Posted on 03/12/2008 3:41:41 PM PDT by Borges
Dairy magnate Jim Oberweis was recovering from the flu yesterday when I called.
And he sounded a wee bit testy.
Soundly defeated Saturday in a special election in the 14th Congressional District, the Republican Oberweis is vowing to fight on in the upcoming November rematch against just-sworn-in Democratic Congressman Bill Foster.
Why did he lose?
"I have some theories, but I'm keeping them to myself," Oberweis said. The media, he argued, didn't help. "You guys gave him [Foster] pretty much a free ride."
There was a time in Illinois when Republicans roamed the earth.
They were once mighty. They were once strong. Yes, Democrats always outflanked them in Chicago but the GOP had its own hold on power and its own firm voice.
Names tell the story.
Lincoln, Dirksen, Percy, Michel, Hyde, Ogilvie, Thompson, and Edgar. They went to the White House, U.S. Senate, Congress, the governor's mansion and were a force to be reckoned with in the General Assembly. Some were statesmen. One, Pate Philip, was a hateful, narrow-minded pit bull, but he sure could command a majority in the state Senate. Others were stalwarts like state Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka, who held on to the last remaining constitutional office so Republicans could still claim one lonely outpost as their own.
No more.
The Illinois Republican Party has become the laughingstock party of wacko imports like 2004 U.S. Senate candidate Alan Keyes and homegrown, perennial, political problem child, Jim Oberweis.
His loss to Democrat millionaire physicist Bill Foster represents a monumental GOP humiliation.
It is a national, not local, story because none other than the longest-serving Republican speaker of the U.S. House, J. Dennis Hastert, held this 14th District seat for 11 terms until he recently up and retired mid-term.
Politicos across the country are looking at what happened here as a barometer of just how disenchanted Republicans in a reliably Republican district can be with the current president, the endless war and the miserable economy.
And fearful Republican candidates all across the country on the November ballot wonder if Oberweis' fate will be theirs.
On top of everything else, Foster had Barack Obama cut a campaign commercial for him. The Obama factor is scaring Republicans senseless.
But Oberweis' loss is also all about Oberweis. In four successive elections, he has run for anything and everything: U.S. senator, governor and Congress. And he's 0 for 4 thanks to a goofy immigration ad, a failure to weed out fiction from fact in another ill-advised commercial. And then there is his uncanny ability to alienate huge chunks of his own party.
You'd think a guy whose dairy sells a stupendous ice cream could find a way to sell himself. But no.
The Illinois GOP has its own marketing challenges. Oberweis and state Sen. Chris Lauzen scorched each other's earth in the special primary way before the Foster face-off. They never could patch it up for the sake of the party. Then again, even the embrace of a senior leader like Hastert apparently didn't do diddly to put Oberweis over the top. So much for the strength of a fractured GOP in which conservatives and moderates cannot, for the life of them, find a shred of common ground.
Come November, Illinois' nine Republican Congressional seats could be watered down to five. Democrats could jump from 10 to 14.
Some of the Illinois GOP's problems are out of its control. Both Bush and Obama give them nightmares.
But plenty of their problems are self-inflicted. Absent a collective will and discipline to overcome what divides them, they'll go the way of the dinosaur.
Fewer and fewer of them will roam Illinois' earth.
Just WOW! Seems the media and a lot on the left have a new diagnosis. Republiphobia!!
She was a Republican?
Yep. She was the one who brought Keyes in.
Strange, since the 2 are exact opposites.
She wasn’t pleased with the decision.
He lost because he’s a lousy campaigner and Northern Illinois is second only to Southern California in the number of Mexicans. The English language isn’t even spoken in some towns in Northern Illinois.
This is one of the worst hit jobs I've ever read masquerading as an editorial. If the same sort of “professionals” are doing the political reporting, it's no wonder Illinois no longer has a two party system!
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