Stromata Blog

Chicago: Too Early to Call Off the Suicide Watch

Chicago’s mayoral primary has already had one good result: After prodding Congressional Democrats to oppose overriding the D.C. council’s pro-crime revision of the city’s criminal code, President Biden abruptly announced that he won’t veto the measure if, as expected, the Senate joins the House in passing it.

That’s great news for residents of D.C., but how do things look in my erstwhile home town of Chicago, where I lived for thirty-plus years before escaping to the slightly less demented Washington State?

Last Tuesday, Chicago primary voters (the 32 percent who bothered to turn out; not even the graveyards showed much enthusiasm for the choices on offer) narrowed the general election field to two candidates, conspicuously not including incumbent Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

None of the jungle primary candidates was a Republican. The closest to a conservative (and still miles away) was fifth place finisher Willie Wilson, a black businessman who started life as a sharecropper and is now best known for his weekly Gospel music program, Singsation. Paul Vallas, who headed the Chicago school system in the late 1990’s and did little to either accelerate or arrest its decline, is pegged as the “moderate” candidate, because he favors hiring more police and cracking down on criminals. Second place finisher Brandon Johnson is a Cook County commissioner who doubles as an organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union and believes that lawbreakers need only large doses of “therapy”.

Whether Vallas would be able to do much good as mayor is questionable; that Johnson would do a great deal of harm is not. One can draw hope from the primary results, where Vallas finished well ahead of anybody else, but don’t hope too confidently.

The second, third and fourth place finishers – Johnson, Lightfoot and socialist Congressman “Chuy” Garcia – are on the far left fringe of the Democratic Party, if not beyond it; together they pulled 51.1 percent of the primary vote. Vallas’s best hope is that Chicago Republicans (about 15 percent of the electorate), who have mostly given up voting in mayoral elections (I did), will drag themselves to the polls to support the lesser of two evils. His dilemma is that a message that inspires reluctant Republicans to vote may incite hard core progressives to do the same, and the latter solidly outnumber the GOP.

I’m not going to venture a prediction, but if I still lived in the Windy City, I would cast a ballot on April 4th and be ready to leave town fast on April 5th.

A Glimmer of Hope for Chicago – Probably Not

Since moving away from Chicago, I’ve paid little attention to its depressing political scene. The city’s last Republican mayor left office in 1931. In a handful of elections since then, Republicans have had a wisp of a chance. The last such occasion was 1983, when Bernie Epton might have defeated Harold Washington and slowed, probably only slightly, the city’s ensuing decay, had it not gone off on a Caribbean holiday over the final weekend of the campaign.

I was so inattentive this year that I hadn’t noticed that the election is scheduled for February 28th. It’s nominally the “general election” but is, in reality, the Democratic primary, since a candidate must get a majority of the votes in order to avoid a runoff (scheduled for April 4th). There are nine candidates this year. The only one you’ve heard of, unless you live within the range of Chicago political advertising or are a terminal political junkie, is incumbent Lori Lightheadfoot, a strong contender for America’s Craziest Mayor honors.

Grace Curley, who lives in Boston and therefore is familiar with dysfunctional city governments, has written an optimistic appraisal of the election, “Is the end of Lori Lightfoot?”, in which she recounts a selection of Lightfoot scandals, some of them bizarre. Here is the latest, though not the oddest:

On Thursday, news broke that the mayor’s campaign had sent an email attempting to recruit Chicago Public School students to “help” with the incumbent’s reelection effort. The students would earn class credit in exchange for their contributions.

After this unethical email made its way to the press, prompting outrage from other candidates in the race, Team Lightfoot sloppily attempted to backtrack – not once, but three times.

The first statement explained that the effort was designed “to provide young people with the opportunity to engage with our campaign, learn more about the importance of civic engagement and participate in the most American of processes.” It was for the children, don’t you see?

The following statements assured the public that Team Lightfoot would cease contact with CPS employees.

Later that day, it was revealed that recruiting emails were not just sent to CPS teachers but also to instructors at the City Colleges of Chicago. Many hands make light work!

When addressing the media, Lightfoot did what all desperate politicians do when in a bind: she blamed a young staffer for the disaster.

Maybe this will be the year that Lori’s light goes out, but that is scarcely likely to be a change for the better, for this is an election in which every contender is worse than all the rest. Of the other two leading candidates, one is running to the mayor’s left and the other got his start in politics as an organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union, one of the most anti-education organizations in the country.

Whatever the outcome, I’m glad that I won’t have to live with its consequences.

The Coming Torricelli Maneuver in Illinois

Let me be the first to predict it: Just before the deadline for putting the ballot into final form, Alexi Giannoulias will withdraw from the Illinois Senate race, and the Democratic bosses will name Dan Hynes, who came within a fraction of a percent of winning the gubernatorial primary, as their replacement candidate.

Obvious when you think about it, no?

Update (3/4/10): Jennifer Rubin agrees with me.

The President of Chicago

I’ve seen four theories about why President Obama has decided that the most important task he can undertake this week is to fly to Copenhagen to lobby in behalf of the Chicago bid to host the 2016 Olympic Games.

The one that I would like to believe is Bill Kristol’s: that the sports junket is a cover for a surprise visit to our troops in Afghanistan. The trip could be the start of a White House effort – conspicuously absent to date – to rally public support behind the Af-Pak campaign and contradict the hints (such as his delay in authorizing new force commitments and nearly complete absence of communications with the commander in the field, not to mention Joe Biden’s vaporous “fight terrorism from 35,000 feet” proposal) that Kabul is about to go under the spacious Obama bus.

A second theory is that the International Olympic Committee has covertly made the decision to pick Chicago and that the President wants to bask in the “glory” of putting an American city over the top. If that’s the motive, it will be yet another example of our chief executive’s childish vanity. Hundreds of rank-and-file Chicagoans have devoted thousands of hours to pushing the bid. The One swoops down to claim the credit. Appalling.

For the true cynics, Jim Geraghty notes that the trip “just happens to take him out of the country the day the unemployment numbers for September will be announced”. How handy to have a big foreign story to overshadow what’s likely to be an unhappy domestic one.

Finally, and most plausibly, there’s the view of John Fund, writing in the WSJ.com Political Diary (subscription-only, and the best use of $7.95 you have this month):

Some even in Chicago question the wisdom of his lobbying trip. “To let himself be distracted by a parochial concern like this does not speak well for Obama’s judgment,” wrote Chicago Tribune columnist Steven Chapman. Not every Chicagoan shares Mr. Obama’s enthusiasm for hosting the games. The latest Tribune poll shows only 47% of residents backing the city’s bid in the wake of Mayor Richard Daley’s decision to put taxpayers on the hook for any cost overruns.

But in reality President Obama’s decision makes perfect sense. Chicago’s bid for the Olympics is in jeopardy, and even though the president will have perhaps five minutes before the microphones of the International Olympic Committee, his star presence could make the difference. What’s on the line in Copenhagen is much bigger than the Olympics, at least to the parochial players who run Chicago. Mayor Daley has staked his legacy on snagging the games. The 67-year-old mayor has dominated the city for the past two decades, but recent scandals and financial strains have dented his prestige. “The mayor’s ability to continue to run the city as he sees fit could hinge in great part on whether the Olympics bid succeeds,” reports the Chicago Tribune.

That’s why Chicago sources tell me Mayor Daley pulled out all the stops to mobilize the White House to save the city’s bid. He was aided in his appeals by the fact that the White House is now stuffed with top aides who are Daley loyalists, ranging from Valerie Jarrett to David Axelrod to Rahm Emanuel.

In their heyday, the big city political machines wielded massive influence. The bosses had governors, senators and congressmen in their pockets – but never quite managed to dominate a Presidency. Richard M. Daley is generally regarded as a pale shadow of his father, Richard J. In this respect, at least, he has surpassed the old man.

Further reading: The American Spectator, “Obama’s Olympic Spirit”

Replacing Rahm

Last Tuesday, I engaged in the civic-minded and (for a Republican) futile act of voting in the Illinois Fifth Congressional District primary. My former Congressman, Rahm Emanuel, has gone off to save the country from the greatest threat facing it, viz., Rush Limbaugh, so it’s necessary to select his successor. It will, of course, be a Democrat. Republicans have held the seat for four years out of the past 110. (As an historical aside, the very first Fifth District Representative, elected in 1842, was Stephen A. Douglas.) Last time out, the GOP candidate advertised himself as “LIBERAL”, with “Republican” in tiny type. He got 22 percent of the vote.

When I arrived at the polls, shortly before 8:00 a.m., I found eerie emptiness. Two precincts share the polling place. I was the only voter for either. In the past, there has usually been a short line even for a primary. The wait last November was half an hour. Tuesday’s apathy (a turnout under 15 percent of registered voters) defied the fact that twelve Democrats were running, several of them locally prominent politicians who had advertised heavily.

The first place finisher (12,100 votes) was Mike Quigley, a Cook County commissioner best known for having quarreled with the Stroger dynasty, second only to the Daleys as fons et origo of Chicagoland corruption. That’s more than Barack Obama ever did. I have no reason to think that Mr. Quigley will be anything other than a down-the-line Pelosi loyalist. Still, I’d rather be represented by him than by the union-boss toadies who placed second and third. Further down (seventh place with six percent) was Tom Geoghegan, endorsed by Mickey Kaus, no less. He tried the novel tactic of buying ads on right-wing blogs. It didn’t work.

