Potentially on 2020 GOP US Senate ballot: Mark Curran, Peggy Hubbard, Tom Tarter
By Jennifer Nevins -
It was sixteen years ago that Michael Gerson coined the term that President George W. Bush would use to great effect: “The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations.”
Originally, the President used it to champion his “No Child Left Behind” education program, the phrase intended to vividly encapsulate the propensity of school teachers to expect lesser results from Hispanic and black students.
President Bush himself seldom used the powerful phrase again, but it caught fire with many of us conservatives who saw in it an even more fitting application: a tidy way to summarize Democrats’ patronizing treatment of minority groups outside of the classroom.
Indeed, it is hard to conceive of a more accurate missile with which to blast all facets of Progressive paternalistic nonsense-the acceptance of underachievement, the shocked surprise at overachievement, the underestimating of agency, and refusal to expect anything more than just good enough. Conservatives, we loved to stress, see people as people-and have no need to make the distinctions the Left does as naturally as breathing.
But we are now in the year 2019. Primary season is here. In Illinois, we have now have several Republican primary candidates circulating petitions to unseat Dick Durbin in 2020 – among them political newcomer Peggy Hubbard, former Lake County sheriff and attorney Mark Curran, and Downstate physician Dr. Tom Tarter.
And the Gerson shoe is – for a surprising number of conservatives – on the other foot.
Peggy Hubbard
For her part, GOP candidate Peggy Hubbard – who rocketed onto the scene in 2014 with her live Facebook rants in which she courageously called out the black on black crime in Ferguson and beyond – is a woman with a compelling life story.
As she tells it, she has a hard scrabble background as she was raised in a St. Louis ghetto to a single mother. She is a former member of the Navy. A former court officer. A former police officer. A former IRS analyst. A former abused wife and a former single mother.
She is also a former Democrat who recently admitted she voted for Obama both in 2008 and 2012.
Additionally, – in spite of Peggy Hubbard’s insistence that she supported Donald Trump in 2015 – official records show that she did not pull a GOP primary ballot in 2016 to vote for Trump nor any other GOP primary candidate.
Incredibly – and incredibly often – a typical response to that bit of truth telling is as follows: "Yeah, so? They all voted that way. Leave it be. The past is in the past."
They all voted that way.
No – actually they didn’t. Of course, it is true, that most black Americans voted for Obama. But looking at 2012, approximately 1.4 million black Americans voted for the Republican candidate (the author can’t bring herself to mention his name, but Utah is not missing him).
It’s normal for progressives to lump all non-whites into one unthinking hive, but must we conservatives do it too? Conservatives are certainly entitled to not care if their candidate was bamboozled not once but twice, but for heaven’s sake don’t regard the concern like it is out of bounds. It is not.
Leave it be. What on earth for? Is this a primary or a coronation?
Peggy Hubbard must be scrutinized. So too must Mark Curran. So too must Tom Tarter. So too must anyone else who thinks enough of their background, their abilities, their virtues, to get into the muck and mire of the Senate race. This is a primary. And primaries are for fighting. It should be an exercise in political discernment, not in political correctness. If one cannot see past color, it is on them, but the character assassinating of those with the temerity to put it out there needs to stop. It is what the Left does.
The past is in the past. Quite possibly it is. In Hubbard’s case, and in anyone else’s. But outright dismissal of the old saying ‘the past is indicative of the future’ is what guides not only the historian, but voters as well. Otherwise, a candidate’s background and voting record wouldn’t matter and we would hand every guy or gal a blank slate. But we don’t.
Or do we?
Will we learn from the past?
In the days of Illinois conservatives being backstabbed by the likes of U.S. Senator Mark Kirk and more recently, U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, there seems to be a curious lack of caution as it pertains to the 2020 U.S. Senate all-important race.
People I know who swore up and down and up again that they would ever allow themselves to be fooled again seem very eager to dismiss any sort of questions as out of hand.
Sadly, some of these folks – good conservative folks – have no trouble ascribing the very worst of motives on those who raise the red flag. Remember when so many of us bemoaned the fact that Obama’s race and Hillary’s gender seemed to give them immunity to all criticism? After all –who wants to be called a racist, a misogynist, a bigot?
Remember that?
I have already aggravated a number of you, so I may as well go on to suggest that if a wide swath of the conservative voting base in this state is going to approach this primary as a game of ‘hear no evil, see no evil” we may as well vote by cast our votes by drawing straws.
In a sense, everything I have said here goes far beyond Peggy Hubbard, although understandably her supporters are unlikely to buy that. In this election – and in those that will follow – we conservatives have to apply the same standards, the same concerns, and yes, the same leeway if so desired, to all candidates running under the Republican banner. To question the background, the motivations, the record, of ANY candidate is simply a corollary to good judgement.
Scrutiny, friends, is not a smear.
