I had an opportunity to watch a debate between the Republican candidates for the Illinois 14th Congressional District race last night and it did nothing to change my opinion of dairy magnate Jim Oberweis. This is Denny Hastert’s district. You know him, the former Speaker of the House and another in a long list of quitters who chose to leave office before the end of their term when the going got tough.

The debate started with perennial candidate Oberweis using his opening statement to attack his opponent State Senator Chris Lauzen instead of using the time constructively to outline his vision for the people of the 14th. While Oberweis is smart and can be considered conservative it is hard to consider him reliable and his pattern screams of a man trying to garner an elected position, ANY elected position to feed his ego. Oberweis is a twice defeated candidate in the Republican Senatorial primaries in 2002 and 2004 while his latest loss came in the 2006 Illinois gubernatorial primary where he couldn’t even defeat the lackluster and liberal Judy Baar Topinka. Lauzen is a 14 year State Senator who is a reliable conservative with a reliable voting record. Smartly, Lauzen used his alloted opening time to extol his record and ideas. In such a case substance always wins. This is clear if you watch the debate linked above.

Amusingly Oberweis calls Senator Lauzen a “career politician” without mentioning his own decade long quest for elected office, a record that can only peg him as being a career candidate. While I wish I could take full credit for the moniker I believe it was coined by commenter “tfb” on the Illinois Review blog. A further point is that the district consistently returned Hastert to Washington. The former Speaker spent 27 years in elective office, 21 of them in the Washington DC. If this isn’t a “career politician” I’d like the Oberweis camp to name one for me. Interestingly, Hastert the career politician has endorsed Oberweis.

Lauzen is not perfect and has admitted his mistakes as well as clearly articulated his positions on the important issues. Oberweis did as well but seemed less at ease when sticking to issues than when he was on the attack.

Then I saw this tidbit in Michael Sneed’s column in the Chicago Sun-Times this morning:

A scoop . . .

. . . of the ice cream kind? Sneed hears rumbles Jim Oberweis, the Oberweis Dairy owner being backed by former U.S. Rep. J. Dennis Hastert to fill Hastert’s vacant House seat, has plans if he wins.

• • Translation: Oberweis is telling pals privately he’ll probably only be a one-termer because . . . he would use the congressional seat as a launching pad to run for Illinois governor again.

There ya go.

Unsubstantiated rumor at this point but entirely plausible for a man whose ego won’t let him start at the State House or Senate level to begin his public service career and will spend whatever it takes to feed his ego. If he couldn’t beat Judy Baar Topinka who was trounced by a weak candidate in Rod Blagojevich, what makes him think he’ll beat Lisa Madigan or any other Democratic candidate in a blue state with a dysfunctional Republican Party? Oberweis needs to earn some stripes and prove that politics is more than a rich man’s hobby in his case. He would be better off starting lower and sticking to the issues over the rancor, it has never served him well in the past.

Posted by Biloxi in Illinois Politics, Politics at 9:25 PM EST

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Hillary Clinton’s latest plea for votes touts how she promises a “new beginning” but by and large her main stump speech has been to detail her experience. She claims experience in politics largely because of her status as a first spouse starting in that hotbed of national politics Arkansas and ending up with her 8 years as the Nation’s first lady in Washington DC. If it were not for that she most surely would never have been elected to the Senate from a state she only lived in for a month or so prior to running.

So which is it Senator, experience or a fresh start? The claimed experience would classify her as an insider and as such would make her part of the entrenched establishment. In my mind this would provide more of the same and preclude any talk or chance of a fresh start. Secondly, from the sounds of the linked video it sounds like we live in the midst of a depression in the worst country on earth. Hillary details a faltering economy, people unable to get health care, an “energy crisis” and people who cannot take care of their parents or educate their children. This isn’t a fresh start, it is a return to the scare tactics of her husband’s administration. The gameplan is to make things look as bad as they possibly can so their weak plan looks to be fixing things that aren’t as broken as presented. Pessimism isn’t a fresh start, it is politics as usual.

My politics are obvious and I won’t be voting for a Democrat anytime soon but I can’t help but wonder how anyone could consider voting for someone who has such a negative and slanted view of the great country in which we live. Disagreement on direction is one thing but to portray the country as being entirely in the toilet is another. I always felt Bill Clinton’s policies were lacking and his downsizing of the military and intelligence community left the country very vulnerable in many ways but I would not count the America of 1999 and 2000 (seriously declining economy and all) as the hellhole on earth that Hillary likes to paint the current United States to be. This country is too great for one person, even the leader of the free world, to drive to complete and irreversible ruin. Hillary’s candidacy is most appealing for those who long to return to the halcyon days of the Clinton Administration where everything was idyllic and we were without an enemy in the world.

Oh… wait a minute, what about WTC I, Khobar Towers, The African Embassy Bombings, and the USS Cole bombing. How about the Jimmy Carter brokered deal with North Korea deal where they took the relief money and oil and went right back to developing their nuclear weapons?

Look at Sen. Clinton’s advisers and tell me we are going to get a new beginning. We see Terry McAuliffe, Sandy Berger, Madeline Albright, Wesley Clark, and so on, the list is quite voluminous and it includes the biggest adviser, Bill Clinton. Together with Hillary they offer nothing of a fresh start but rather a return to the 90’s head in the sand foreign policy with far more disastrous results. The domestic portion of her platform offers little better with a stack of new entitlements to go along with a roll back of the Bush tax cuts. She does however offer a middle class tax cut, hmmm… where have we heard that before? Perhaps in 1992? Look at Bill Clinton’s campaign literature for insight into Hillary’s new beginning.