On the GOP side, there were six candidates, which was quite incredible. In ordinary years, there may be two, usually pretty unimpressive characters. A commentator on a primary a few years ago opined, not unfairly, that neither candidate’s IQ was as high as his age. The field this time around was a quite presentable bunch of nobodies. A minuscule electorate (4,000 voters) chose Rosanna Pulido, whose one quarter of the vote put her 150 votes ahead of the LIBERAL. The guy I voted for, who had what should have been a very helpful endorsement from local Republican star Tony Peraica, did no visible campaigning and came in fourth.

Miss Pulido is a somewhat controversial figure, as she heads the Illinois chapter of the anti-immigration zealot “Minutemen” organization. Her Web site’s choice of “featured issues” (the Second Amendment, illegal immigration, abortion and “seniors”) strikes me as not quite attuned to a moment when everybody’s attention ought to be focused on the bumbling radicalism of the Obama Presidency. When the weather was sunny, it was fine to argue about e-Verify and H1B visas. With the storm raging, let’s concentrate on stopping the guy who’s tearing the roof off the house. A campaign that quoted profusely from Daniel Henninger and Charles Krauthammer and Michael Boskin and Yuval Levin wouldn’t carry the Fifth District, but it also wouldn’t be quaint and out of touch. There are, I suspect, more than a few liberals who are starting to realize that their dwindling stock portfolios have some connection with the dithering Administration in Washington.

The Colonel’s Ghost

The Chicago Tribune’s editorial page has become such a montage of vaguely leftoid pastels that I hardly ever glance at it any more. Today, however, the ghost of Colonel McCormick seems to have possessed the editorial board, as it shouts forthrightly, “Roland Burris, Resign”:

The benefit of the doubt had already been stretched thin and taut by the time Roland Burris offered his third version of the events leading to his appointment to the U.S. Senate. It finally snapped like a rubber band, popping him on that long Pinocchio nose of his, when he came out with version four.

Let’s see if we have it right: Burris had zero contact with any of Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s cronies about his interest in the Senate seat being vacated by President Barack Obama – unless you count that conversation with former chief of staff Lon Monk, and, on further reflection, the ones with insiders John Harris, Doug Scofield and John Wyma and, oh yeah, the governor’s brother and fund-raising chief, Robert Blagojevich. But Burris didn’t raise a single dollar for the now ex-governor as a result of those contacts because that could be construed as a quid pro quo and besides, everyone he asked refused to donate.

The story gets worse with every telling.

Enough. Roland Burris must resign.

The Colonel would, of course, have made more of this point:

Illinois House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie (D-Chicago), who chaired the impeachment panel, sat on Burris’ amended testimony for more than a week.

That would be the period during which ARRA (pronounced “error”) was being pushed through the Senate with just the bare 60 votes it needed for passage. How convenient that one of those 60 Senators wasn’t “distracted” by questions about his integrity. Just a coincidence, no doubt. At least, we can be sure that no one in the MSM (including, alas, the Chicago Tribune) will probe more deeply.

Meanwhile, The One has nothing to say:

I was rather intrigued that the White House press corps asks Gibbs about Burris “a couple times”, and Gibbs hasn’t gotten, or can’t get, the president’s reaction. . . . Of course this is a thorny and uncomfortable topic, and any non-mush statement would have to either give Burris the benefit of the doubt or concede the “resign now” crowd has a point. But those tough calls come with the job.

Avoiding the topic for as long as possible is kind of like... I don’t know, voting “present” or something.

I have more confidence in our President. I’m sure that he will issue a strong, unequivocal statement – just as soon as Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi fashions words to put into his mouth.

Due Process for Blago: What It Means

A Cornell professor has entered a plea in behalf of Milrad Blagojevich, arguing that the soon-to-be-ex-governor is being condemned by the Illinois legislature on weak evidence without due process of law. Dave Kopel feels the same way. Neither of these estimable figures is the sort to have a natural sympathy for Blago, and their arguments have a patina of high-minded devotion to justice. As Mr. Kopel puts it,

[T]he evidence against Blagojevich consists almost exclusively of an FBI agent affirming the authenticity of highly selective excerpts from surveillance tapes which he provided via an affidavit. Notably, Agent “Cain refused to answer whether the excerpts in the affidavit put events in ‘the proper context’ (Tr. 293) or whether he has learned anything in the seven weeks since he signed the affidavit which ‘would make any of the statements in your affidavit untrue?’ (Tr. 299).”

Put me in the camp that is reluctant to ruin someone’s life just because Patrick Fitzgerald says so.

In his round of television appearances, Blago has declared that the portions of his recorded conversations that have so far been made public are taken out of context and that, when the full truth is known, he will shine resplendent as a defender of the little guy against a conspiracy of malefactors.

Fine. He has the opportunity to present the context and explain away his seemingly incriminatory statements. He can put on a defense at his Senate trial. He can testify under oath. He can call witnesses. He can review the prosecution’s evidence in detail and expose its flaws. But he chooses instead to confine his defense to the airwaves and, reportedly, a closing statement to the Senator-Judges.

In a criminal trial, he would have the right to say nothing and compel the government to prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Messrs. Jacobson and Kopel are essentially applying the same standard to an impeachment, and there, I believe, they go astray.

Americans have rights to life, liberty and property that can be taken away only by due process of law, a term that incorporates all kinds of safeguards for defendants. Private citizen Milrad Blagojevich can’t, and shouldn’t, be sent to prison unless the U.S. attorney can offer a case that, entirely on its own, demonstrates his guilt. I’ll grant arguendo that the prosecutors before the Illinois Senate haven’t done that.

Tenure in a high public office is not, however, a right. It is an honor and privilege. If the governor of Illinois, faced with the evidence that has been made public, can’t or won’t offer reasons why we should believe him innocent, I see no reason for allowing him to remain in office. It’s up to Blago to show why the citizenry ought to trust him to exercise executive powers – not up to us to wait patiently for the assembling of an iron-clad case against him.

In the Land of Lincoln

Received from a friend. I wish I had thought of it.

The Blago-Burris Seat

Notwithstanding the ingenious suggestions of various Volokh Conspiracy commenters, there are only two ways that the Senate can avoid seating Roland Burris. One is to persuade the Supreme Court to overrule Powell v. McCormack. That could happen, but liberals won’t be happy if it does. The rationale for the decision would almost certainly be the Political Question doctrine, the revival of which would be a severe setback for the Legal Left. I look forward hopefully to Justice Scalia’s majority opinion and to the NLG/ABA/AAJ gnashing of teeth thereafter.

The alternative is to persuade the appointee to back out, by making it clear to him that he will spend an unhappy two years as a gate crasher. The Democratic leadership has to let him take the oath of office, but they can’t be compelled to admit him to the party caucus or give him committee assignments and decent office space. Members can ignore his bills and refuse to let him co-sponsor their own. The presiding officer can overlook him when he tries to speak on the floor. The Democratic Senate Campaign Committee can announce that he will get no support in 2010. Faced with the choice between a prosperous lobbying practice in Springfield and pariah status in Washington, Mr. Burris can be expected to ease himself out of the picture. Bobby Rush might call the bluff and dare Harry Reid et al. to consign the lone black Senator to the back of the bus. Roland Burris won’t.

Jennifer Rubin has a series of astute observations [links omitted]:

Harry Reid better have a more compelling argument than “fraud” to keep Roland Burris out of the senate. For starters, where’s the evidence of “fraud” and is Reid accusing Burris of some misdeed? By their brilliant strategy of opposing a special election, the Democrats have now ensured an unseemly and protracted legal and political free-for-all.

President-elect Obama is predictably “disappointed.” That, you may recall, is the officially-approved default reaction.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan whines that Blago’s pick of Burris leaves the state in a “terrible situation.” Hmmm. How could this have been prevented? Someone ask Sen. Dick Durbin.

I agree that Reid’s got a tough case: it’s not enough to say Blago is a crook and was considering a list of other people for a price. Blago’s move, in a way, is a brilliant bit of misdirection, but it does undermine any insanity defense. This is one clever pol.

My favorite quip, though, is Jonah Goldberg’s: “Roland Burris is more qualified to be undemocratically appointed to the Senate than Caroline Kennedy is.” He heads that “Stating the Obvious”, and it is.

I’ll admit to feeling pangs of sympathy for the Senator-designate. Although his persona practically defines “lackluster”, his biography is inspirational (even if he does say so himself). He grew up as a young black man in downstate Illinois at a time when racial attitudes there were only marginally more enlightened than in Alabama and was elected to statewide office on an essentially nonracial basis. It’s a pity that his career will be remembered not for those achievements but for this twilight fiasco.

Further reading: John Kass, “For Sheer Brazenness, Nobody Surpasses Rod”

A Post-Partisan Knave

Tony Rezko’s trial and conviction are, at heart, an indictment of Illinois’s major political parties. The most prominent politicians to whom he was attached were Democrats, Rod Blagojevich and Barack Obama, but, as the Chicago Tribune observes, his machinations were a scandal for both parties:

The trial also provided ample fodder for cynics who see Illinois politicians as members of a cozy club motivated more by greed than altruism or ideology.

Witnesses against Rezko claimed his alleged schemes involved a host of political insiders from both major parties. Among those whose names came up repeatedly during the trial were Chris Kelly, another top fundraiser for Blagojevich; William Cellini, a veteran Republican power broker; and Robert Kjellander, the longtime Republican national committeeman from Illinois.

