that helps a team contend for a championship.

But that’s the guy that was Adam LaRoche, who was one of the major team acquisitions of last year whose weak season was a big part of why the Chicago White Sox fell short.

HE’S ALSO THE guy who’s getting into the news across the nation because of his willingness to walk away from the $13 million he’s supposed to be paid for playing this season – all because White Sox management have problems with the fact that LaRoche’s son, Drake, goes everywhere with him – and even has his own locker in the team clubhouse at U.S. Cellular Field.

There are those people willing to defend the White Sox because they honestly believe an employer has a right to do what they want, while others find something noble in the 36-year-old ballplayer wanting to spend time with his just-becoming-a-teenaged son.

Personally, I wonder about someone’s devotion to work if they’re spending that much time with the kid. But that doesn’t mean I’m defending the ball club.

Because I have no doubt that if LaRoche had somehow been able to hit with as much power as well as he had in past seasons with other teams, somehow the White Sox would have figured a way of getting over their hang-ups about the kid being everywhere.

COULD IT BE that there will now be a batting average at which point a ballplayer can have his kid around? Perhaps similar to the “Mendoza line” of Mario Mendoza, the 1970s-era shortstop of the Pittsburgh Pirates and Seattle Mariners.

He was a lifetime .215 hitter, but managed to play regularly because of his quality defense, and is now regarded as the example of how bad a hitter one can be yet still play regularly.

Perhaps yet another example could come from the White Sox themselves. Everybody thought it was so cute back in 2005 and on their way to the World Series when manager Ozzie Guillen’s fully-grown kids hung around the team and were a constant presence.

Yet by the time the White Sox let Guillen leave as manager in 2011, the kids were often cited as part of the reason why Ozzie had become unbearable.

AS FOR THE White Sox, they would benefit financially if LaRoche walks away from the final year of his “big money” contract for 2016 – I’ve already read speculation about how this move makes it possible for them to afford to make a few roster moves if the team turns out to be in contention around mid-season.

Which makes me wonder how much this issue was stirred up just to offend LaRoche, who apparently suffers from ongoing back pains that may be a large part of why he didn’t play ball so well in ’15. Personally, the one White Sox game I made it out to last season was one in which the New York Yankees were walloping the White Sox so badly that LaRoche was called upon to pitch for an inning!

Not exactly a stellar moment in White Sox team history.

Although it also makes me wonder how Adam LaRoche sympathizes with his kid, on account of the fact that he, too, is the son of a major league ballplayer – Dave LaRoche, whose own athletic career of the 1970s and early 1980s included a couple-year stint with the Chicago Cubs.

FOR THE RECORD, Dave LaRoche had a record of 65 wins (9 of them for the Cubs) and 58 losses with a 3.53 earned run average during 14 seasons pitching in the major leagues. Good enough that he's been able to remain in professional baseball, coaching most recently for the New York Mets' minor league affiliate in Brooklyn.

Was that a good-enough record for Adam or his brother Andy (who also played major league baseball) to have been permitted on the premises of a major league locker room?

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What is gained by Obama going ahead to make Supreme Court appointment?

President Barack Obama on Wednesday rubbed it in the face of the Republican opposition that has spent the past seven years trying to undermine him. He's also hoping his actions play well politically to the point that his Democratic allies wind up benefitting.

GARLAND: He can have Supreme Court dreams

About the one thing that isn’t at stake is the chance that Merrick Garland – currently the chief judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia – will become a Supreme Court justice any time soon.

ON THE DAY after Election Day in his home state of Illinois and four other places – ones in which Hillary Clinton did well and Democratic Party renegade Bernie Sanders saw his chances slip (although he insists he’s not even dreaming of leaving the race) – Obama made it known he has made a pick to fill the vacancy caused by the death last month of Antonin Scalia.

