Posts Tagged ‘illinois’

At least overconfidence won’t be a problem for the GOP in 2024 as it was after the two Red Wave elections–and other thoughts

Posted: November 13, 2022 by John Ruberry in congress, culture, elections, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

I was around for the 1994 and the 2010 Red Wave elections. And for the most part, they were pretty awesome, particularly the first one, when the Republican Party bulldozed the Democrats and captured the Senate after eight years of Democrat control, as well as the House of Representatives, after a record 52-year reign by the Dems. And while the GOP didn’t win the Senate in 2010, the Republicans gained an astounding 63 House seats in what is now known as the Tea Party election. 

After both midterms, conservatives salivated at the prospect of the next presidential election. In 1992, Bill Clinton was victorious, it was believed, because George H.W. Bush ran a lackluster campaign–that was true–and votes for third-party candidate Ross Perot siphoned enough support from the GOP conservative base to elect the Democrat. In 2008, the feeling was that John McCain never had a chance against Barack Obama after the Great Recession market crash two months before Election Day. But McCain ran a lackluster campaign too. 

Overconfidence, bordering on hubris, kicked in for the GOP after those Red Waves.

As of this writing there will be a Democrat majority in the Senate in the next Congress, and maybe, a razor-thin Republican majority in the House. 

Bubba had a come-to-Jesus moment–having Dick Morris in his camp helped–and Clinton after the ’94 midterms pivoted to the center by declaring, “The era of big government is over.” The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, widely-known as the Welfare Reform Bill, offered tangible proof.

After what Obama deemed “a shellacking” in 2010, Obama, as he does best, talked a good game–but he didn’t pivot. With no hope of getting unpopular legislation, such as cap-and-trade passed by the new GOP House, he channeled his charisma to win in 2012–as conservatives seethed. And ObamaCare didn’t go into effect until 2013.

Besides over-confidence hindering their White House chances, Republicans nominated country club-flavor Republicans, Bob Dole and Mitt Romney, for president in 1996 and 2012, respectively. In essence, their campaign was, “I’m not the other guy.” Yawn.

As of this writing there will be a Democrat majority in the Senate in the next Congress, and maybe, a razor-thin Republican majority in the House. 

Election denial.

It’s time for the GOP to look at what went wrong this year, starting with election-denial. As I wrote in March, Joe Biden versus Donald Trump was not a free and fair election. Big Tech and media meddling in regard to suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story, in my opinion, was the foremost reason. Richard M. Nixon was the victim of a suspicious presidential election tally in 1960. I was a child in 1968 and 1972, but I don’t recall reading about Nixon mentioning the 1960 race at all during his ’68 or ’72 successful presidential runs.

Deal with it. The Dems won in 2020 and we lost. Move on. If Trump runs in 2024, that needs to be his message. Most of the candidates in close races who said that Biden stole the election from Trump in 2020 were defeated. Election denial is toxic for Republicans.

The big winner in the midterms was Florida governor Ron DeSantis. He’s not an election denier and he has a solid list of accomplishments to point to after four years in office.

The new election playing field.

I loathe mail-in voting, “election season” instead of Election Day, and ballot drop-boxes. But these things aren’t going away. To prevail, Republicans have to adapt and find ways to perform better on the new playing field. Mail-in voting is a good place to start. Increasingly, the GOP is the party of private sector jobholders. Let’s say you’re a construction worker raising a family who is told by his boss, “Hey, I need you at this worksite tomorrow in Nebraska–it pays well.” But that worker hasn’t voted yet and Election Day is two days away. Meanwhile, in Blue Illinois, Election Day is a holiday for government workers.

What if it snows on Election Day? That happened in a Republican area in Nevada last Tuesday.

Shortly before Election Day in 2016, my mother was hospitalized. She had voted in every presidential election since 1956, but mom wasn’t able to vote for Trump, much to her disappointment. We need to reach out to seniors and, gently of course, convince them to utilize mail-in or early voting. 

Republicans need to build on its increasing support among Hispanics and reach out to Asians. The GOP is the party of law and order. However, the media wing of the Democratic Party labels the phrase “law and order” as racist. So Republicans need to rebrand and become, let’s say, the “safety and security” party. Safety and security is an appeal that will resonate among all racial groups.

Tribalism.