BILL CLINTON OFFERS AN ECONOMIC PLAN TO COMPETE AND PROSPER IN THE WORLD ECONOMY

Bill Clinton will cut taxes for the middle class and make the rich pay their fair share.

Bill Clinton will encourage and maintain commitment to better education at every level.

Bill Clinton will make sure American workers can get training and retraining throughout their careers — so that America can achieve a high-skill, high wage economy.

Bill Clinton will fight for tough, effective trade laws and encourage investment in research and development for emerging technologies.

Bill Clinton will make certain there are more FHA loans so middle-income families can buy homes.

Bill Clinton will speed up building and repair of our roads and bridges.

In his first address to the nation he reneged on his middle class tax and instead offered status quo with increases for some:

To middle class Americans who have paid a great deal for the last 12 years and from whom I ask a contribution tonight, I will say again as I did on Monday night: You’re not going alone any more, you’re certainly not going first, and you’re not going to pay more for less as you have too often in the past. I want to emphasize the facts about this plan: 98.8 percent of America’s families will have no increase in their income tax rates, only 1.2 percent at the top.

Maybe those under 35 or 40 may not remember those promises from Bill that sound eerily like many we hear from Hillary today. The Clinton’s have worked a political partnership for many years and old habits die hard. There may be some modifications as they have learned from the past but the overall platform and agenda is still there. Only in politics does a fresh start offer a rollback to the 20th century and a disregard for the lessons we have learned in the intervening years.

Posted by Biloxi in Politics at 6:38 PM EST

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In today’s edition of the Obama News (aka Chicago Sun-Times) political writer Abdon Pallasch decided to relate a story about one of the hanger-on conspiracy theorist types instead of offer any real substance about the anointed one or as Teri O’Brien calls him; ” he who walks on water”. Apparently undecided voter Bruce Banister (isn’t that the Incredible Hulk’s alter ego?) needed Barack Obama’s assurance that he would fight “stolen elections”.

At a town hall meeting in rural Jefferson on Monday, undecided voter Bruce Banister, 56, asked Obama, “The last two presidential elections have been very dirty, and for me there have been very serious questions about whether George Bush was even legally elected. I want to know if we have another dirty election and you are the candidate, if you think it is dirty, will you back off like Gore and Kerry did or will you fight?”

Never mind that Gore fought beyond logic and without any real case or proof of such fraud until there was nowhere left to go. Considering the election was held in doubt until well after Thanksgiving 2000, I would say he fought and actually showed a poor loser mentality to boot. Secondly, John Kerry didn’t fight because he knew darn well he didn’t have a case or basis for such a battle. Without substantive legal grounds such a suit would have been a massive waste of his wife Theresa’s money. So this two time electoral loser who can’t make up his mind gets a half a page in Chicago’s version of the Enquirer and they still wish to paint themselves as objective.

Obama actually gave a great answer though one has to wonder why he dignified the question by addressing it at all.

Obama replied, “I intend to whoop ‘em so good that it won’t even be close and they can’t steal the election.”

Then Obama gave the hard-charging answer Banister was looking for: “If for any reason this thing is close, we will fight it tooth and nail till the end. The nice thing is, I’m a voting-rights attorney as well as a civil rights attorney.”

Kind of reminds me of Hugh Hewitt’s book tittle, If It’s Not Close They Can’t Cheat. He further went on to outline how he hopes to win over enough independents and Republicans to leave little doubt. His being a voting rights attorney is inconsequential as we have seen most of the deceit coming from the left. (Cigarettes for votes anyone?) Apparently this satisfied the loser who at 56 years old is still looking for the Zapruder film of election fraud to justify his paranoia. While Obama had no choice but to answer the question as posed to him it shows the myopia of many Democrats and a definite lack of critical thinking on the real issues.

That was enough to persuade Banister, a rare-guitar dealer, to commit to supporting Obama over his other choice, John Edwards, in Thursday night’s caucus.

This one question was able to swing Banister’s vote from Edwards to Obama with so many other important issues facing our country and world these days. The final decider of his vote was a fear of stolen elections where there has not even been a scintilla of hard evidence to back up the past charges. Obama is a candidate flying on feel good issues like Oprah, an interesting history, a solid educational background and white liberal guilt but very little substance where it really matters. Areas like foreign policy, tort reform, energy policy, tax reform, immigration enforcement and reform, etc. I expect this kind of uncritical thinking from the young and idealistic but a 56 year old? Unfortunately it is all too common in modern politics. Symbolism over substance and paranoia rule the day over actual ideas.

This is not meant to be critical of Obama himself as much as a message to the electorate. As stated above I think he answered the inane question in the best manner possible. We need to start looking beyond the image and into the substance of the policies and ideas. If Banister liked Senator Obama for his immigration policy, his stance on the war or any other of his policies or combination thereof it would be a healthy political climate even if we disagree. Those are real issues to debate. Bogging down in imagined stolen elections and NIA eavesdropping on our private conversations gets the country no further along as is evidenced by our currently paralyzed Congress that was elected on a promise of change without hearing any of the nuts and bolts.

This entire column was consumed by a crackpot with a bent towards conspiracy while the substance of Obama’s real views was relegated to final two paragraphs. The press in many ways is complicit in our diversion from matters of import as evidenced Pallasch’s column but it is up to us not to get caught up in the inanity. We need to demand more of our politicians but most importantly we need to demand more of ourselves.

Posted by Biloxi in Liberal Illogic, Obamastan, Politics at 11:40 AM EST

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From The Republic:

May 2008 bring the best to you and yours. Have a blessed New Year!

Posted by Biloxi in Biloxi Says at 9:33 AM EST

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