Bush 43: Conservative movement is inconsequential

Washington Examiner ^ | September 15, 2009 | Byron York

[BillyBoy]

>> You can’t mention flipfloppers without including Pat Quinn. He was the (non-ACORN) Alinsky organizing power behind Dan Walker. He was consistently anti-combine (and very liberal) as state treasurer and up until he became Blago’s Lt Gov. Then Quinn began to tone it down and play a waiting game ... knowing the odds were that Blago would be indicted and removed from office. Ultimately Quinn cut deals with Madigan. <<

Yes, Quinn is a good example of someone who always spent their career as very vocally anti-combine but changed in recent years. I think part of it has to do with the odd system we have in Illinois of electing our Governor/Lt. Governor ticket in which voters can choose whoever they want for both offices in the primary but in the general election they are forced to elect them together as a team. As a result you sometimes have politicians that have nothing in common from the primary depending on each other for political survival in November. That was certainly the case with Quinn & Blago, who were hardly on speaking terms when it came to internal RAT party politics but who were joined at the hip in November. If Blago was defeated for re-election, Quinn would automatically go down with the ship as well. Saving his own political career obviously trumped integrity for Pat Quinn (a classic example of profiles in cowardice), as a result Pat Quinn kept quiet about Blago's corruption and indeed did everything he could to defend Blago from critics in order to ensure the Governor was re-elected so Pat could be in a position to assume power if anything happened. And of course history has shown that stragedy did result in political gadfly Quinn eventually assuming the Governorship.

I personally think it's just desserts now that Republicans will be able to associate Quinn with Blago and the corrupt combine even though historically the two were major rivals and never got along. The RATs deserve to get a taste of that after they (successfully, IMO) painted a false image of McCain as "Bush's third term" and got voters to believe the two were best buddies, when in reality they had long been bitter rivals in the GOP and had thinly veiled contempt for each other.

>> I disagree with your assessment of Peaica. Peraica is for less taxes, less spending, less borrowing, less regulation. He is pro-life, pro-gun. That equals conservative to me. Peraica’s problem is his personality, ego and style rub people the wrong way ... and he makes mistakes like bringing into his campaign drunks who do stupid things that embarass him. <<

It equals conservative to me too. But here's the rub. I follow the traditional definition of RINO as it was originally supposed to be used, as a Republican In Name Only whose ideologically differs little from a Democrat. But here in FR there's a large element of conservatives who define RINO as any Republican who disagrees with them on an issue of key importance to the GOP base. As a result, you have Republicans who agree with the base 80-90% of the time being labeled RINOs. John McCain and Lindsey Graham, according to their longtime voting records, are pretty strongly for less taxes, less spending, less borrowing, less regulation, pro-life and pro-gun. Both are despised as "RINOs" on FR, due to "betraying" the base on a handful of issues several conservatives consider to be unacceptable to deviate from (unless of course the politician is named John Thune or Fred Thompson, but that's another story). Some conservatives actually argue that these Republicans, who agree with them 80-90% of the time, are worse than someone like Mark Kirk who agrees with them 30-40%. I disagree, but my views are frequently in the minority with the "Graham is evil RINO scum" crowd. Pericia is despised for similar reasons among a majority of Illinois conservatives (and like John McCain, nevertheless many conservatives who swore they would "never vote for him", held their nose for him anyway when his opponent was John Stroger). It's not just for abrasive personality reasons ala Jean Schmidt, but genuine problems with some of the things he's done in office.

[spintreebob]

Your Blago-Quinn description is true. It applies equally to the Toopinka-Birkett ticket .. and now probably the McKenna-Murphy ticket.

Your discussion of RINO definition depending on one’s priorities is also true. Peter Fitzgerald was wrong on ANWR, McCain-Feingold and other issues. But he was right on Patrick Fitzgerald. When I worked hard for Peter in 98 I was well aware of this. Corruption is my litmus test. For many LIFE is the litmus test. Peter conveniently passed the LIFE test.

Based on what I know about the current candidates, I think Proft, Adam, Wallace are the closest to being firm in anti-corruption. But I could be wrong. I was wrong about Murphy ... especially about his IQ as his move is dumb.

I have no problem with the Rauschenberger-Gidwitz deal. Unlike Toopinka-Birkett, they kept their integrity during the deal. So I’m not against all deals. But I’ve got to see the upside ... and I don’t see it with Murphy ... or Hughest ... or other wannabes.