If the increasingly frail and mentally feeble Joe Biden runs for reelection and wins renomination–the Democrats won’t have a strong campaigner like Clinton or Obama on the top of the ticket in ’24. And Biden has already said that he won’t pivot, as Bill Clinton did, to the center now that the midterms have passed.

Woo-hoo! We’re gonna win!

Slow down there, cowboy.

Republicans face disaster if they underestimate the support Biden will enjoy from the tribalist base of the Democrats. That tribe will vote every candidate who has a “D” next to their name. In the Chicago area, I live among millions of these people. They might wise up one day. Maybe they won’t. But as Dan Bongino said numerous times in the last week, “Things are just not bad enough yet for a lot of people to wake up from the Kool-Aid slumber.”

And it’s not just Illinois that is afflicted by Dem tribalism. Pennsylvanians chose a cognitively challenged far-left US Senate candidate, John Fetterman, who suffered a stroke this spring, over a mentally nimble Republican candidate, Dr. Mehmet Oz. True, Oz could have run a better campaign. 

Ronald Reagan, in his 1984 landslide win over Walter Mondale, won 49 states. But in the popular vote–yeah, I know, the Electoral College declares the victor–Mondale still collected more than 40 percent. In 2024, even if Biden is in worse physical and mental shape than Fetterman is, he’ll do much better, courtesy of tribalism, than Mondale did, in both the Electoral College and the popular vote.

Fetterman, if by some other-worldly convergence ends up as the Democrat nominee for president in 2024, could match Mondale’s popular vote percentage. I am dead serious about that. Tribalism is a tough nut to crack.

There is much to think about and much to do for the Republican Party. But at least the GOP won’t be overconfident in 2024. That might be the best news out of this Red Ripple election.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Another front in the Boss Madigan scandals is something for Illinois voters to remember on Election Day

Posted: October 23, 2022 by John Ruberry in crime, elections, News/opinion, politics
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Madigan graphic courtesy of the Illinois Policy Institute

By John Ruberry

In March, after years of investigation, Michael Madigan, the decades-long speaker of the Illinois House and chairman of the state Democratic party, was indicted on corruption charges. The heart of that indictment was centered on northern Illinois’ principal electric utility, Commonwealth Edison, in what the indictment termed a “years-long bribery scheme” involving contracts, jobs, and of course favors, such as legislation favoring ComEd. Earlier this month, Madigan was indicted again, this time AT&T Illinois, a subsidiary of the much-larger AT&T, was the company involved. 

ComEd’s parent, Exelon, is a publicly traded company, as is AT&T. 

In return for AT&T Illinois paying a $23 million fine and admitting guilt, charges will be dropped by the local U.S. attorney’s office in two years, according to the paperwork filed in federal court in a deferred prosecution agreement. ComEd agreed to a similar settlement, while paying a $200 million fine. 

Madigan, 80, entered public life in 1969 as a delegate to the Illinois constitutional convention. He was elected to the Illinois General Assembly from a Southwest Side Chicago district a year later. He became House Speaker in 1983. 

As I’ve remarked many times before, Illinois is in serious need of term limit laws.  

While he was running what the U.S. District Attorney of Northern Illinois later called “the Madigan Enterprise,” the Boss managed to expand his power even more by becoming chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party. Perhaps the most devious gerrymanderer ever, Madigan used that post and the speaker’s office to create supermajorities in both chambers of the General Assembly. Oh, Madigan’s daughter, Lisa, served four terms as Illinois’ attorney general during dad’s reign. 

During Madigan’s reign-of-error, Illinois’ pension bomb was created. The fingerprints of the Boss were on every state budget from 1983 until his departure from public life.

The Madigan Enterprise fell apart early last year after–on Illinois Democrats’ standards–a lackluster 2020 general election. The Boss, finally visibly tainted by the drip-drip of the ComEd scandal, was unable to win reelection as speaker. Madigan, bereft of the linchpin of his power, quietly resigned not only as state party chairman, but he also resigned his House seat. He even quit as Democratic committeeman of Chicago’s 13th Ward, where presumably he is still revered. Madigan was never interested in student council-style pretend-power, he only relished the real thing. 

AT&T Illinois sought out Madigan because it wanted to ditch its landline telephone business, which it did in 2017. The General Assembly overrode the veto of Governor Bruce Rauner, a Republican, to get the job done. 