Slick Barry’s reaction: “This isn’t the Tony Rezko I knew.” Just like the Jeremiah Wright and the Michael Pfleger he didn’t know.

As the elite media will remind us incessantly, Barack Obama was not accused of participating in any of the schemes for which Rezko was being tried. Rezko was, however, one of his earliest and most generous patrons, going so far as to help him buy his house. Fixers don’t do favors for young pols out of the goodness of their hearts. Politicians with any perceptiveness don’t accept them without realizing that repayment will be called for.

Still, Senator Obama ought not to suck up all the attention. The message the Republicans ought to get – and send – is that it is past time for the Illinois GOP to purge its Thompson-era leadership. If it continues to offer the voters nothing but a different set of knaves, they’ll continue to choose the familiar Democratic crew.

Further reading: John Kass, “Rezko Is Not Just Obama's Problem - He’s the GOP’s”

Another Restrictionist Loses

Yesterday, the Republicans lost the Congressional seat in Illinois’ 14th District, an area that probably hasn’t gone Democratic since Abe Lincoln was a babe in arms. This is, of course, a difficult year for the GOP, but one factor leaps out in this particular race. The Republican candidate, a rich and so far unsuccessful political dilettante named Jim Oberweis, built much of his campaign around the allegedly urgent need to restrict immigration. In the minds of the restrictionists, that’s the issue that will fire up the demoralized Republican “base” and offset the Democrats’ fervor for defeat in Iraq. It didn’t work that way. Like its cousin protectionism, immigration restrictionism polls well, but for some reason its supporters are like the famous “Obama girl”; they talk loudly but never get around to casting votes.

Further reading: The Wall Street Journal, “Lose and Learn”:

Republicans such as Mr. Oberweis remain convinced that illegal immigration is a winning issue. And if the electorate were comprised mostly of Internet screechers and cable news anchors, they might be right. But the fact that Mr. McCain, the Presidential candidate most closely associated with immigration tolerance, has outlasted Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee and other immigration hardliners, should be an indication that other issues are foremost in the minds of even GOP voters.

Blago Sets a Record!

If there were a Guinness Book of Political Records, Rod Blagojevich would have gained a spot in it today. Governors often have trouble getting their bills through legislatures, but I’m sure that none has ever before done quite so badly at it as this:

The Illinois House today overwhelmingly rejected Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s plan for a new $7 billion business tax.

Not a single lawmaker voted “yes” in favor of the plan when House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago) called the resolution, which asked if they supported or opposed the governor’s proposed new tax. But 107 lawmakers voted “no” – a vote against the governor’s plan – and seven voted “present.”

The Blagojevich scheme started life as a nice piece of demagoguery: “Business” would pay hefty new taxes to finance a state-run heath care program and a big increase in education spending (allocated in accordance with the priorities of the teachers’ unions, of course). Unluckily for the governor, he couldn’t just soak the rich in the traditional Democratic fashion by mulcting high-income taxpayers. The Illinois Constitution prohibits a graduated income tax. Taxes on profitable (i. e., successful, job-creating) businesses are also constrained, because another constitutional provision limits the corporate income tax rate to 160 percent of the individual rate.

Governor Blagojevich’s alternative was a tax on gross receipts. He doubtless figured that the “business tax” label would satisfy everybody but troglodyte Republicans, of which the state legislature has fewer and fewer with every election. But the levy’s impact was so plain that Democrats needed only their customary 20/200 economic eyesight to see that it would hit not shadowy plutocrats but everybody who buys goods and services, including all of their own constituents.

One mustn’t expect too much wisdom from Illinois lawmakers, so there is likely to be some dreadful “compromise” that will squeeze the blood from different, less transparent turnips. Nonetheless, it will be pleasant in future years to recall that tally: zero to 107 to seven.

Quote of the Day

James L. Merriner, author of Grafters and Goo Goos: Corruption and Reform in Chicago, 1833-2003:

Larry J. Sabato, a professor at the University of Virginia, is a kind of all-purpose political commentator. He told me, “The unholy trinity of politically corrupt states are New Jersey, Illinois and Louisiana.” . . .

I asked Sabato, assuming that Illinois and New Jersey are among the most corrupt states, why is that? What is different about them?

“Corruption is nurtured by the political culture . . .” he said. “Through the generations, corruption has become strongly associated with politics [and] people just expect the two to go together like love and marriage.”

Let’s hear from a real insider. Richard Juliano, former deputy chief of staff for Ryan, spoke at the Minneapolis ethics conference.

If not the unsung hero of the Operation Safe Road probe of Ryan’s terms as secretary of state and governor, Juliano comes off looking better than most of the other 75 people who were convicted or pleaded guilty in that investigation. He cooperated with the prosecution even before being indicted and was sentenced to four years’ probation and a $10,000 fine.

Juliano said Ryan’s operatives were “conditioned” to “consider all of these [corrupt acts] to be minimal transgressions . . . as long as the media didn’t find out about it, in which case we would have a political problem, it would be OK . . . the goal was to win the election. As long as we win the election, everything else will take care of itself.”

To quote Sabato once more on the culture of corruption: it “depends heavily on what average voters will tolerate from their elected officials.”

The feds are vigorously investigating the administrations of Gov. Blagojevich and Mayor Daley. We just re-elected them by landslide margins.

If only Illinois had a Republican Party. . . .

An Obama Scandal? Nope

If Insight, a right-of-center magazine, obtained the material for this story from Hillary Rodham Clinton’s opposition research team, as it asserts, Senator Clinton needs a staff shake-up. I’m no Barack Obama fan; he’s the most vacuous presidentabile since Liddy Dole. But, as the story itself eventually makes plain (and pace Jim Geraghty), there’s less than nothing interesting in the period that he spent as a pupil in an Indonesian madrassa before his tenth birthday.

The story starts promisingly for the Illinoisan’s non-admirers:

An investigation of Mr. Obama by political opponents within the Democratic Party has discovered that Mr. Obama was raised as a Muslim by his stepfather in Indonesia. Sources close to the background check, which has not yet been released, said Mr. Obama, 45, spent at least four years in a so-called Madrassa, or Muslim seminary, in Indonesia.

“He was a Muslim, but he concealed it,” the source said. “His opponents within the Democrats hope this will become a major issue in the campaign.”

When contacted by Insight, Mr. Obama’s press secretary said he would consult with “his boss” and call back. He did not.

Sources said the background check, conducted by researchers connected to Senator Clinton, disclosed details of Mr. Obama’s Muslim past. The sources said the Clinton camp concluded the Illinois Democrat concealed his prior Muslim faith and education.

Except that we learn a few paragraphs later that, following her divorce from young Barack’s father,

Mr. Obama’s mother married an Indonesian student and the family moved to Jakarta. Mr. Obama returned to Hawaii when he was 10 [emphasis added] to live with his maternal grandparents. . . .

In Indonesia, the young Obama was enrolled in a Madrassa and was raised and educated as a Muslim. Although Indonesia is regarded as a moderate Muslim state, the U.S. intelligence community has determined that today [emphasis added] most of these schools are financed by the Saudi Arabian government and they teach a Wahhabi doctrine that denies the rights of non-Muslims.

It seems rather doubtful that whatever the lad learned in approximately second through fifth grade played a decisive role in forming his political outlook, and the reference to Saudi financing is weaselly. It refers to the present situation, not that of 35 years ago.

Furthermore, Senator Obama hasn’t “concealed” his past to any meaningful extent.

In [his autobiography, The Audacity of Hope], Mr. Obama briefly addresses his education in Indonesia. “During the five years that we would live with my stepfather in Indonesia, I was sent first to a neighborhood Catholic school and then to a predominantly Muslim school; in both cases, my mother was less concerned with me learning the catechism or puzzling out the meaning of the muezzin’s call to evening prayer than she was with whether I was properly learning my multiplication tables.”

How much more does one expect to learn about anybody’s elementary education? That he was sent to schools of two different faiths tends to confirm his statements, quoted in the article, about the essential irreligiosity of his mother and stepfather. If they didn’t take either Christianity or Islam seriously, it’s unlikely that their boy paid close attention to doctrinal instruction or remembered much that was worth relating in a campaign-oriented memoir.

If there’s a real story here, it’s about Senator Clinton: not about her well-known ruthlessness but, rather, about the ham-handedness that so notably marked her blundering leadership of her husband’s socialized medicine initiative. If she’s this inept at dealing with Barack Obama, do we want her confronting North Korea, Venezuela and Iran?

One Illinois Election That the Dems May Actually Have to Steal

OpinionJournal Political Diary (which you, too, can receive in your own e-inbox for a paltry $3.95 a month) today paints a picture of the utter hopelessness of the Thompson-Edgar-Kjellander-Topinka simulacrum of a political party:

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich may be the luckiest governor in the country. The Democrat’s approval ratings are in the low 40s. He's been raked over the coals in recent weeks by the Chicago media for handing a state job to a woman two weeks after her husband slipped him a $1,500 check at his daughter’s birthday party. And last week a top fundraiser and advisor to the governor, Antoine “Tony” Rezko, was indicted on 24 counts of corruption in what U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald called a “pay-for-play scheme on steroids.” Mr. Rezko promptly skipped town, missing a court appearance on Friday, and is now thought to be somewhere in the Middle East.

