By Ralf Seiffe
Democrats have spent the last five years oxidizing the President with an incessant whine in three part harmony. First, they say, “Bush is incompetent” pointing to the mantra that he “failed to connect the dots.” Next, they say, “Bush lied” ignoring the consensus of all intelligence services that Saddam had the capability and intention of using WMDs. Finally, they tell us, “Bush is a lawbreaker” for listening in on our enemy’s radio traffic. This campaign has been extremely successful for the Democrats; they anticipate taking the House and the Senate in the Fall. If they do take over next January, look for them to order “strategic withdrawal” and deliver a victory in Iraq on the scale of their success in Viet Nam.
Given the progress Democrats have made with their troika of complaints, is there anything Illinois conservatives can learn from our opponents that would help remedy our sad condition? After all, the parallel is striking; the Democrats are out of power in DC yet verge on a likely change in power. Conservatives, out of power in Illinois, should learn from our opponents and organize here to do the same thing.
So, using the Democrat’s complaints as a guide, let’s first consider the notion of connecting the dots with intelligence. The purpose of intelligence is to understand an opponent’s capabilities and intentions before they are able to use them against you and Democrats are right to insist on it.
In Washington, “intelligence” is a vast bureaucracy of analysts, secret agents, codebreakers and a computer network able to listen to phone calls all over the world. In Illinois, you can do just as well by reading the mail.
Consider the brochure I recently received from Julie Hamos, my State Representative. Inside was the standard ten-question survey designed to create support for her left-wing agenda. Nothing new there but for perceptive conservatives, it has the intelligence value that a list of street addresses for Hizb’Allah rocket launchers would have for the Israelis.
The first two questions are real intelligence gems. Question one concerns school funding. The question does not ask how to improve education in Illinois, rather it asks how to increase funding. The suggested answers are all methods to increase taxes or accelerate revenues with asset sales. Regular intelligence analysts would conclude that Ms. Hamos is a garden variety tax and spend Democrat but that would not “connect the dots.”
Recognizing what is missing from the survey is the intelligence equivalent of the CIA noting that Lavrenti Beria was missing from the Kremlin’s 1953 May Day Parade. Because improving education is absent from the question, even mediocre analysis would hold that Democrats consider funding is more important than educational outcomes.
A more adventurous analyst might note the absence of an improvement answer and connect that the Democrats have created an edumonster to which they are now subservient. The question is a signal to school bureaucrats that they needn’t worry about any new accountability initiative lest the unions turn on the party. Gifted analyst--the Jack Ryans among us--would go much further and conclude that the question shows the Democrats and the teachers unions are now allied to actually frustrate educational achievement.
By taking the national Democrat’s advice to “connect the dots” Republicans can make a cogent case that the Democrats no longer control the educational monopoly they created and it’s now out of control. As a consequence, this monopoly is simply raising prices and diminishing services--the expected outcome of all monopolies and just the reason we outlaw them. By connecting the dots--and making the obvious case--the Democrats give us the reason to radically restructure education and make the case for a “strategic withdrawl” from the financial quagmire the educrats have created.
The Democrat’s second complaint is that “Bush lied.” They tell us that Bush had to lie to secure Congress’ vote for the war and to induce other nations to come to Iraq. The President can be excused because he acted with integrity but with imperfect information. Our state legislators cannot rely on the same excuse. For the second year, they did not fund even the current costs of state pensions. Then, with perfect knowledge of their default, they claim that the state budget is “balanced.” For perceptive readers, stating the budget is balanced while not paying the current pension service costs--let alone past costs--is a huge lie.
Representative Hamo’s second question asks respondents to rank other priorities for state spending. The premise of the question is “Although the state budget is balanced…” and average analysts would take this statement at face value and go on to answer the question. Among the six suggested priorities are “universal health care,” “expanded social services” and this curious suggestion: “Full funding of pensions for teachers and state employees.”
Perceptive average analysts would certainly stumble over this suggestion. Why is there a choice to “fully fund” the state’s pension obligations? If the budget is balanced, wouldn’t state employees’ pensions already be fully funded? The fact that the legislature has failed to fund the full cost of pensions for years means the budget cannot be considered balanced by any reasonable standard. Democrats know this and when they tell us the “budget is balanced” it is propaganda and the survey perfectly exposes the Democrats as prevaricators. Indeed, it’s a lie that must be made to even ask about the other priorities. If conservatives were as motivated as our opponents we would be in the streets chanting “Julie Lied--Pensions Died!”
Finally, the Democrats claim Bush is a lawbreaker and doesn’t Anna Diggs Taylor’s vapid decision prove it? Locally, the analog response should simply be “When can we expect indictments?” If Republicans wanted to capture the public’s disgust, they would run an attorney general candidate who promised to beat the feds to the courthouse and prosecute public corruption with state laws. Illinois laws address real crimes like bribery and theft with punishment served in real, nasty prisons. The possibility of going to Illinois penitentiary rather than a Club fed would probably create a traffic jam of crooked politicians at the Dirksen Building pleading to “mail fraud” before the state could get ‘em on charges the public understands.
These few examples superimposed on the Democrat’s national master plan shows that paying attention to their complaints creates a platform for political victory. There are many other examples that can be exploited, over and over, by imaginative, conservative Republicans. However, like Representative Hamo’s outrageous premise that the state budget is balanced, this presumes Illinois Republicans want to win. From what I can see, most are more interested in getting along with the Democrats than in fighting them.
