Does GOP in Illinois of Rauner era not take candidate recruitment seriously?

I’m not sure whether to be intrigued or offended by the rumor mills that say the Illinois Republican Party is contemplating running black people for the posts of Attorney General and Secretary of State come next year’s elections.

GRIFFIN: Is that medal his sole credential?

I’d like to think it means that Republican officials in our state have reached a certain level of enlightenment, and perhaps have even managed to look past a person’s melanin content to see the whole person. But then I think realistically, and snicker at the very notion.

BECAUSE THE CYNIC in me thinks the particular individuals allegedly under consideration for the posts were picked because of specific characteristics in their backgrounds that somehow makes them acceptable to the hard-core of GOPdom who otherwise wouldn’t consider casting a ballot for such a person.

For attorney general, the Republicans reportedly are considering Erika Harold (the one-time Miss America from Illinois) to run against incumbent Lisa Madigan. She is, indeed, a graduate of Harvard Law School (just like Barack Obama).

While for secretary of state, 19-year veteran of the post Jesse White may be challenged by Josh “J.C.” Griffin.

Who’s he?

IT SEEMS HE served five years in the Air Force, served a combat stint in Iraq, and worked a little bit for state government during the era of Pat Quinn as governor.

 

HAROLD: Rumored to challenge Madigan, L.?

But Republicans seem willing to disregard that potential character flaw (at least that’s the way they’d perceive it) because Griffin, a one-time native of suburban Olympia Fields, declared himself a Republican when registering himself to vote following his military service.

So what we’re basically saying is that Republicans are putting up Miss America and G.I. Joe to challenge two long-term state officials. They’re putting up stereotype images because they don’t necessarily have candidates in mind who could run credible campaigns for those particular posts.

Republicans will be asked to cast ballots for those images, and against any kind of government experience (although I’m sure that at age 83, they’re going to make a serious argument that the people of Illinois ought to send the one-time Cubs minor league ballplayer into political retirement).

WHITE: Will GOP make age an issue in '18 campaign?

IF ANYTHING THIS may be the evidence of how low the Republican Party has declined in Illinois. They have the governor’s post, and Bruce Rauner seems determined to blow a large chunk of his personal wealth to remind us to “Blame Madigan!” for everything and vote for him.

Beyond that, what are Republican-types casting votes for? The same old nonsense pitting Chicago against the rest of the state? Which really does little more than to persuade Chicago voters to cast ballots against the rest of Illinois?

Which means we all lose with that line of logic. To really revive Illinois, we have to move beyond such parochial ways of thinking.

As for Harold, I’ll say the same thing I’ve written before. It’s a shame she isn’t developed into a credible candidate – instead of one who has to rely upon the fact she wore a sash and tiara some 15 years ago.

AND AS FOR Griffin, I can’t help but think that his so-called credentials (five years of military service and a stint in a combat zone) actually matches up with my own cousin Carlos, who did five years in the Army and had his combat stint during that “first” Gulf War (remember 1990 in Kuwait?).

RAUNER: Does he like being lone GOPer?

Somehow, I don’t think anybody would take seriously the notion of my cousin returning to Illinois to run for elective office. I suspect the snickering would be deafening.

So here’s hoping that the rumor-mill (for what it’s worth, Griffin was non-committal when he was interviewed on the subject by WCIA-TV in Champaign) turns out to be erroneous.

Unless the GOP really is surrendering any chance of winning government posts other than that of governor. Does Bruce Rauner fantasize about a government where he’s the lone official – and everybody just shuts up and does what he says?

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EXTRA: Note to GOP; Quit yer whinnin' and find a challenger

The latest whiny rant that makes the Illinois Republican Party seem like a six-year-old who just dropped his ice cream cone and Mommy won’t buy him another came out Wednesday, and this time Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White is the target,

WHITE: Two decades, and counting, in current post

The one-time Party of Lincoln wants us to be all offended that White will not say for sure if he’s running for re-election in 2018. He has hinted in the past he’d like to retire (he’s already 82 and has held the post since 1999), but seems to be one of those political people who just can’t see himself doing anything but holding office.

OF COURSE, FOR Republicans the real issue is that if White does run again, it is very likely they won’t be able to come up with a credible challenger. That would mean yet another high-profile political post they would likely lose come the 2018 election cycle.

