Posted on 05/31/2008 6:30:46 AM PDT by Clintonfatigued
So you may have received a call from Jim Oberweis recently.
No, not one of those annoying robocalls that descended on the 14th Congressional District like a swarm of angry, negative bees during the final weeks of the primary and special-election campaigns. I mean something quite a bit more personal.
Since losing the March special election to now-Rep. Bill Foster, Oberweis has been contacting people involved in the race, people who commented on the race, and people (like yours truly) who covered the race. He's been meeting with as many of these people as he can, trying to pick their brains and find out where his campaign went off track.
I'm calling it the What Went Wrong World Tour, and I promise, that's my last snarky comment about it because I honestly respect him for doing this.
According to Oberweis' new campaign spokesman, David From of Burnham Strategies Group, the idea came from Oberweis. And From said they've learned a lot from the meetings so far. One of the most important lessons, he said, has been that voters haven't gotten to know Jim Oberweis the man -- father, grandfather, community member.
As I alluded to earlier, I was a stop on the World Tour a couple of weeks ago, along with fellow reporter Dan Campana. I found Oberweis a willing listener, even if he still seems like he can't believe he lost the special election.
(Excerpt) Read more at suburbanchicagonews.com ...
What went wrong was that Jim Oberweis was the nominee.
May I suggest Mr Oberweis that you retire from politics. that is the best thing you can do. However, your money is still needed so please contribute.
Mr. Oberweis,
Enough is enough! This is, what, the fifth, sixth race you lost? I like a lot of your ideas, but you have to know when it’s time to face reality. Yes, Nixon, Reagan, and Lincoln didn’t have perfect campaign records, but neither did Alan Keyes, Ralph Nader, or Harold Stassen.
Oberweis should stop milking the political scene and go back to milking cows. I think that pretty well sums up the situation.
BTW, Jim Oberweis and his wife will be at the state party convention in Decatur, Illinois next week. I will be there as well. Jim won't listen to a guy like me telling him that he's damanged goods, the only way he's going to see the writing on the wall is if his diehard supporters that have been following him around since 2002 tell him them. They don't appear to be poised to do so.
Somebody needs to tell Oberweis to get the hell out of the way. Lauzen can take the seat back easily.
If Oberweis dropped out, I'm told the "only moderates can win crowd" at the IL GOP would likely slate RINO Genava Mayor Kevin Burns (who dropped out of the primary when he couldn't compete) to run in November.
I'm not sure which is worse, Oberweis or Burns.
Well, that’s f*cking fantastic. Maybe we can come back in 2010... or 2012 (of course by then, the rodent legislature will likely make a nice safe seat for the nobody currently occupying it). I hope that dick Oberweis is happy with the mess he made. He seems to be nothing but a Democrat agent.
Oberweis is a first class a$$ clown who deserved to lose. He spent $3 million to distort Lauzen’s record. Yet came begging to the NRCC to dump $1 million for him. What a fool. Oberweis needs to go back to hiring illegal immigrants for his ice cream stores.
I never understood why he got the NRCC to pour money into (losing) race anyway, thereby tieing up resources the NRCC needed to spend against vulnerable DemocRATS elsewhere like Indianapolis.
Throughout Oberweis' campaigns for Senate, Governor, and Congress, his main talking point was that he was a self-made millionaire and gave us the "advantage" of being able to self-fund his race compared to "other" Republicans that would need to be propped up with party funds to keep going after the primary.
So what happened to this "advantage" once Oberweis actually did get the nomination?
Also interesting, what happened to all the conservatives on this board who spent the 2006 primary demanding Illinois Republicans "get behind" Jim Oberweis and accused the other conservative in the race (who didn't nearly have as high negatives and baggage that Oberweis carried) of being a "Topinka plant" who was there to sabotage the great Jim Oberweis from getting the nomination so we can "beat Blagojevich"?
At the time, they spent monthes demonizing Bill Brady as a "liberal plant", (insisting a State Senator with an spot-free career conservative record was spending millions of his own money simply as an evil backroom "deal" to help Topinka)
What say the Oberweis crowd now?
So, can someone explain what people hate about this guy? From the comments at the linked site, it seems moderates are not comfortable with him because he is too “right-wing.” Is that the main problem, or is it something else?
I’m not sure what his views are because he’s changed them. However, the main problem is that he’s an arrogant, abrasive blowhard who wins Republican primaries by waging smear campaigns.
In addition, this district hasn’t sent a Democrat to Congress since 1944. There is no reason for a Democrat to win here, except that the Republicans had a defective candidate whom voters disliked.
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