Southern Poverty Law Center a “hate” group? Ives wants ideologue voters

Jeanne Ives, the state senator from Wheaton who thinks anti-organized labor governor Bruce Rauner is a flaming liberal, let us know Monday she’ll wait a few days before filing her nominating petitions to get on the Republican ballot for the March 20 gubernatorial elections.

IVES: Wants the ideologue vote

Not that it really matters – Ives is the conservative ideologue candidate whose supporters already have made up their minds they’re voting for her (actually, against Rauner). The only question is just how many people really think Rauner isn’t conservative enough to appeal to them.

SO IT REALLY shouldn’t be surprising to anybody that Ives is capable of denouncing the Southern Poverty Law Center (an organization that has devoted decades to monitoring Ku Klux Klan activity) as a “hate group.”

She wants the political support of those individuals with their racial or ethnic hang-ups who think it’s the rest of the world that is somehow hateful of them for daring to suggest that their hang-ups are wrong.

Yes, she sees that Donald Trump was able to gain the presidency by appealing to people who think they’re being picked on for their wanting to look down on the rest of the world.

Perhaps she thinks she can do the same in Illinois – ignoring the fact that we were amongst the states that rejected The Donald. And that we take great pride in being able to say we did so (Go Hillary!!!).

SO JEANNE SAYING the people devoting their lives to fighting bigotry are the real bigots?!? It’s an obvious nonsense statement, but one that will play well with the kind of people she wants to turn out in great numbers to support her political ambitions.

TRUMP: Will Ives follow his campaign strategy

Which is really a collection of people determined to dump on the political ambitions of Bruce Rauner – the anti-labor guy whose conservative bearings aren’t intense-enough on social issues to appease the ideologues.

For the record, Ives’ comments were in relation to being asked about the Illinois Family Institute – a conservative-leaning think tank that works actively to promote conservative thought.

The Southern Poverty Law Center says the institute qualifies as a ‘hate group” based on its thoughts on legislation that relates to gay people. Ives wants the votes of people who support the institute, so during an interview she did with a Quad Cities-based television interview program, she said the law center “themselves should be deemed a hate group.”

RAUNER: Does Ives hurt his re-election chances

A THOUGHT THAT anybody with sense realizes is stupid. It’s part of an effort by the ideologues to shift attention from the extremes of their own thought and try to place blame on everybody else.

Which may be the way the ideologues want to view the world, but isn’t the way anybody with sense does so.

I know some political watchers are convinced that such nonsense talk (of which Ives is bound to spew much more between now and the GOP primary in March) will only help Rauner. They think a majority of Republicans, particularly those in the third of Illinois known as the Chicago suburbs, will be repulsed by such talk and wind up backing Rauner – no matter what they may think of his views on abortion.

Even though as a Wheaton resident, it could be argued that Ives IS one of those suburban Chicagoans and perhaps speaks for them.

PRITZKER: The ultimate beneficiary?

A PART OF me thinks that this could drive the true moderates (as in the people who have daily lives to live and don’t obsess this early about whom they’ll vote for come March 20, 2018) to the Democratic side – where they’re likely to have to pick between J.B. Pritzker (the millionaire just like Rauner) and the other people with Democratic dreams of running for office.

Or maybe many will just become disgusted with the whole process. Always a real possibility.

There’s only one thing I’m sure about.

While Ives may say she thinks the Southern Poverty Law Center is a “hate” group, that probably won’t be the most ridiculous thing she (or any other candidate) will say during this election cycle.

  -30-