If White does retire, maybe some GOPer has a chance to slip into office and prop up the potential future political opportunities for Gov. Bruce Rauner. Of course, that’s presuming voters aren’t so fed up with the Illinois political status quo of ‘no budget’ that they don’t just dump him too.

Republicans are trying to make it an issue that White ran for re-election back in 2014 even though he previously had hinted at retirement, and has since made statements in 2015 and 2016 that he didn’t want a sixth term as secretary of state.

We, the voters of Illinois, didn’t seem to get too offended just over two years ago. Who knows how we’ll react. Or do you really think a gaudy, cluttered license plate design is really the kind of issue that will rile up voters?

RAUNER: He'd like political allies

ALTHOUGH IF YOU really want to get technical, you’d think the Illinois GOP would be the last entity to try to make an issue out of term-limit pledges.

For they’re the ones who include amongst their ranks Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill. He’s a congressman from the part of Illinois that is suburban St. Louis, and when he originally ran for office back in 1996 he made a firm pledge that – if elected – he would not serve more than six, two-year terms in office.

Which means we should be coming up on the 10-year anniversary of Shimkus’ departure from the Washington scene. Somehow, Shimkus keeps concluding that his presence in the District of Columbia is still needed. As far as I know, he’s going to face about as credible of opposition on Election Day ’18 for his congressional seat as White will for secretary of state.

SHIMKUS: Supposed to leave 10 yrs ago

It is kind of odd in White’s case, because I remember when he first got elected to his present post in 1998, the idea was that White was a long-time state legislator and Cook County recorder who would serve a term or two in Springfield before taking political “retirement.”

JESSE, HOWEVER, SEEMS to be a political survivor. One whose presence causes the Republican Party to engage in such lame nonsense as what they’re now spewing.

And yes, this latest Republican statement tells us that White is sticking around because Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, wants him too. It all comes back to Madigan, in the minds of the Illinois GOP.

I guess the idea of coming up with more credible candidates who can actually beat the opposition is an idea that goes beyond their intellect; or perhaps even the power of all the millions of his own money that Rauner has committed to spending in next year’s election cycle.

All I know is that it is likely Rauner will be a little bit poorer come early 2019 – and probably just as lonely politically as he is currently.

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Would Giuliani, Romney brawl make us miss political presence of Hillary?

The soon-to-be President Donald J. Trump is in the process of picking the people who will run various agencies under his administration, and that may actually be more important because Trump is such a governmental neophyte that those people are likely to get a free reign to do what they want.

Can anybody envision Rudy or Mitt handling this situation as diplomatically as Hillary. Photograph provided by State Department

Which is what makes the New York Times report Friday about the brawl taking place within the Republican ranks all the more interesting – a fight for Secretary of State. The position that has a major role in determining our nation’s foreign policy.

IT SEEMS THE Republican establishment that was always skeptical of Trump would like to see one-time presidential dreamer Mitt Romney put in the post. While many of those who were with Trump from the beginning want another long-time Trump loyalist installed there.

As in Rudy Giuliani, the one-time New York mayor who would like to be thought of as the law-and-order guy who cracked down on crime in the city during the 1990s but also is remembered for a firm leadership in the days following that 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.

His calm helped keep the city calm, which in turn helped keep the country as a whole from going bonkers from thoughts that the Ay-rabs with their funky Moos-lim religion were going to take over the world!

Will it take Giuliani presence in post...

Personally, the thought of either of those guys being put in as Secretary of State makes me squeamish – largely because I suspect they’re both interested in resurrecting their legacies and would likely try to do so with grand gestures that would put the nation at-risk on the world stage!

I’M NOT SAYING they’ll single-handedly get us into another war. But I wouldn’t put anything past them. The only time Giuliani ever is rational is when he talks baseball – he’s a hard-core New York Yankees fan in a way Hillary Clinton could never pull off.

If anything, the one plus of having either of them in the post is that they’ll make the record of a previous Secretary of State look all the more impressive by comparison.

By that, I mean Hillary herself – who served as Secretary of State from 2009-13. Or during President Barack Obama’s first term in office.

... or that of Mitt to make us appreciate Hillary?

The conservative ideologues amongst us have their own set of reasons they will use to denounce her time served in the post (Benghazi, anyone?), but I also recall the points in which her service wound up helping to resurrect her political reputation from her days as first lady and in the U.S. Senate to the point where I suspect some people probably wished they could take back their ’08 support of Obama.