Although there was some speculation that Obama could name the first Indian-American to serve on the high court and also at one point considered a justice from the appeals court for San Francisco (considered the most liberal in the nation), in the end Obama picked Garland.

Considering the Obama presidency previously gave us two women (one of Puerto Rican ethnic origins) as its Supreme Court picks, it would seem that the choice of Garland was meant to be safe.

Except that when it comes to this issue, nothing is “safe.”

OBAMA: Calling GOP's bluff

FOR THE REPUBLICAN majority that controls the U.S. Senate that will have to confirm any choice the president makes has already made it known it does not want Obama to have the pick.

They are content to let the court operate one short for just over the next year so that the next president (whom they fantasize will be a Republican) makes the pick.

It’s not just that they don’t want Obama to have this one pick – they don’t want him going into the history books as having been the guy who got to pick one-third of the Supreme Court of the United States.

They don’t want him doing what their alleged idol, Ronald Reagan, did, which was to stack the Supreme Court and other federal courts with judges who had an ideological sense of what the law was all about. Those picks have lived on much longer than he did.

REAGAN: Not ready for Ronnie's legacy to die

IT MUST BE a real smack in the face if Obama (the man they ideologically and racially detest) gets to be the guy who undoes what Reagan did.

Which is the part that gets to me. Some Republican types openly admit their desire is to keep the Supreme Court from going “liberal.” Either because that’s just their leaning, or because they really think it was ordained by God himself that the nation’s high court be biased in their favor.

My sense is that the choice of Garland is meant to provide the Republican leadership with a white male lacking in liberal leanings (albeit one who’s Jewish) for whom the easy thing to do would be for the GOP to accept his appointment.

This way, if they do wind up turning him down – or better yet, not even consider him – it can all be blamed on political partisanship.

THERE ALREADY HAS been political trash talk advising Democrats of the need to vote because we don’t want Donald Trump or Ted Cruz making a Supreme Court appointment. That rhetoric will be stepped up so high, and will be used by every Democrat seeking political office.

CLINTON: Will Hillary make the REAL pick?

While some people will probably vote Republican just because of that, Obama is gambling that the voice of real people in this country will be so outraged that he ultimately wins.

And that a future “President Hillary Clinton” will wind up getting to make the appointment of the real replacement for Scalia.

Although it’s kind of a shame that Garland is not likely to gain the position – although Harvard-educated, he is Chicago-born and raised in suburban Lincolnwood; the perfect end to the legacy of the first Chicago resident of significance to rise to the ranks of U.S. president.

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EXTRA: What next, governor?

WILSON: What will Willie run for next?

It will be interesting to see what becomes of Willie Wilson.

The African-American business executive whose wealth was self-made got the political bug in him when he ran his failed bid to become Chicago Mayor in last year’s election cycle.

SO MUCH SO that he declared himself a presidential candidate, got himself put on the Illinois ballot for the Democratic primary, and managed to take 0.3 percent of the vote in the race most people saw as being between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

Even though voters also had the option of picking Wilson or three other people for the party’s presidential nomination.

Although there were votes yet to be counted as of Wednesday morning, it seems just over 6,000 people cast ballots for Wilson – far less than the 50,000-plus of voters who thought Willie was fit to be Chicago mayor.

Not that anyone, probably even Wilson himself, ever thought he had a chance to win the Tuesday primary election. You don’t win the nomination if Illinois and South Carolina are the only states where you’re even on the ballot.

IT IS MORE about wanting to have a voice with which to express oneself on issues of personal concern. It helps that Wilson has enough funds to get himself on the ballot so as to force people to listen to him.

Personally, I’d suggest creating a weblog – it’s a heck of a lot cheaper than trying to run for electoral office.

Although it’s obvious Wilson has the itch for electoral office, and may well try to run a future political campaign. What the heck, Illinois governor is up for grabs in 2018.