But so far, Mr. Blagojevich’s Republican challenger, Judy Baar Topinka, hasn’t been able to exploit any of this to her advantage. Her support among registered voters has recently been clocked at the high 20s. And as the current State Treasurer, she’s having trouble getting out from under the shadow of former GOP Gov. George Ryan, who is scheduled to shuffle off to the federal pen in January after being convicted on corruption charges earlier this year.

Twelve years ago, Republicans swept the statewide elective offices and both houses of the legislature. Unhappily, that triumph elevated a real confederacy of dunces to positions of power. After a decade-long parade of corruption and ineptitude, the shadow of the Illini GOP is in no position to call the Blagojevich kettle dirty gray. It has also managed to fritter away the party’s base by pandering to an imaginary cohort of pro-abortion, pro-gun control, anti-death penalty, pro-same-sex marriage metric football fans in the Chicago suburbs.

Nonetheless, the same day that brought OpinionJournal’s gloomy recap produced a startling bit of good news. A Tribure/WGN poll found that Republican Tony Peraica is in a neck-and-neck race for Cook Country Board President, with a big chunk of the Democratic vote in his camp and a huge proportion of voters undecided.

[Todd] Stroger leads Peraica 39 percent to 36 percent in the survey, which has an error margin of 5 percentage points. The poll of 481 likely Cook County voters was conducted Oct. 8-11.

The number of undecided voters – 22 percent – shows the race is still very fluid as the Nov. 7 election nears.

The poll found Stroger, the son of former board President John Stroger, has nearly universal name recognition. But it also showed Peraica has had some success chipping away at Stroger’s Democratic base.

It’s been 40 years since a Republican won the County Board presidency. But Stroger may be weakened by the campaign Forrest Claypool waged against his father in the March primary and by misgivings over the way Democratic leaders selected Stroger for the November ballot after his father retired.

The new poll found that 21 percent of self-described Democrats said they would vote for the Republican.

Stroger père suffered a stroke a week before the primary, but the party bosses concealed the extent of his disability until he had defeated a strong challenge from an “outsider” Democrat, then handed the nomination to the undistinguished Stroger fils.

I can’t be immensely optimistic about the outcome. The Democratic machine has historically been able to turn out 101 percent of the vote when it needs to, and Cook County this year made the secret ballot optional – I kid you not – thus making party discipline easier to enforce. Still, it is pleasant to think that the Dems may be put to the trouble of having to steal at least one election in Deep Blue Illinois.

Quote of the Day

John J. Miller on a profile of Illinois’ junior Senator in this morning’s Washington Post:

The Wash Post swoons over Barack Obama this morning. I know what you’re thinking: Ho hum. The word “presidency” appears in the tenth sentence. But nowhere does the word “liberal” appear. Having been elected to the Senate less than two years ago, his legislative record is scant. Yet it’s undeniably liberal. On it a scale of 0-100, with 100 = most conservative, the American Conservative Union currently gives him a rating of 8. This is to the left of Hillary Clinton, who earns a 12 in the current session, and exactly the same score as John Kerry. Obama may be “a fresh face,” but he represents and old and tired politics. When will the media notice that?

Liberalism is not, of course, just a matter of statistics. Senator Obama’s “fresh” ideas include opposing photo ID requirements for voters, calling Social Security reform “racist” and preferring Moveon.org to the moderate Democratic Leadership Council. If he were Barry O’Boyle, a diplomat’s son who won a Senate seat through lucky breaks that would be implausible in an Allen Drury novel, he would have faded by now into the faceless throng of left-wing legislators. It’s his good fortune that the diplomat father hailed from Kenya rather than Boston. To those who regard skin color as the outward manifestation of character, that accident of genetics makes him Presidential material.

The Friends of Fraud at the Polls

Senator Mitch McConnell’s amendment to require voters to present photo identification in all federal elections made it into the immigration bill by a 49–48 vote. Why was such an obviously benign anti-fraud measure so hotly contested? Here is the account from OpinionJournal Political Diary (a mere $3.95 a month):

The eyebrow-raising news is that every Democratic senator opposed what would appear to be a no-brainer of an idea.

Mr. McConnell noted that in modern life it’s almost impossible for someone not to have a photo ID – it’s required for everything from boarding a plane to entering a federal building. His proposal would have included a grant to ensure that states could afford to provide a free ID to anyone who needed one. [That isn’t a budget buster. In Illinois, for instance, the charge for a state photo ID, valid for five years, is five dollars.] Requiring someone to show a photo ID would cut down on potential fraud and misrepresentation at the polls, especially in states such as Wisconsin where voters can register to vote and cast a ballot on Election Day with no waiting period. . . .

The debate over photo ID was revealing. Democratic Senator Barack Obama of Illinois inexplicably claimed the proposal was a solution without a problem because there was no voter fraud in the country. Coming from a man who grew up in and represents Chicago, his statement left some colleagues in slackjawed amazement. . . .

A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll last month found that 80% of Americans favored a requirement that photo ID be shown at the polls, with only 7% opposed. Nonetheless, every Democratic senator lined up in opposition – a clear a sign that the interest groups that support Democrats must feel threatened by the idea of ballot security.

Republicans took note of the fact that even vulnerable Democratic incumbents up for re-election this year such as Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Maria Cantwell of Washington state, both of whom live in states where there have been allegations of voter fraud in recent elections, turned thumbs-down on the idea. You can bet that television ads highlighting their stand will be part of this fall’s political mix.

Senator Obama, I note, continues his trajectory from fresh voice of moderation to tired party hack and moonbat fellow traveler. Or perhaps he reasons that, since Cook County has effectively abolished the secret ballot, safeguards against fraud are rather beside the point.

If the Democrats’ prospects are rosy in November – and I don’t doubt that they are – couldn’t they at least have the grace to give up the advantages gained by bringing phony voters to the polls? They still have absentee ballot fraud as a backup. Besides, the McConnell Amendment won’t take effect until the 2008 election, so there will be plenty of opportunity to create a huge Dem majority in Congress this year. After that, surely the party’s commitment to dealing with pressing national issues, that is, to a foreign policy aligned with France, expanded domestic spending, higher taxes and a determined blind eye to the long-term problems of Social Security and Medicare, will secure a permanent place in the affection of American voters, making stuffed ballot boxes superfluous.

Adrift in Illinois

The malaise that afflicts the Republican Party nationally isn’t noticeable here in Illinois – because the state GOP is in such dreadful condition that nothing could make it worse. The party that a decade ago held almost all statewide offices and majorities in both houses of the legislature now limps along, happy to retain its gerrymandered quota of Congressional seats and dominate a diminishing number of downstate counties. The last two Republican governors left office under ethical clouds after single terms. The most recent is currently on trial for corruption. Whether or not the jury finds him guilty of personal wrongdoing, there’s no doubt that, for most Illinoisans, the Party of Lincoln is the Party of Sleazy Incoherence.

Yesterday’s primary will do nothing to alter that perception. Judy Baar Topinka, the last significant elected official in the cadre that has controlled the state Republican Party since Jim Thompson’s heyday, won the gubernatorial nomination with an unimpressive 38 percent of the vote in a four-way race. Turnout in the primary was 125,000 below the Democrats, despite the fact that the incumbent governor, Rod Blagojevich, faced only token opposition. His first term has been thoroughly unimpressive, but no one seriously thinks that he faces a stiff challenge from Mrs. Topinka. Given a choice, the Republican electorate chose to drift.

The surest sign of the party’s sluggish surrender to inertia was the fourth place showing of well-funded, well-qualified, Chicago Tribune-endorsed Ron Gidwitz. If, as the Thompson-Edgar-Kjellander-Topinka Establishment keeps telling us, Republicans need dynamic moderates, here was the man. But the Establishment closed ranks around one of its own tired nabobs. Mr. Gidwitz finished fourth, with less than 11 percent of the vote. Together, he and Mrs. Topinka, the “centrists”, were outpolled by two unabashed conservatives, Jim Oberweis and Bill Brady. Unfortunately for the conservative cause, Mr. Oberweis is a foot-in-mouth disease sufferer and Mr. Brady a little known, underfunded state senator. A candidate who combined the former’s cash with the latter’s talent would have been formidable. As matters stand, their showing merely confirms the winner’s weakness.

The TEKT philosophy is, in brief, that Republicans can win in Illinois by stifling the party’s right-of-center base and directing their appeal toward the feminist, socially liberal, “fiscally conservative” (but not opposed to any actual spending or taxes) soccer moms of political urban legend. Their rationale for persisting in this continually unsuccessful strategy is that strident rightists in the Alan Keyes or Jim Oberweis mold can’t win in Illinois. Which is true, but they can’t win anywhere else either (leaving aside a few counties in Utah and South Dakota). Yet right-of-center Republicans almost everywhere else manage to do better than Illinois mugwumps.

The last several election cycles have demonstrated, throughout the country, that a political party can’t be competitive without a core of enthusiastic voters. That isn’t a sufficient condition, but it is a necessary one. In Illinois, a state that is culturally and fiscally far from left-wing (consider how many conservative and moderate Democrats there are downstate), it’s preposterous for a party to try to coalesce around soccer moms. It’s even worse to do so under a leadership that is popularly identified, fairly or not, with pervasive corruption.

The last, best hope for Illinois Republicans is that, while candidate Topinka crashes and burns, sensible conservatives will emerge further down the ticket and then will be able to move into the void following her humiliating defeat. If that doesn’t happen, future elections in this state will look much like those in Belarus.

