CHICAGO – The outlook for Illinois' U.S. Senator Mark Kirk's bid to be re-elected in 2016 is looking gloomier and gloomier – despite the cheery emails his campaign sends out about funds coming in.
One of the 10 most vulnerable Republicans, the senator – who has done almost everything possible to turn off the conservative voters he despises – seems determined to push his campaign down to the November election wire. This time, conservatives will yawn when he and his envoys will once again attempt to heap tons of guilt on the Illinois Republican base for the U.S. Senate losing a seat to the Democrats.
But this time, it looks like more than the Illinois Republican base is catching on RealClearPolitics writes today that even at the national level, Republicans are zipping their funding wallets closed for Kirk:
Republican outside groups have spent tens of millions of dollars in competitive Senate races this year, eager to protect GOP incumbents in a difficult cycle with the chamber’s majority up for grabs. But as that spending has ramped up in recent weeks, next to none has gone to bolster Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk, widely viewed as the most vulnerable of them all…
… For some of these Republican groups, it’s a simple calculation: Illinois is a deeply blue state in presidential election years, and with so many other competitive races in battleground states, investing there may not be the best use of resources.
“It is an enormously difficult state to be a Republican running statewide in a presidential year,” said one party operative who works for an outside group and who requested anonymity to discuss strategy. “I think you could bring Abraham Lincoln back from the dead to try for the Senate seat and he would have trouble in 2016, or he would be a decided underdog in 2016.”
Then Thursday, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) announced their decision to house the new NGA West headquarters in St. Louis, Mo., rather than on the Illinois said, adjacent to Scott Air Force Base in St. Clair County. Although the senator is chairman of the subcommittee overseeing the NGA relocation funding, he couldn't get them to pick Obama's home state over its neighbor to the west.
"This isn't the first time NGA has deliberately used bad information to make a bad decision, which is why I have asked the top government watchdog to ensure this decision is best for the warfighter and taxpayer,” said Senator Kirk.
And Right Side News reports that Senator Kirk is making a "sneaky" maneuver to open the amnesty doors in a year when the head of the ticket is using illegal immigration as a hot button issue:
Senator Kirk Trying to Use NDAA as Amnesty Vehicle Again
Pro-amnesty Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) is trying to sneak amnesty into the Fiscal Year 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a bill meant to fund our troops. For the second straight year, Sen. Kirk has introduced an amendment — modeled off of Rep. Jeff Denham’s (R-CA) ENLIST Act — that requires the Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary to issue green cards (legal permanent resident status) to certain illegal aliens just for enlisting in the military. (SeeFAIR Legislative Update, June 16, 2015) Specifically, the Kirk amendment makes all illegal aliens with work authorization through President Obama’s unconstitutional Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) eligible for military service. And, because of an Executive Order still in effect from the Bush administration, these amnestied illegal aliens are immediately eligible to become U.S. citizens once they receive their green cards. (SeeFAIR’s Military Amnesty Policy Statement) The amendment also makes aliens with two years of lawful status eligible to enlist, meaning aliens who were lawfully admitted for a temporary basis (e.g., student visa) could circumvent the proper procedure established by the Immigration and Nationality Act in order to get a green card and U.S. citizenship.
All this, despite his Democrat challenger faces a court date in August, accused of mistreating whistleblowers while Tammy Duckworth served the Quinn Administration heading up the state's Veteran services.
