By John F. Di Leo -
In the summer and fall of 2015, many Illinois Republicans called for the party to retire incumbent US Senator Mark Kirk in the primary. Despite some party pressure, but obviously not enough, he refused to sit out the election. He campaigned for re-nomination, which scared both candidates and money out of the primary, and he won the spring… losing the fall as everyone predicted.
Mark Kirk was elected narrowly in 2010, in a race that should have been a landslide even in Illinois. It was the best year for the Republican party in generations, and he was fortunate to have a general election opponent whom even the Chicago Tribune called “the mob’s banker.”
In office, Kirk suffered a stroke, severely limiting his campaigning ability… and several political choices as a Senator, particularly his support of carbon “cap and trade” regulation and belief in the “manmade climate change” hoax, utterly doomed his candidacy for re-election.
Mark Kirk had never been comfortable with the Republican base, and the feeling was mutual. His hostility to conservatives was kept somewhat in check as a Congressman but was unleashed, full-force, once he reached the Senate. The power of incumbency enabled him to coast to re-nomination in 2016, but his repulsion of the party’s base doomed him in November.
And it was predicted.
Second Verse, Same as the First
We see the same story being written again for 2018, this time in the Governor’s race.
Bruce Rauner and Mark Kirk have very different histories, of course; one a lifetime businessman, new to politics, and the other an old legislative aide and Congressman who rose to statewide office in the usual way.
But they also have incredible similarities. Both were always distrusted by the party’s base. Both gained statewide office as something of an internal compromise by conservatives – “he’s not one of us, but he may be the best we can get… he’ll still be better than a Democrat would be.” So the base may not have chosen them in the primaries, but accepted them in the generals, and pushed them over the line in their first Novembers.
But as we close in on three years of the Rauner experiment, we find ourselves in much the same position we were in at this time in 2015 with Mark Kirk.
Rauner has turned off so many core constituencies – through such fatal errors as signing a sanctuary state law, allowing transgender driver’s licenses, and taxpayer funding of abortion – that he has utterly lost the republican base.
As everyone knows, Illinois is a difficult state for a Republican. It’s not impossible, but it is hard, and getting harder every year, as the majority of the 95,000 or so who annually flee the state are Republicans.
This means that a Republican candidate for statewide office simply cannot turn off any major element of the GOP base, and Rauner has turned off several. He promised to be no more than a moderate on the issues on which he is wrong; contrary to his promises, he chose in 2017 to be downright radical on them.
The war chant of the rampaging RINO has always been “Where else can they go?” and that argument has often won the day, because in fact the patriot must usually admit that a modern Democrat would always be worse.
But Mark Kirk often made us question that argument, and Bruce Rauner in 2017 has made it his business to destroy it.
It is almost inconceivable that even a Democrat would dare statewide funding of abortion-on-demand, or turn the entire state into a sanctuary state. Chris Kennedy, in recent weeks, has even made some pointed centrist remarks on such key issues, to ensure that if he survives his party’s primary, he can run to the right of Rauner on issues of importance to the GOP base (Kennedy doesn't need to win us all, he just needs to splinter us).
Bruce Rauner cannot win the entire Republican base, and build on it with a majority of the middle and a decent subset of the left, as he did last time. He got into office with an outsider’s magic act that simply cannot be repeated, now that he has a record.
The luster is off the statue now, as “independent businessman” Bruce Rauner has become a politician… and not a particularly successful one at that:
His claim of being the stern money manager, holding out for systemic reforms before approving tax increases, collapses under the weight of his signature of the abortion bill and the sanctuary bill, because – as everyone knows – the half-million-plus illegal aliens in Illinois are a huge part of the state’s financial troubles… from the costs of crime, welfare, healthcare, and the competition in employment.
The single easiest way to plug our budgetary hole would be to eject the illegal aliens who aren’t allowed to be here anyway; inviting countless more to flood in, through sanctuary status, is fiscal (as well as cultural) suicide.
A governor who is concerned first and foremost about fiscal responsibility would have to be on the side of law enforcement here, not on the side of the sanctuary millstone that is fast sinking our state (along with so many others).
This issue can only become ever more obvious over the course of the year to come. Bruce Rauner cannot win re-election in November by competing only over the left and the middle, having ceded the right to two sad choices: either leaving our ballots blank in disgust, or voting for third parties in desperation.
The Republican party has only one choice, if it wants to retain the Executive Mansion in Springfield for the critical 2019-2022 term – the term in which the legislative remaps set the table for the 2020s:
We need to see beyond Rauner’s massive war-chest – since he has already rendered himself unelectable, his war-chest doesn’t matter – and look to November.
Rauner won the primary last time because the legitimate Republican candidates split between three choices – Dan Rutherford, Bill Brady, and Kirk Dillard. This time, the opposition must unite behind one person with impeccable party credentials and a voting record that shows consistency with the party platform… a county chairman, a state rep or a state senator, who can mount a credible campaign in the fall against whichever left-wing amateur the Democrats nominate.
Illinois Republicans have to learn from 2015, and do what we should have done then: every single GOP county committee should issue a resolution that We Will Not endorse Bruce Rauner for re-nomination, period.
We must treat this race as an open seat, one in which the extremist Bruce Rauner need not apply… and run one great, winnable Republican to lead our ticket in the fall.
Illinois Republicans have a choice to make:
Either we beat Bruce Rauner in the Primary, or we watch the Democrats beat us in the General.
Copyright 2017 john F. Di Leo
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based trade compliance lecturer, writer and actor. His columns are regularly found in Illinois Review. Permission is hereby granted to forward freely, provided it is uncut and the IR URL and byline are included.