Voting in Chicago: New Style, Old Substance

This morning I made the futile gesture of casting a vote in the Illinois Republican primary. The State GOP has spent years destroying itself and has as much chance of winning an honest election as the opposition in Belarus does of winning a dishonest one. Not that we’re going to have to worry about an honest election, if my impressions of the new ballot system are at all correct.

I knew when I entered the polling place that a new, “high-tech” method of voting was waiting for me, but I hadn’t bothered to learn any details. I was presented with a sheet the size of, if not a bedspread, at least a large pillow: very big type and lots of white space, very disproportionate to the two contested Republican races in my precinct. I lugged it to an uncurtained stand, where, using a “special marker” that looked like it had been bought at Office Depot, I marked “X” next to my choices. I may as well tell you that they were Bill Brady for governor and Steve Rauschenberger for lieutenant governor. Any possibility of secrecy vanished when I started toward the vote-checking apparatus and was informed that an election judge had to initial my ballot first. Given its layout, there was no way that she could avoid seeing how it was marked. In fact, I noticed her eyes glancing over it (probably wondering how such a rarity as a Republican in the lavender Lakeview neighborhood would vote). That doesn’t matter in this case, but it would matter if I were a bribed elector and she a party functionary checking to make sure that I’d kept my promises.

The paper was then fed through the apparatus to ensure that I hadn’t under- or over-voted. Optionally, I could place another sheet on top so that my choices wouldn’t be visible to bystanders. Optionally. Here was the third opportunity, after the unshielded booth and the election judge’s roving eye, for my vote to be disclosed to whoever might have an interest.

Once upon a time, the secret ballot was regarded as both a foundation stone of democracy and a prophylactic against fraud. Now it isn’t even a consideration. Given that the new system is to be used in Cook County, I don’t think it cynical to suggest that the omission was not accidental, though I do wonder why, in view of the decrepit state of their opposition, the Democrats are going to the trouble to fix a sure thing.

My Plame Conspiracy Theory

As the connection between actual events and anything that resembles wrongdoing becomes more and more attenuated, Tempest-in-a-Teapot Dome (a/k/a “Nadagate”) is passing beyond mortal capacity to comprehend (though JustOneMinute continues to make a valiant effort). To conserve my brain cells for more pressing tasks, I’ve given up trying to decipher whether the glamorous Valerie Plame Wilson was a top secret superspy cleverly using the cover of a desk job at Langley and throwing the nation’s enemies off the scent by telling neighbors that she worked for the CIA, or whether her secret identity was first revealed by Karl Rove or Colin Powell or Judith Miller or Joe Wilson or Valerie herself, or why special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald continues this prosecutorial snipe hunt. Instead, I’ve formed my own theory. It’s a conspiracy theory, of course. Anything less would fall short of universal expectations. Here it is:

Aside from serving as special counsel on the Plame kerfuffle, Mr. Fitzgerald is United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. In that role, he oversaw the corruption probes that devastated the administration of former Republican governor George Ryan. During last year’s strange Illinois Senate race, conservatives speculated that getting rid of Mr. Fitzgerald was a high priority for the generally inept and ethically challenged state GOP leadership, and was, in fact, behind the official party’s torpedoing of the Senate candidacy of ardent Fitzgerald cheerleader Jack Ryan.

My conspiracy theory is that those same state party leaders, using their connections to the Speaker of the House and from him to the President, urged Mr. Fitzgerald’s appointment to the Plame case in the hope of distracting him from investigations closer to home. That strategy requires making sure that his special counsel’s duties never come to an end. The most expedient way to prolong them is by avoiding straightforward answers to straightforward questions, thus fueling Mr. Fitzgerald’s suspicions and encouraging him to keep searching for the solution to a riddle that doesn’t really exist. Karl Rove, being a sinister genius, naturally plays a large part in this elaborate charade.

Let me note for the record that I don’t believe that this theory is true. It does, however, account for the phainomena better than any put forward by the Rove-hating Left. If we are not allowed to believe what is most plausible – that Mrs. Plame Wilson’s employment by the CIA was no great national security secret and was revealed as a harmless side effect of correcting her husband’s false account of his mission to Niger – my alternative is, I believe, the best one currently on offer. All that’s needed to confirm it is a subpoena to Judy Baar Topinka.

Obama’s Moderation, Wisconsin Vote Fraud, Etc.

■ Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.), an African-American (his father is from Kenya) whom the Jim Crow section of the press refers to as “black” (he has as much white as black ancestry, so shouldn’t he be “gray”?), has been a media darling ever since he lucked into a Senate nomination last year. On the strength of a Fourth of July oration at the Democratic National Convention, he has a reputation as only a moderate liberal. That label is rather belied by the news (caveat: from Daily Kos and therefore not necessarily trustworthy) that Loony Left Moveon.org has raised $3 million for him and that he has asked that his name be removed from the Web site of the genuinely moderate liberal Democratic Leadership Conference. According to the Kossacks, “We know where Obama’s loyalties lie, and it’s wiith [sic] the netroots. He’s one of ours.” I wonder whether Senator Obama wants to be one with those whose reaction to the murder of four Americans in Iraq was “Screw ’em.”

■ Orlando Sentinel columnist Peter Brown (via OpinionJournal Political Diary, a $3.95/month bargain):

Since the disputed 2000 election, increased turnout, especially among minorities, has been deemed so desirable that suggestions that some tools to increase access might also make it easier to vote illegally have been dismissed as politically incorrect. . . . [But] federal prosecutors began investigating [abuses of Wisconsin's liberal same-day registration rules] after the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel found 7,000 more ballots tabulated in that city than people counted as voting, and an additional 1,200 votes from invalid addresses. Officially, Kerry carried Wisconsin by only 11,000 votes, and Milwaukee has less than 10 percent of the state's voters. The same rules were in effect statewide, but no other jurisdiction’s numbers were reviewed by the news media. It is quite possible President Bush actually won Wisconsin. Had Kerry won Ohio, he would have become president, but not if Bush won Wisconsin.

I know nothing about Peter Brown in particular, but the Sentinel is in general a very liberal paper. (One Mother’s Day it ran a flattering profile of an abortionist.) This may be a sign that even parts of the Left are beginning to worry about vote fraud in America.

■ IMHO, it is much too early to think seriously about the 2008 Presidential election. For unserious thinkers, however. . . .

■ Have you heard about born-again stars? (No, not a link to a story about religion in Hollywood.)

■ Kofi Annan is 67 years old today. Would it be excessively ungracious to suggest that he give himself and the world the birthday present of prompt retirement?

Fresh Face, Stale Mind

Barack “Lucky” Obama is routinely portrayed by the media as a fresh new face in the Senate. Well, the face may be fresh, but the mind isn’t, as he demonstrated yesterday by rotely accusing President Bush of presenting racially “offensive” arguments for Social Security reform.

The President has been pointing out regularly that private accounts would be a boon to retirees who die prematurely. Under the present system, they receive less than they have paid in FICA taxes. Basing Social Security on capital accumulation would make it possible for them to leave an estate. The greatest beneficiaries of this change would be black males. Not only do they have significantly shorter life expectancies at retirement age than other groups, but they inherit less from their parents, who typically have had little opportunity to accumulate savings during their own lifetimes.

The present state of affairs is thus disadvantageous to both the current generation of blacks and their children. That is not the only, or the principal, argument for reforming Social Security, but it is certainly a consideration that policymakers ought not to overlook.

Well, Senator Obama does want to overlook it. In fact, he doesn’t think that it should be mentioned in polite society.

Instead, people should be talking “about how are we going to close the health disparities gap that exists, and make sure that African-American life expectancy is as long as the rest of this nation.”

Er, why can’t we talk about that in addition to working toward a more equitable Social Security program? The problem of poor health among black Americans isn’t going to be solved in a couple of years with a couple of government initiatives. It is a long-term effort that needs to be pursued on many fronts. Senator Obama, eager to keep the race card in play, insinuates that improving Social Security implies abandonment of all other efforts to ameliorate the problems of the black community:

“The notion that we would not be talking about lack of health insurance, and reducing diabetes, and reducing incidents [sic] of AIDS, and making sure that African Americans have the wealth and the income to save into retirement and supplement Social Security is stunning to me.

Not only is that a non sequitur, but it ignores the fact that private Social Security accounts, by making blacks richer in the future through savings and inheritances, will contribute to making them healthier.

It’s glaringly obvious that Senator Obama’s primary concern is not improving the health of black Americans but maintaining their allegiance to the Democratic Party by slandering beneficial Republican initiatives. That is the stale politics of the “liberal black plantation”, and denouncing arguments as “offensive” while refusing to engage them intellectually is the symptom of a stale mind.

Business Lawyers Rate the Courts

Each year the Institute for Legal Reform conducts a State Liability Systems Ranking Study, which surveys the opinions of corporate lawyers on the fairness of state courts. “Fairness” is viewed from a business perspective, of course, so anyone who thinks that corporations deserve whatever they get should feel free to invert the rankings and cheer on the states whose judges and juries finished lowest.

