Bob, I read your post on how Obama won his Senate seat and thought maybe you'd be interested in what I wrote nearly two years ago in an email debate internal to The Heartland Institute that someone there decided to post on the Heartland blog. I'm a lifelong Illinoisan whose father spent more than 30 years as an elected official in McHenry County, which has the highest percentage of registered Republicans in the state. The Republicans themselves helped ensure Obama's victory. Here's how:
This list is just off the top of my head and I have to get back to work. The point is all these things were done with a Republican president, House and Senate. Republicans LOVE big government when they are in charge of it. The Republican establishment is seething and will soon co-opt the new crop of Republicans or will drive them out if they don’t play ball.
I witnessed this here in Illinois. We had a Republican senator named Peter Fitzgerald. He insisted on appointing federal prosecutors from outside Illinois so they’d have no personal or political allegiances. Those prosecutors soon started throwing Illinois politicians into prison. One of those politicians is former Gov. George Ryan, a Republican who is sitting in federal prison as I write this.
Because Fitzgerald insisted on cleaning up the fetid cesspool that is Illinois politics, then-Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert of Illinois and other top Republicans withheld support from Fitzgerald for his reelection. The list includes Bob Kjellander, who at the time was Republican National Committeeman and National Republican Party Treasurer . . . and a friend of Karl Rove’s since their college days. Fitzgerald got the message and did not run. Barack Obama took the Fitzgerald seat, and the rest is contemporary history.
The sympathies of most Republicans in office — and of the Republican puppetmasters who hide in the catwalks to pull their strings — are with those who want more government as long as Republicans run it.
Their motto should be: “Democrats would destroy this country in 20 years; we’ll do it in 30.”
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Inside Illinois Politics: More on How Obama Became the US Senator from Illinois
Steve Stanek, a research fellow at The Heartland Institute and managing editor of two Heartland publications, Budget & Tax News and Finance, Insurance & Real Estate News, emails:
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Thanks for the inside on the crony repubs from IL. Our government is Toxic to everything we hold dear, it's time for a Major Change!
ReplyDeleteAnonymous (2:57),
ReplyDeleteYes, time for a major change. It's time to dissolve the government seated at the United States Capitol, at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., and at 1 First Street, NE. The City of Washington would become like a museum city, a destination for tourists who wish to marvel at the buildings of the greatest empire the world has ever known.
I see no reason why the fifty provinces could not become independent yet attain sufficient coordination through the activities of a relatively weak organization like www.nccusl.org. It would have less power than even the government established by the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. Eliminating the federal laws would vastly reduce the complexity of law, which would be good for everyone, lawyers included.
I am absolutely convinced that this transformation could be accomplished during the lifetimes of those who are not yet 50 years old. Unfortunately, there are a few obstructions to overcome, e.g. the taxfeeders who want to collect payments through Social Security and SNAP. Warmongers will not want to be deprived of means to subsidize their aggressions and occupations.
Other problems will come from the law and order crowd, which never heard of a police force that had too much power to protect it from the hobgoblins who lurk around every corner and behind every rock.
Still more problems will come from the moronic left which will shriek and howl about the new way not being democratic. Proper responses to them would include these questions: (1) How do you vote a democracy into existence without presupposing the existence of a democracy to sanction the vote? (2) If your republic can't be voted into existence democratically, then why call it a democracy?
Sooner or later one of the lefties will figure out that another goal is to abolish the provincial governments, too. But the bigger government has to go first, and when it does, the UN will be undermined in the process, which is nice a bonus that ought to please rightwingers.