Basically, the Illinois GOP is in the same position that the Illinois Dems were in about twenty years ago, when a bunch of LaRouchies got themselves nominated by running under-the-radar primary campaigns. The Dems (correctly) decided that the only way to prevent their normal candidates from being dragged down by the outpatients was to firmly denounce the latter.
I can understand the concept of not wanting someone to harm the party. But it appears to me what's really going on here is that there are those who despise the religious right, and call anyone who is in that group a "loon" or worse, and, in media and elsewhere, aggressively ENCOURAGE and REINFORCE the steroetypes they CLAIM they're trying to avoid.
"Basically, the Illinois GOP is in the same position that the Illinois Dems were in about twenty years ago, when a bunch of LaRouchies got themselves nominated by running under-the-radar primary campaigns. The Dems (correctly) decided that the only way to prevent their normal candidates from being dragged down by the outpatients was to firmly denounce the latter."
I can't claim to know the history you refer to here, but it seems like you're trying to give a historical precedent to acquit yourself of maliciously sabotaging your own candidate.
I DO know a little about the history of Jesse Helms from my state... He was just as aggressively demonized with many of the same bogus arguments and circular reasoning that you and the other regular Keyes thread disrupters throw around. Like Keyes, he was an EXCELLENT orator who thought and spoke with an amazing ability to discern right from wrong, and also to effectively indict the false logic of his oposition. But most never had the oportunity to hear him speak because there was such an effort to keep him from the public's ear. VERY similar to the treatment Keyes is receiving. But because of his indifference to the slander he received in the press, and his ability to make decisions on principle, and not on political expediency, he, despite continuous attacks, maintained the vital position as the chair for the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee until he retired, successfully preventing many attempts to submit our national soveraignty to the UN.
So if you want to offer LaRouche as a historical precedent. I'll see your Larouche, and raise you a Helms.