I live in Du Page County, IL. In the days of Reagan, Du Page voted Republican, 65% - 70%. For the 2004 election, Du Page voted for Bush by only 54-45. Obama whipped Keyes, 65-31 in Du Page. Alan Keyes has said that he plans on sticking around in my state for a while longer. No doubt, he intends to see if he can drive more voters to the Democratic Party.
This is a nationwide trend, or rather parallel nationwide trends. Wherever the suburbs are growing mainly because of people moving out of cities, they are trending Democrat. Wherever they're growing mainly because of people moving in from rural areas, they are trending Republican.
If the Illinois Republican Party ever grows a brain and starts vetting their candidates (immediate step) and grooming future candidates, the Illinois Dems will be crying in their beer as loudly as all the other Blue-Staters.
Talk about putting lipstick on a pig! Why waste that much space when the real story is in the last couple paragraphs.
The same thing is happening in small towns across Connecticut. The liberals in the cities move to get away from the high taxes, crime and lousy schools. Unfortunately, they're too stupid to learn and they immediately try to re-create the same situation in their new community. They all want bigger schools and libraries and all sorts of expanded services. Lots of them have great high paying jobs and they have no qualms about making the rest of us pay for their wants.
I've heard about a study that concluded that liberals who move down south from the northeast over time tend to become more conservative in their political views. I suppose it will take 2-3 election cycles before the new suburbanites realize it pays to consider Republican candidates, but they seem to vote the person, not the party. In the redder states, this pattern benefits the GOP. At least IL is not a swing state, so the Repubs have a luxury here to build up their party and move patiently. Well, that's what my relatives in DuPage and Cook Co. tell me anyway.
You have unique problems there in IL. With the Ryans (how many of them bombed for the GOP?) and Alan Keyes ("lemme see how unattractive I can make my conservative position"), you have taken a lot of hits. If you hang in there and stay solid, things are bound to swing your way, as they have in other MidWest states.
BTW, what heppened in Colorado???
The idiot who wrote this doesn't have a clue. Conservative voters are leaving hellholes like Chicago and LA in droves. There are few real Republicans left running for office in these areas, only RINOs who are indeed feckless and shouldn't be elected by any party. So these cities and states will in the future be written off and ignored. Why would any conservative waste time campaigning for office there? My beef is with continuing to subsidize these failed places with red state tax dollars. Texas, for one, sends more tax money to D.C. than we get benefits back. Our gasoline taxes alone send astronomical amounts to the feds due to the long distances we travel. I'm for cutting off this largess.
This is not surprising. Many conservative Republicans either moved away to retire or died. Many urban white liberals have moved to the suburbs in persuit of a more tranquil life, and retained thier liberalism. As a result, suburban Chicago is becoming more like the city its new residents left behind.
There is a similar trend in downstate Illinois, though it's less pronounced. Conservative Republicans are moving away or dying. Socially conservative Democrats are voting their pocketbooks, and a stuborn recession isn't helping matters. Also, population loss is making the university towns a larger presence there than before.
All in all, it's fortunate that Bush ran as strongly in Illinois as he did. I had expected a larger Kerry margin.