I SUSPECT THAT Romney wants the stink of losing the 2012 election cycle to Obama removed from his name, while Giuliani probably remembers how close he came to running against Clinton for that Senate seat in New York back in 2000.

He probably thinks that had he not been forced to drop out (replaced by no-name Rick Lazio), HE would have beaten Hillary back then and crushed her political future. Is he delusional enough to think he can somehow get into Hillary’s old political position and erase any memory that she ever existed?

Hillary never convincingly pulled off Yankee fandom...

A twisted way of thinking, to be sure. But when it comes to political people, their way of viewing the world is often extreme by “real people” standards. Then again, real people wouldn’t put up with any of the twisted nonsense it takes to run for office.

Namely, having to deal with people like Trump who are capable of twisting the truth into absurdity to the point where we don’t have a clue where they really stand. Which may have been his whole goal all along!

WHILE NOBODY KNOWS what a “President Trump” will accomplish (anybody who says they know is really just telling us what they want him to do), I do know that if it strays too far from the ideologically right-wing dreams of Trump’s most intense political backers, they will turn on him and cause their own form of chaos.

...but never looked as ridiculous as Trump!

Which may also go a long way toward rehabilitating Hillary Clinton’s political reputation – which already is getting a jolt from the fact that some 2 million more people wanted her to win this month’s elections rather than Trump.

Either of the Trump picks for Secretary of State will make her era look all the more competent. A Trump presidency will make her look all the more competent. The day will come when most of us will have forgotten the details about why it was we didn’t trust her – except maybe that she was a “her” instead of a “him.”

The legacy of Hillary Clinton could well wind up being the woman we took a pass on when we had the chance, but later wished we had picked for the top post!

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Now, we wait!

It will be curious to see what kind of rhetoric we get to hear in coming weeks when it comes to the concept of non-citizens being able to acquire a valid driver’s license from the state of Illinois.

For the conservative ideologues did their best effort to try to thwart the issue from being considered by the General Assembly. Constant statements, a rotunda rally and video clips all espousing their view that this is bad policy.

BECAUSE IT GIVES recognition to people whom the ideologues would prefer to see remain in the shadows of our society. Which means it makes all the sense in the world from the perspective of people who view things sensibly.

As best as I can tell, the political people were largely capable of ignoring all this hot air that was spouted last week!

Only one legislator in the Illinois Senate spoke out against the idea when it was debated there (although another, according to the Capitol Fax newsletter, was using Twitter to send out hostile messages about the people discussing the issue. Tweets for the twits, is how I’d describe it), and the concept got an overwhelming vote of support last week in the Senate.

But that doesn’t mean the concept is law yet!

FOR THE ISSUE never came up for a vote in the Illinois House of Representatives. In fact, I’m surprised that I haven’t heard the ideologues claim “victory” based on the concept that they “intimidated” the legislators there from acting at all.

Considering that the Illinois House seemed more interested in ending the veto session a day early, I suspect the issue really didn’t factor into their thought process at all.

Because it means the bill is still pending, and could be among the many “controversial” issues (more casinos and pension reform, among others) that get rammed through on the final day in January before the newly-elected members of the General Assembly assume control.

It would have been nice to see this issue get full legislative approval this week, mostly so that it wouldn’t have to linger all during the winter holidays. But when one looks at the big picture, what is one more month compared to a rest-of-our-lifetimes of a sensible policy when it comes to driver’s licenses.

THE BIG REASON why I support this concept is that I think it only makes sense for people to have to provide all the personal information about themselves to the state that one is required to give in order to get a license.

Most people who truly are as law-breaking as the ideologues want to believe the “foreigners” are would never want to have to provide truthful information about themselves.

Getting people out of the shadows of our society is of great benefit to all of us. Plus the fact that if these people do pass the driver’s exam that all the rest of us take to get a license, there’s no reason to deny them the right to drive.

And as for those people who claim it will be a burden on insurance companies to offer these drivers coverage, I’d say that’s nonsense.

IF ANYTHING, IT will make our streets safer – and offer those insurance companies more customers. Any company that thinks it is going to refuse to accept such business is going to find that they’re losing income, and that the companies that will put aside ethnic hang-ups will be tapping into a new business market.

Not that I expect any of the ideologues to be swayed by this. They’re going to be the malcontents who will yell and scream to the very end, and whose hostile rhetoric needs to be pushed aside (into the trash can of cheap political talk, as far as I’m concerned).