The top and bottom tens don’t contain any surprises:

1. Delaware
2. Nebraska
3. North Dakota
4. Virginia
5. Iowa
6. Indiana
7. Minnesota
8. South Dakota
9. Wyoming
10. Iowa
* * * * *
41. Hawaii
42. Florida
43. Arkansas
44. Texas
45. California
46. Illinois
47. Louisiana
48. Alabama
49. West Virginia
50. Mississippi

At a time when Red State vs. Blue State comparisons are all the rage, it’s noteworthy that political leanings have no obvious correlation to the quality of judicial systems. President Bush carried eight of the ten states that the survey respondents liked best – and seven of those that they most abominated.

Illinois, my own home state, was impressively consistent in each of the areas covered by the study: Overall Treatment of Contract Litigation (45th), Treatment of Class Action Suits (45th), Punitive Damages (41st), Timeliness of Summary Judgment/Dismissal (45th), Discovery (45th), Scientific and Technical Evidence (45th), Judges’ Impartiality (46th), Judges’ Competence (46th), Juries’ Predictability (45th), Juries’ Fairness (46th). And three Illinois counties (Cook, St. Clair and, of course, Madison) gained places on the list of the 15 worst local jurisdictions.

Remarkably, Illinois has managed to drop 12 places since the 2002 study. Unfortunately, that isn’t because other states have been improving at a fast clip but because its own evaluations have been plummeting. Its aggregate score (on a 100 point scale) fell during that period from 55.1 to 44.1. No other state had anywhere near so large a change, for better or for worse.

If only the Illinois Republican Party hadn’t self-destructed during the long period of Thompson-Ryan-Kjellander-Topinka dominance, there might be a campaign issue lurking here.

Balm in Illinois

Illinois was an enclave of blue, as in gloom, last Tuesday. It’s not much consolation that the Republican Senate candidate did slightly better than the hapless GOP standard bearer in New York or that Republicans narrowed the Democratic majorities in the state House and Senate by one seat each. Still, there was one bright light. In the Fifth Appellate District, covering a large part of southwestern downstate, Republican Lloyd Karmeier won a formerly Democratic State Supreme Court judgeship. What’s more, his opponent’s campaign was heavily funded by the notoriously corrupt Madison County plaintiffs’ bar, the nation’s premier example of why the tort system needs reforming. The contest was reportedly the most expensive judicial election in American history, and it was money well spent. The cause of legal common sense gained a judge (reducing the Dem majority on the Supreme Court to four-to-three). Meanwhile, the Madison County sharks wasted something like $5 million and lost a judicial ally, for their candidate not only did not get elected to the high court but also was up to retention in his current appellate court position and failed to garner enough votes to keep his job. He is the first appellate judge ever rejected by Illinois voters.

Opportunities Lost

Next to the President’s reelection, nothing was sweeter yesterday than the Republican gains in the Senate, which came in at the upper bound of everyone’s predictions and put the GOP in a position to break judicial filibusters with the aid of just a handful of Democrats. Our side prevailed in some hard-fought battles: Richard Burr’s final sprint in North Carolina, Mel Martinez’s edging out a better known opponent in Florida, Lisa Murkowski’s defeat of Alaska’s most popular Democrat in the face of a quasi-scandal over the circumstances surrounding her appointment, Jim DeMint’s bold advocacy of free trade in the country’s most protectionist Republican-leaning state. At the same time, the Senate was where we muffed the easiest chances. Three states in particular leave one full of regret for vanished opportunities.

Illinois: If there were a political equivalent of Chapter XI, the Illinois Republican Party would have entered it long ago. The leadership’s Senatorial folly, when it forced Jack Ryan out of the race without having any idea of who should replace him (and effectively wound up with no one), was a final act of bankruptcy. Mr. Ryan’s sex scandal without the sex was a momentary embarrassment, but it didn’t have the makings of a vote-moving revelation, particularly not when his opponent was an untested young radical who owed his nomination, won over the firm opposition of the party hierarchy, to lucky breaks. As Peter Fitzgerald showed six years ago against Carol Moseley-Braun, a moderately conservative Republican has excellent prospects in Illinois against a far left Democrat. Maybe Ryan would have lost, but not by a super-landslide, and a victory would have put him in a position to ease out the Topinka-Edgar-Kjellander crowd whose blunders have steadily decimated what ought to be a powerful party.

Pennsylvania: President Bush may have lost Pennsylvania by campaigning for erratic liberal Arlen Specter in the GOP primary. Senator Specter did nothing to help the Bush-Cheney ticket and will do as little as possible, when he becomes chairman of the Judiciary Committee next year, to smooth the way for the President’s judicial nominees. (He openly declared as much in the course of seeking newspaper endorsements.) Although his primary opponent, Rep. Pat Toomey, wouldn’t have been a sure winner, his presence in the race would have maximized conservative turnout. There would have been no blowback from the Left; liberal turnout, including scores of thousands of ghosts in Philadelphia, was already maximized. A Toomey victory would have been a clear Republican gain. Defeat would have had the consolation of removing a Specter that is haunting the Republican caucus and can’t be considered worse than a marginal loss.

Georgia: Republicans were as sure to pick up the Georgia Senate seat as the Democrats, post-Ryan, were to win in Illinois. A rare chance was punted when they didn’t choose black conservative Herman Cain as the state’s next solon. Not only is Mr. Cain more conservative than the eventual winner, Rep. Johnny Isakson, but he would have been a marvelous counterpoint to Senator Obama: a successful black entrepreneur contrasted with a guy who has only worked for the government all his life. It would have been a fine demonstration of the benefits of conservatism for minority groups. Alas, that demonstration will have to await another year.

“The Crazy Things that Alan Keyes Says”

For some people it isn’t enough that Alan Keyes has virtually no chance of winning the Illinois Senate election. They also don’t want anybody to listen to his campaign. One of these folk has set up a Truth About Keyes blog, “to help collect all the crazy things that Alan Keyes says. And then help de-bunk them”. A little preemptive well poisoning by someone who professes to be “angry” that so awful a person was allowed to run for office.

I browsed through “Truth Girl’s” collecting and debunking this evening and have to say that hers is the sort of effort for which the adjective “lame” was invented. Her principal complaint is that Ambassador Keyes is an outspoken Christian whose “crazy” opinions include the ideas that Christianity played a large role in the founding of America and that easy access to contraception and abortion has undermined marriage. Well, okay. In the world of Fahrenheit 9/11, it takes a little more than standard issue social conservatism to fit my definition of “crazy”, but others apparently employ the term more loosely.

Perhaps the most interesting example of Keyes’ wild-eyed mania is “Keyes on Padilla and Civil Liberties”. Ah, ha!, you think. She’s nailed the right wing extremist shrieking for execution by executive fiat. Not precisely. Here is the shocking, anti-civil libertarian passage that she quotes from a Keyes essay entitled “The Dangers of Physical Safety”:

The case of “enemy combatant” and American citizen Jose Padilla is raising important issues beyond the challenge of frustrating the plots of terrorists. In a USA Today Gallup poll last week, 80 percent of Americans said they would give up some freedoms to gain security. This alarming sentiment, of course, has been the basis of the tyrant’s bargain with the people from the beginning of human society. America was founded in large measure precisely to end such blackmail.

That’s why we should pay close attention to how Jose Padilla is treated. He might very well be a terrorist, but he is certainly an American citizen. That means that he is entitled to a whole range of protections under law that we take for granted. These protections include the opportunity to defend oneself against government charges, and to have that defense conducted in a court of law, with a fair chance to state one’s case before an impartial and independent judge – independent, that is, of the executive power that is bringing the charge.

. . . Mr. Padilla, we are told, is an “enemy combatant” in the judgment of President Bush. This judgment may well be true – indeed, seems quite likely. But imagine the following sequence of events. A president or other high official determines that a citizen is an “enemy combatant.” Accordingly, that citizen is stripped of his rights, held incommunicado in the brig without legal counsel like the al-Qaida prisoners being held in Cuba, until the war ends. And, of course, the war on terror may never end, so he may stay there forever.

So that’s the sort of “crazy thing” that this liberal observer wants to “de-bunk”? Who would’ve guessed?

Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?

My initial reaction to the Illinois Republican Party’s selection of Alan Keyes as its Senate candidate was hopeful: If the leadership’s fumbling had made the race unwinnable, at least we could lose in a way that would enhance the chance of victory in future years. What I overlooked was that fools get a reputation for folly, and even their possibly wise decisions are tarnished. John Fund, writing in the OpinionJournal Political Diary (subscription only, but a bargain at $3.95 a month) sums up what I fear is the consensus reaction:

The party has spent six weeks interviewing prospective candidates and last Wednesday decided that not one of Illinois’ three million adults over the age of 30 would do. They offered the nomination to Alan Keyes of Maryland, a radio talk-show host and former diplomat who has never lived in the state. . . . No doubt the 90-day race will be fun for him as a skilled debater and polemicist. But that doesn’t obscure what a bad decision this is.

In effect, the selection of Mr. Keyes is an admission by the Illinois GOP that only a black person has the moral standing to go up against Barack Obama, the Democratic Party’s candidate and its “great black hope.” That’s the worst sort of cave-in to identity group politics.

Secondly, Mr. Keyes himself says that having a Maryland resident parachute into a Senate race in Illinois is “as a matter of principle” not a good idea. Republicans attacked Hillary Clinton for carpet-bagging her way into the 2000 New York Senate race and they appear to be hypocrites for defending having Mr. Keyes do the same thing, with the only major difference being that Mr. Keyes doesn’t have a chance of winning. That makes me wonder all the more whether the Illinois Republican Party deserves to be put into receivership and new management installed.