Maybe Willie can dream about being a factor in what will otherwise be an ugly political campaign as Democrats go all out in their efforts to knock Bruce Rauner out of office in such an ugly fashion that the humiliation the governor feels ensures he never gets the desire to run for office again!

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Not a political revolution on Tuesday, no matter what some want to believe

I’m sure there will be those individuals who will contend a serious change in our government was achieved, what with the way voters in Cook County dumped State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez.

Still have my sticker

Anita is the one whom it seems will wind up taking the fall for the police shooting death of Laquan McDonald, as her opponent, Kim Foxx, managed to get a serious voter margin over her.

SO MUCH SO that people can’t argue the presence of a third candidate in the Democratic primary took votes for Anita – Foxx got a solid majority. With particularly strong voter turnout for her in the South Side and surrounding suburbs.

In short, the portions of metro Chicago that have majority African-American populations where people were outraged over the shooting death of McDonald that got captured on video.

The people who have been screaming for Mayor Rahm Emanuel to resign and are frustrated to realize he could care less what they think will have to settle for defeating Alvarez’ re-election bid (she was seeking her third term as head of the county prosecutorial office).

Let’s hope they remain pleased if, in a couple of years from now, the criminal trial of the police officer who shot and killed McDonald (he faces multiple counts of murder) does not go the way they want and the cop gets acquitted (which is always a real possibility).

BUT FOR THOSE people with the Beatles’ song “Revolution” running through their minds, I’d say “Pipe down!” Because dumping Alvarez – while significant – is about as big as things got on this Election Day.

FOXX: The new state's attorney

U.S. Senate hopeful Andrea Zopp, who was hoping that the same people who voted Foxx into the Democratic nomination for state’s attorney would also support her, didn’t do so well.

Her numbers were so weak that the various newsgathering organizations rushed to declare Rep. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., the winner for the Senate right when the polls closed at 7 p.m.

And as for “the Bern,” Sen. Sanders of Vermont would seem to be nothing more than a mild case of suntan in Illinois and elsewhere. For it seems Democrats in this state preferred Hillary Clinton. Then again, so did Democrats in all the states where ballots were cast on Tuesday.

HILLARY, THE PREFERRED candidate of the Democratic Party establishment, continues her progress toward gaining the presidential nomination for the November general election.

CLINTON: She didn't get 'berned' in Illinois

While the one-time “Party of Lincoln” continues to shame the reputation of “Honest Abe” with its desire to nominate obnoxious New York real estate developer Donald Trump for a bid for the White House.

If anything, the intriguing part of Tuesday’s activity may well be the turnout.

It wasn’t that big in Chicago proper – Board of Election Commissioners officials say it was less than the 53 percent of registered voters who turned out in 2008 when hometown boy Barack Obama first ran for president.

BUT IT WAS high in the suburban areas – so much so that the Washington Post made a point of acknowledging the desire of our suburbanites to make sure to cast their ballots.

For what it’s worth, I have one Facebook friend who tells the story of how his parents did not cast their ballots because the lines were so long at their polling place in suburban Buffalo Grove and they couldn’t wait.

While I know my own parents in suburban Homewood saw the long lines of would-be voters waiting to use the touch-screen machines to cast ballots, and wound up deciding to fill out paper ballots instead, rather than wait in line.

All in all, it makes me grateful I used an early voting center to cast my votes a couple of weeks ago. Particularly since any attempt to consider Tuesday’s outcome revolutionary gets dumped all over by the outcome for Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago.

Da winnah, and still champeen!

NOT ONLY DID he solidly crush the challenger who received campaign funding from people loyal to Gov. Bruce Rauner, his preferred candidate of Julianna Stratton managed to crush state Rep. Ken Dunkin, D-Chicago – the legislator whose refusal to support Madigan on several issues undermined the so-called “veto proof” majority that Democrats use as their club over Rauner’s head.

Political retribution was achieved. And how revolutionary can things be if the big winner for the night is the high-and-mighty “Mr. Speaker?”

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