The most ridiculous bit I saw this week had to be an e-mail I received from an activist-type who insisted that former Gov. Jim Edgar was “taken to the woodshed” because he said he “doesn’t pay much attention” to the Republican party platform that opposes policies such as what Illinois is considering.

This activist just showed what an ideological fool he is, largely because I have never encountered a political official who was rigidly behind his party’s platform 100 percent.

THE SENSIBLE OFFICIALS are the ones who know when to be flexible and make accommodations.

It’s going to be attitudes such as what was expressed by this activist that will have our nation fall off the “fiscal cliff” come Jan. 1 – assuming our political people can’t be accommodating and make some sort of deal.

I’m sure this activist (whom I’m not naming because I don’t want to dignify him any more than I have to) is also among the people who believed all that rhetoric that Gov. Pat Quinn is the most unpopular governor.

For it is Quinn who said of this issue, “Our roads can be safer if we ensure that every driver in Illinois learns the rules of the road and is trained to drive safely.” Here’s hoping that Quinn, as one of his first acts of 2013, gets to sign this measure into law.

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Best thing Hillary ever did for the Clinton name was lose back in ‘08

It’s laughable, when you think about it.

CLINTON: Would we like her as much if she had won?

There’s a new poll out (commissioned by the Washington Post and ABC News) that says 57 percent of all people surveyed would like to see soon-to-be former Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton run for president come the 2016 election cycle.

IT’S NOT JUST that some people already are getting excited about ’16 even though Barack Obama has yet to take the oath of office to serve the four-year term to which he won re-election last month.

It’s more that I have vivid memory of when Hillary Clinton was THE most reviled human being in the U.S. political scene – even more so than husband (and president) Bill.

Heck, there were some people whose biggest objection to Bill Clinton was that he didn’t put a muzzle on his wife!

Now, as Hillary Clinton plans to step down after having served four years under President Obama as Secretary of State, it seems that we can’t get enough of her.

THIS IS LARGELY a woman-driven thing. It would seem we are long overdue to start taking women seriously as potential chief executives of the U.S. government. And she is getting the credit for many of the accomplishments that occurred during the first term of the Obama presidency.

Which is not a problem. She had a hand in many of them. She deserves her praise.

But looking at the details of this poll, it would seem the only people who still have their hang-ups about Hillary are white men who identify with the Republican Party.

Only 13 percent of them like the idea of Hillary Clinton running for president. But Republican (35 percent) and politically independent (68 percent) women are willing to go along with the 84 percent of women who are Democrats in saying they’d like to have Hillary as president.

IT MAY WELL be that Obama’s best action of his first term was not to take personally all the pot-shots that the Clinton presidential campaign directed his day during the 2008 primary. He picked her for possibly the most important position (I know some will argue attorney general) of his cabinet.

But what would have happened if Hillary Clinton had won that Democratic primary?

What if she had gone on to clean John McCain’s clock in the general election? What if we literally had spent the past four years with William Jefferson Clinton as the nation’s first “first gentleman?”

You know very well that Hillary Clinton’s approval rating (66 percent, according to the poll) wouldn’t be anywhere near that high.

SHE’D BE THE one lagging far down in the teens (or maybe low 20s) when it comes to supporters. She’d be the one getting blamed for everything that could possibly go wrong.

And you just know that Bill Clinton would have done something that would have further infuriated all those people who devoted the bulk of their lives in 1998 to trying to remove him from office through the impeachment process.

The best thing that could have ever happened to the Clintons on a personal level was not having to endure the hassle of actually trying to run the country.

Because the bottom line is that we all have a certain level to which we will give a knee-jerk reaction of blame in dealing with any incumbent officials. It’s all their fault! Dump the fool so that we can move on to blame their replacement.

SO EXCUSE ME if I don’t exactly take seriously the idea of a poll being taken now that says the one-time Goldwater Girl from suburban Park Ridge ought to be a presidential contender in four years.

All those people who are thinking we should have voted for Clinton in 2008? If that had happened, they’d now be wondering how much better off things would be if they had voted for that Obama guy four years ago!

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Will Turner do as well as Hillary Clinton?

Has Art Turner become the Illinois equivalent of Hillary R. Clinton?

By that, I mean is he going to wind up with more governmental authority because of his apparent defeat, in the same way that Hillary is in a better position now than her hard-core backers would have had for her had they got their way?