The charge of a “cave-in the identity group politics” is unfair. The members of the state central committee who pushed for the Keyes selection were the conservative minority, who find the candidate attractive for his opinions and his skill in presenting them, not for the color of his skin. Given the absurdity of the figures who presented themselves as potential nominees, a mixture of crackpots and ego-driven millionaires, turning to an outsider was a desperate but understandable idea. As for hypocrisy, everybody gets to play by the same rules. Hillary Clinton won and thus established a rule that residency really doesn’t matter in Senate contests. The hypocrites are Democrats who argued successfully for that position in New York and now want to turn around and take the opposite tack in Illinois.

What makes John Fund’s view of the situation plausible is that caving in to identity group politics is what one expects from the incompetent GOP establishment. In fact, its alternative, a black woman who had never run for office and whose only past political donations were to Democrats, looked very much like a black-for-the-sake-of-black candidate. There are already signs that the Topinka wing of the party acceded to choosing Ambassador Keyes only reluctantly and will now do its best to undermine him. Today’s Chicago Sun-Times quotes establishment stalwart Kirk Dillard, Jim Edgar’s former chief of staff and now chairman of the DuPage County GOP (who turned down a chance to run for the Senate seat himself), launching multiple complaints about Keyes and promising what sounds like Laodicean support. The same sort of backbiting chased Peter Fitzgerald out of his Senate seat and Jack Ryan out of the race to succeed him.

Receivership and new management? The sooner, the better. If that’s a side effect of the quixotic Keyes bid, the ambassador will deserve hearty thanks from Illinois Republicans.

Further Reading: Hunter Baker, “Keyes In” and “An Off-Keyes McCainiac” (wildly optimistic, but it is obvious that the writer is impressed by Ambassador Keyes’ oratory and couldn’t care less about his race)

Hope Springs (Faintly) in Illinois

The Illinois Leader and the Chicago Sun-Times are reporting that the Republican candidate for Peter Fitzgerald’s Senate seat will be either Alan Keyes or Andrea Grubb Barthwell. The former is an ex-U.N. ambassador, ex-television show host and permanent political gadfly who doesn’t live in Illinois, the latter an unknown federal bureaucrat who, as soon as her interest in the position became known, was preemptively attacked for “sexual harassment” (consisting of evidently good-natured, though risqué, remarks to a homosexual colleague).

By any rational political calculus, neither Ambassador Keyes nor Dr. Barthwell has a chance of finishing within 20 points of Barack Obama, whom media adulation and astonishing luck have elevated to superstar status. (If you’re interested in where the state’s next Senator stands on issues of national importance, you won’t find out by reading the Tribune, though the Obama Truth Squad is struggling to fill the gap.)

Virtually inevitable defeat stems not from the candidates but from the circumstances. The bumbling state GOP leadership, from either panic or less creditable motives, drove Jack Ryan out of the race, then searched for a replacement with all the adroitness and grace of Inspector Clouseau tracking down suspects. They reached the end of the farce today, when the state central committee interviewed 13 prospects at the Union League Club, some of them eccentrics, the rest mostly millionaires promising to throw their own cash into the losing cause. Egotism is a great redistributor of wealth.

The committee’s decision displayed, for the first time since this sorry affair began, a trace of astuteness. If it isn’t possible to win, one can at least lose strategically. It remains to be seen whether Judy Baar Topinka & Co., having mismanaged everything else, will comprehend the reasoning behind the strategy.

It does not lie in fielding a black candidate against the part-black Obama. Blacks are not going to start giving Republican candidates a chance just because the party occasionally runs somebody of their own ethnicity. What is needed is a black candidate who can make the case for black conservatism, who will explain forthrightly, over and over again, why conservative policies are better for the black community than failed liberal nostrums. The effect won’t be instantaneous, but every journey begins with a single step.

For that step to be the start of a useful journey, rather than a random jog, two conditions have to be met. The first is, obviously, a candidate who can explain conservatism forcefully and clearly. The second is attention to the black media. As one observer recently noted:

[I]t’s not uncommon for radio stations that serve black residents to reach two-thirds of them in a given week. One-quarter of black voters watch Black Entertainment Television daily; more than 60% tune in at least weekly.

Democratic operatives saturate this minority media with a campaign of negativity and misinformation that would make Michael Moore blush. Republicans are cross-burners who want to put a semiautomatic in little Jamal’s hands and take money way from little LaWanda’s public school. For fun on weekends, Republicans drag black men to their death behind pickup trucks with Confederate flags attached to the rear bumper. Republicans want to racially profile blacks, incarcerate them in high numbers and disenfranchise as many as possible. And so on.

In election after election nationwide, Democrats define Republicans to massive black audiences in this manner. And they do so with almost no serious GOP push-back. When Republicans do bother to respond, they turn to outlets like C-SPAN-2 and Fox News. This is like not responding at all.

If Republican leaders understand these points, there is hope that this year’s defeat will bear good fruit a few election cycles from now. If not, they might has well have tapped one of those millionaires.

Update: Alan Keyes is the man. There won’t be many Senate races any time, anywhere like this one. But he has only been offered the nomination and has said that he will make a decision by next Sunday. Come Monday, the GOP could still be sans candidate, at which point I am going to give up and plan on having to vote Libertarian.

Update (8/6/04): All of the news media are now reporting that Ambassador Keyes will accept the Republican nomination. The Illinois Leader has details (and just about the only favorable reaction). As I say above, the only rationale for this race is to try to evangelize for conservatism in the black community. Not surprisingly, the mainstream media are doing their best to apply prophylactics by insinuating that nominating an out-of-state black Republican represents some obscure form of racism.

Do Topinka & Co. Want a Candidate?

State Senator Chris Lauzen (R-Aurora) has a theory (“What the U.S. Senate Race Is Really About”) that is all too plausible in the context of Illinois politics: The state Republican leadership has bungled the selection of a replacement for Jack Ryan, because it doesn’t want to win.

Why would it be happy to throw away a Senate seat? The answer centers on the most important man in Illinois politics – not an elected official but U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald.

If you want to know who is really “changing Illinois politics as we know it” and “ending business as usual” in Springfield and Chicago, it sure isn’t Rod Blagojevich who already has four developing scandals by today’s count in just his first 18 months in office.

Instead, it is Federal Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald who aggressively investigates, indicts, convicts, and actually throws politicians and their cronies from both parties in jail! While we watch the self-destruction of an inexperienced governor trying to match wits with a razor-sharp, fiercely self-disciplined Speaker of the Statehouse from his own party, the real drama and progress in Illinois politics is the prosecution of those who have been caught in both parties . . . from Mickey Segal to George Ryan [ellipsis in original].

Traditionally the President follows the advice of the senior Senator or Representative of his own party in appointing U.S. attorneys. Mr. Fitzgerald was the choice of retiring Senator Peter Fitzgerald (no relation). If President Bush is reelected and there is no GOP Senator from Illinois, the decision about whether to keep or replace Patrick Fitzgerald will fall to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who is unlikely to quarrel with state party leaders. Those leaders have made no secret of their dislike of the U.S. Attorney’s investigations, which have touched the Republican state chairman and other party insiders. If Jack Ryan had continued his Senate race and won, he would certainly have favored retaining Fitzgerald. Any other independent-minded Republican Senator will do the same.

The best scenario for the party leadership, on this hypothesis, would be the election of one of their cronies, but no electable crony has stepped forward. Second best is to fumble around until no viable candidacy is possible.

Senator Lauzen’s analysis of motives may be wrong. As the saying goes, Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence. But the incompetence in this case has reached levels that stagger one’s capacity for belief and lend credibility to the alternative.

Why Not-Topinka?

Political gadfly Jack Roeser can be too strident for my taste, but his op-ed on the Illinois Leader site, “Time for Topinka to Step Down”, is IMHO 100 percent on the mark. In the wake of the evanescence of yet another fill-in for the GOP Senate nomination, the state Republican chaircritter has plenty of reasons to make the happy dispatch:

Topinka’s enmity toward Senator Peter Fitzgerald has been palpable. It’s clear that the discouraging lack of support from party elites was a major reason behind his decision not to run for reelection.

This is not surprising. The Illinois GOP establishment is very much the political façade that the Trib’s John Kass calls the “bi-partisan combine.” Others have labeled it “the culture of political sleaze.”

By [recommending the appointment of] an aggressive, independent U.S. Attorney, Senator Fitzgerald forever won the disdain of the aptly named ‘George Ryan wing’ of the Republican Party. Because of the indictments of so many of that wing, he is the target of their retribution. . . .

When unproven allegations were revealed in Jack Ryan’s divorce/custody records, Topinka’s lack of support doomed his candidacy. Most grown-ups saw this matter for what it was, a media-generated attack with no real substance or relevancy.

Ironically, most of the very same people that were “shocked, shocked!” by what was revealed at no point were embarrassed by the corruption surrounding George Ryan. . . .

Topinka dumped Jack Ryan with no backup plan.

Four weeks after Jack Ryan announced he was pulling out of the race, there is still no replacement and the atmosphere has turned circus-like. Clearly, it’s time for a change.

No wonder such exciting personalities as Mike Ditka want nothing to do with being slated by this Republican leadership team! After what happened to MacDougal, Peter Fitzgerald and Jack Ryan, who would trust these people?

Indeed.

