By Mark Rhoads
I almost always want GOP candidates in Illinois to win because they are usually better than the alternative. I really do not enjoy being so hyper critical of state GOP leaders but they always seem to make the same mistakes over and over again. Even a superficial glance at GOP messaging so far leads one to think that state party strategists have hitched their wagon to a "New Broom" straegy exclusively for 2010 and that is very dumb because it will likely take a lot more than just attacking Democrats for their corruption in order to reverse Illinois from blue to red on November 3 and precious message time and resources are being wasted every day by the clumsy GOP leadership.
If voters really care about corruption, or the Blagojevich scandals, or the Giannoulias mob bank connections, or the Quinn/Madigan tacit complicity in backing Blago or Giannoulias, then they have already decided not to vote for Illinois Democrats at the state level this year and they are not going to be any further impressed or further motivated by clunky GOP ads and confused messages.
Many voters take it for granted that Illinois is a corrupt state and the politics of a New Broom campaign is a very lame strategy for motivating voters to go to the polls. One big reaon it is a lame strategy is that voters remember how many times major Republican elected officials have also been in bed with the same corrupt elements in the state, even at the same time and on some of the same deals with some of the same perps. No one is forgetting that the last sitting GOP governor is now sitting in federal prison instead of being at large which is where most elder statesmen want to spend their retirement years.
So a GOP stategy that says in effect "You have to vote for us this year because we are not those other corrupt politicians who were in power more recently than us." is not going to be terribly inspirational to voters and volunteers and donors who want something better for the future of the state than what has transpired over the last dozen years.
Why oh why is it so hard for state GOP strategists to understand that there is one and only one top issue on the minds of voters right now and that issue is jobs and the economy. Political junkies who read IR or other poltical blogs every day might be under the delusion that most voters are following the minute details of the Blagojevich trial every day or read every word of Giannoulias scandals in the newspapers.
But the reality is that most voters only have enough time to worry mostly about their own daily lives and how to pay this month's bills. Any GOP candidate who wants to win who has not focused a campaign on jobs, jobs, jobs is a fool who does not know how to reach voters where they live. Forget about Democratic scandals, people already know all that they need or want to know about scandals and more time wasted on that is time taken away from the most important issue of jobs.
Do any IR readers really think scandals are more imporant to most voters than their own finances? If so, have you seen polling data that supports that? I sure haven't.