REMEMBER WHEN IT became apparent that Barack Obama really was going to get the Democratic nomination for president, no matter how much Clinton dragged the primary fight out to the bitter end? Her backers then switched to the mode that because she was so competitive with Obama in primaries, she was entitled to be Obama’s choice of running mate.

They claimed Obama had to pick Clinton for the vice presidential slot. If he didn’t, it would be perceived as an unforgiveable slur against women – one that would cost him dearly in the general election. We might actually get “President John McCain!!!!!!”

Obviously, that never happened.

Obama wound up holding off until picking a Cabinet before deciding what to do with Clinton, and he ultimately gave her one of the top posts – Secretary of State. She is now one of the most powerful people in the federal government, definitely more significant an official than Vice President Joe Biden (who only draws attention when he slips into profanity to describe the significance of the health care reform measure being signed into law by Obama).

ANYBODY WHO SERIOUSLY believes that Clinton would rather be Vice President, waiting for the moment when Obama becomes incapacitated so she can complete his presidential term, is being absurd.

Also, it wound up not costing Obama much of anything in the general election of 2008. McCain had too many problems with his own campaign (one of which was that the most hard-core GOP ideologues preferred his running mate to him, while the bulk of us wondered if his running mate was evidence that he was adle-brained) to take advantage of any potential for dissent.

I see all of these same circumstances repeating themselves this year when it comes to state Rep. Art Turner, D-Chicago, who finished second in the February primary election for the nomination for lieutenant governor, then finished second again when the Democratic Party bigwigs had to replace nonminee Scott Lee Cohen.

Quinn has thrown out hints that Turner could wind up being named to serve as director of a prominent state government agency – although I wonder if having to deal with such responsibility at a time when all of state government is being slashed to the point where the bones are being whittled at would be seen as more headache than the political perks are worth.

SO NOW WE get the Quinn/Simon, male/female, Chicago/Carbondale ticket, and we get the sense that the position of lieutenant governor is being put into the hands of someone who theoretically could use it as a jump-start to a significant career in Illinois government – instead of being given as a career cap to a long-serving legislator who isn’t all that well-known outside of his West Side legislative district.

But we get some people persisting with the rhetoric that black voters are now so offended with the Democratic Party that they will seriously think of voting for Republican William Brady, Green Party hopeful Rich Whitney, or maybe even the long-shot independent hopes of William “Dock” Walls – who’d like us to think he was a confidant one one-time Mayor Harold Washington, but has never been able to get serious political traction from that in the past.

The Chicago Defender gives us the subhead, “Quinn’s snub of Art Turner spurs talk of black backlash.” Some broadcast pundit types are obsessed with this idea, which I just don’t see happening in large part because I’m not convinced that the “black vote” was all that united behind the “gentleman from Cook” who has been a state legislator for three full decades.

In those wards of Chicago where the African-American vote is dominant, Election Day for lieutenant governor was a battle between Turner and state Sen. Rickey Hendon, D-Chicago, the outspoken legislator and former alderman who really wanted to move up to Congress – but Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., isn’t ready to retire.

THE TIME PERIOD of just over a month between the Democratic primary and the state central committee session that selected Sheila Simon for the spot did not do anything to create unity. My observation from that session was when the committeeman from my congressional district, Bobby Rush, threw his support to Simon instead of Turner.

Although he hasn’t offered much in the way of specifics, Rush did say that when political people from African-American communities met prior to the session to get a sense of where they all stood, Rush picked up on the sense that there was no direction. There was no unity behind Turner or any one candidate.

That influenced him to give his backing to the daughter of the late Senator from Southern Illinois whose image is the one Democrats in this state would like to think they have. And for what it is worth, because of the way in which the votes of the 38 committee members are counted, Rush’s vote counted for more than anyone else’s (that’s what he gets for representing such an overwhelming Democratic district in Illinois).

If it reads like I’m writing that Rush would be one of the first people I’d expect to be complaining about Simon if there truly was a chance that the black vote would be that unified, you’d be correct. If anything, I’m using him as a barometer of sorts for the South Side vote.

NOW I AM saying that there won’t be someone out there among the electorate who will be so offended by what has happened that they will decide to stay home on Election Day as some sort of self-described act of political protest?

There may be a few, but I doubt there will be enough to sway the election. In short, if Pat Quinn truly loses the Nov. 2 geneeral election to Bill Brady, it likely is going to be for some reason other than Art Turner.

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