Bringing in the Junior Varsity

The latest names mentioned to fill the increasingly embarrassing void in Illinois Republican Senate candidates are State Senator Kirk Dillard and primary runner-up Jim Oberweis (no links, but I heard it on the morning news). The GOP is now officially down to the junior varsity, or perhaps the frosh.

Senator Dillard is a fine example of what the party bosses were looking for in that wonderful tune “Politics and Poker” (from Fiorello!): “some good Republican who’s willing to lose”. He has a nice résumé, has never made an impression outside of DuPage County, is on the best of terms with party insiders, calls the Democratic nominee “my friend and colleague” and avers that “a Dillard-Obama matchup would be good for the image of Illinois politics because it would be totally issue-oriented and friendly”. The only issue that he thinks to mention is that he was born in the state and Senator Obama wasn’t. Given that Mr. Obama is probably the furthest left major party Senate nominee in Illinois history, that seems just slightly inadequate. I also foresee that, should candidate Dillard move to within striking distance in the polls, his “friend and colleague” would have no compunction about dragging up now-forgotten scandals. (Senator Dillard served as chief of staff under Governor Edgar, which should be enough of a verbum sapienti.)

Mr. Oberweis touted himself as the “real conservative” in the primary. His “conservative” stands were (1) opposing President Bush’s immigration reform proposals, (2) opposing outsourcing and (3) supporting legalization of drug imports from Canada. The second and third of those are the positions of that great conservative John Kerry. The first is conservative by some people’s lights but isn’t the cleverest stance for a candidate who would like to attract more than a few percent of Illinois’ large Hispanic vote. As the GOP nominee, Oberweis would lose miserably and make conservatives look bad while doing so.

I’m beginning to think that it would be best all around if Jack Ryan never got around to filing his withdrawal papers.

Only Our Tribune

Wonder why one is ill-advised the take the Chicago Tribune’s word for anything beyond weather reports and baseball scores? Here’s a paragraph from a story that ran today about political weblogs:

While scores of political blogs don’t go beyond gossip and bickering, many are quite influential, analysts say. Some feature political commentaries, such as the liberal instapundit.com or the conservative electionprojection.com. [emphasis added]

Professor Reynolds quotes that with no comment beyond his patented “Indeed”.

On the other hand, Election Projection 2004 is conservative, though it doesn’t really “feature political commentaries”. Its main focus is, as its name hints, the Bush-Kerry horse race.

At least the reporter seems to have spelled all of the bloggers’ names correctly.

The Ditka "Hail Mary"

So why does the Illinois Republican Party have little hope except to throw the long bomb to Mike Ditka?

Fundamentally, because it's coached by morons. If Thompson-Edgar-Topinka and their minions had been in charge of the 1985 Bears, the team would have been lucky to avoid the cellar.

Starting with a Senate candidate who had money, brains and charisma, pitted against an intelligent but far left Democrat who won his party's primary mostly through a fluke, T-E-T managed to destroy Jack Ryan's campaign (in retrospect, it's obvious that the small-bore, unverified allegations of misconduct in his divorce records were a summer shower, not a typhoon, as experienced, competent politicos ought to have recognized), then fumbled haplessly over choosing a substitute. Maybe you or I would have performed no more competently, but we haven't spent years strengthening our grip on the state GOP and don't pretend to be savvy political minds.

Ten years ago, Illinois Republicans held the governorship, most statewide offices and both houses of the legislature. Now all that is gone — not because the state has fundamentally changed but because the Democrats have been much better led. The game has been as big a blow-out as Superbowl XX. I'm afraid that, whether or not putting Iron Mike into the game saves this set of downs, our side's prospects are grim without a new coaching staff.

Addendum: Bearing in mind my disclaimer of political acumen and the sad fact that throwing things at the coaches doesn't change the current score, what do I think the GOP should do? If it were my decision, I'd admit that the Senate seat is lost and try to build for the future by running Andrea Barthwell. Assuming that she really is a reasonably conservative Republican (and what rational motive can she have for quitting her job to enter a hopeless race, if she isn't?), the seasoning will do her good as a potential candidate in a future year. And there's always the chance that she'll turn into a rookie sensation or have a stroke of luck. Remember that Barack Obama was a nobody when he entered the primary against the obviously overwhelming Blair Hull and Dan Hynes.

Ryan Redux? Dreaming of Ditka?

The conservative Internet journal Illinois Leader isn't entirely sure that Jack Ryan really is finished as the Republican Senate candidate. He hasn't yet filed official withdrawal papers, and controversy over the media reaction to what were, in sober retrospect, rather mild accusations of infrequent misconduct, has generated at least a minor backlash:

Over the weekend, Chicago-based Republican Young Professionals, a group headed by Doug Ibendahl, began running a petition on their website calling for Ryan not to file his official withdrawal paperwork.

"We're hearing from people experiencing 'seller's remorse,'" Ibendahl said. "We are getting an overwhelming response to our petition drive. Our people told us that they didn't think Jack should step down. We decided to give disenfranchised voters to express their opinion. People are telling us that Jack should not drop out."

Last Friday, the Chicago Tribune's major competitor, the Chicago Sun-Times, ran an exclusive interview with Ryan that left the door open to him running again. Political reporter Scott Fornek reported Ryan telling him, "I don’t feel I’m through with politics."

On Tuesday, Ryan's family issued a statement of support for him, talking a shot at the media, saying, "While Jack could certainly withstand the overzealous and salacious media sideshow that ensued, he could not — as would any caring parent — bear to have his child and his family repeatedly confronted with this. . ."

Earlier today, Sean Hannity interviewed Ryan and openly urged him to stay in the race. He got a negative, but not Shermanesque, response.

The Leader's own on-line poll stands, as I write, at 53.31 percent in favor of a Ryan candidacy, 43.39 percent opposed, the rest undecided.

Ryan would, naturally, be a distant long shot if he were to stay in, but he does have money to finance a campaign, a compelling personal story and enough debating skill to take on an opponent whose views are well to the left of the Illinois political spectrum. He might do no worse than the obscure figures currently under consideration as his replacement.

One name that recently surfaced is not so obscure. The Leader reports that a section 527 organization called "Americans for Better Choices" is trying to entice former Bears Superbowl coach Mike Ditka into the race. The group touts a supposedly scientific Internet poll showing that Ditka is far more popular as a candidate than any of the losers in last March's primary. How much that proves, I'm not at all certain. Still, I didn't take Arnold Schwarzenegger seriously either.

Jack Ryan: The Lessons

Reactions to the disclosures about Jack Ryan (the Republican Senate candidate in Illinois, not the real Jack Ryan chronicled by Tom Clancy) confirm three not very surprising hypotheses about the current political universe.

1. The double standard for conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats is blatant. Ryan's ex-wife claimed that, on at most four occasions in an eight-year marriage, her husband asked her to engage in sex with him in places where strangers could watch. She refused, and nothing further occurred. If wanting to have overly public relations with one's wife is a disqualification for public office, what about Bill Clinton's adulteries? If President Clinton had done exactly what candidate Ryan is accused of doing, would the major media have endorsed his impeachment? If the two actual cases were treated differently, was that because exhibitionism is worse than infidelity, because a Senator holds a more responsible position than a President, because lying to fellow politicians is worse than lying under oath to a court, or perhaps because Republicans' sins are serious matters and Democrats' are not?

Also pertinent is the media's willingness to believe. Uncorroborated allegations in divorce proceedings are not the gold standard of evidence, but none of the media question them in the case of the Ryans. Starkly contrasting is the skepticism (initially not unreasonable) that greeted stories about Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky (not to mention Paul Jones, Gennifer Flowers, Juanita Broaddrick and lots of other women). If it weren't for the DNA evidence salvaged from the famous blue dress, the Lewinsky affair would probably still have the status of "unproven slander by the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy".

Then there is lying. Jack Ryan wasn't forthcoming in advance about what was in his court papers. Perhaps he was being dishonest. Perhaps he didn't think that Jeri Ryan's charges were credible enough to set off a firestorm. In either case, he is not getting the benefit of the "everybody lies about sex" excuse that was sufficient in the last President's case to mitigate indubitable falsehoods in both the public arena and court testimony.

2. Conservatives are completely spooked by allegations of sexual misconduct, apparently afraid that any defense of an accused Republican - even the defense of innocence - will be taken as proof that all complaints about Clinton were unjustified. Hence, they cooperate in perpetuating the double standard. A telling example is a post by Kate O'Beirne in the NRO Corner. She refers to a Democrat whose divorce papers revealed a scandal as "an alleged wife beater" and to Jack Ryan as "a lying exhibitionist" (no "alleged"). Yet the first man admitted that the allegations were true, while those against Ryan rest on the words of a single interested witness with motives to shade the truth.

3. Once again, the dominant Thompson-Edgar-Topinka wing of the Illinois Republican Party displays that political acumen that has led to the loss of the governorship, most other statewide offices and both houses of the legislature in the course of the past ten years. Without pausing to think about the quality of the evidence, they have rushed to condemn their party's candidate as a liar, thus pulverizing whatever chance he had of recovering from this setback. Their public clumsiness also pretty much makes it impossible to supersede Ryan gracefully. Either he will stumble on in a hopeless cause (which his own party helped render hopeless) or his withdrawal will leave behind bitterness that will doom any successor nominee.

I have no objection to holding Republicans to higher standards than Democrats. Fairness should, however, place limits on the asymmetry. At the very least, GOP candidates should not be burdened with a presumption of guilt.