According to the indictment, Edward Acevedo, a Madigan crony and former state representative, received $22,500 for an allegedly no-work AT&T Illinois consulting job. Acevedo is now serving time in prison for tax evasion tied to his role in the Commonwealth Edison scandal. 

Also indicted by the feds this month was AT&T Illinois’ former president, Paul La Schiazza, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.

Many of the minions of Boss Madigan are still in the General Assembly, most prominently Chris Welch, the current Illinois House speaker who, Brutus-like, turned on Madigan last year. 

Who is still in office is something for Illinois voters to think about when they make their election choices this autumn. Especially since, I suspect, it’s hard to fathom that ComEd and AT&T Illinois were not the only companies that tried to illegally curry favor with the Madigan Enterprise.

I recently read Matt Rosenberg’s What Next, Chicago? Notes of a Pissed Off Native Son—my review is here. In it, Rosenberg recalls a conversation with a former Chicago alderman, Dick Simpson, who told the author, “We have a rule about bureaucratic crime, that if one person is convicted there were probably ten people involved with that particular crime or that general pattern, that were not caught.” 

When Madigan was sworn into office as a state rep in 1971, Illinois had 26 electoral votes. In 2024 it will only have 19. 

Surprised?

Disclosure: The author of this entry worked for AT&T Wireless for over a decade.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

At least 24 Illinois county prosecutors have filed suit against pro-criminal SAFE-T Act

Posted: October 9, 2022 by John Ruberry in crime, elections, News/opinion, politics
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By John Ruberry

As you’ve learned in my recent posts at Da Tech Guy, Illinois’ SAFE-T Act will become effective on January 1, which will make the Prairie State the first in the union to abolish cash bail. Under very narrow circumstances, accused criminals can still be jailed, but these are among the crimes that will be non-detainable, which means, after perhaps 24 or 48 hours, they’ll walk free until their trials.

  • Aggravated Battery
  • Aggravated DUI
  • Aggravated Fleeing
  • Arson
  • Burglary
  • Intimidation
  • Kidnapping
  • Robbery
  • Second-Degree Murder
  • Threatening a Public Official
  • Drug-Induced Homicide

    Fact checkers, an ever increasingly dishonest lot, have been running to the defense of the law, which is being championed by the far-left of the Democratic Party. Illinois’ governor, J.B. Pritzker, a likely candidate for president if Joe Biden doesn’t run for reelection, probably plans to use the SAFE-T Act, which passed the state Senate at 5:00am on the last day of the 2021 veto session, to enshrine his woke credentials for 2024. 

    Illinois’ rising crime rate is a hot-button issue this election season, as it should be. The opinion of prosecutors of the SAFE-T Act is hostile. As I’ve mentioned in prior posts, 100 of Illinois’ 102 county prosecutors–they’re called state’s attorneys here–oppose the law. Tellingly, Kim Foxx, a George Soros-funded politician who is the so-called prosecutor in Cook County, where I live, is one of the two who support it. 

    Claiming the SAFE-T Act is in violation of the Illinois constitution, at least 24 state’s attorneys have filed suit to prevent it from going into force.

    As of October 9, these prosecutors include: 

    And I may be way short on this count. East Peoria’s mayor, John Kahl, claims 50 state’s attorneys have filed suit again the SAFE-T Act. But I’ll stick with my number for now–I derived my figure after an exhaustive Google News search. Some of the plaintiffs are Democrat and some are Republicans. Many county sheriffs have joined in on these lawsuits, most of which list Pritzker, Illinois’ attorney general, Kwame Raoul, and the state House speaker and state Senate president as defendants.

    Pritzker, along with some Democratic members of the Illinois General Assembly, are promising that changes will be made to the SAFE-T Act after Election Day, but no details are being offered. Which means that Illinois voters shouldn’t take their promises seriously. During Thursday’s televised debate with his Republican opponent, Darren Bailey, Pritzker didn’t mention any specific changes that he favors to the law. Bailey favors full repeal of the SAFE-T Act.

    Pritzker, as I’ve written for my own blog, has resorted to the ad misericordiam fallacy, an appeal to sympathy as the props up the controversial law. He keeps clinging to an apocryphal story about “addressing the problem of a single mother who shoplifted diapers for her baby, who is put in jail and kept there for six months because she doesn’t have a couple of hundred dollars to pay for bail.” Breitbart, in an honest fact-check, shot holes into Pritzker’s “Diapers Mom” argument.

    If the SAFE-T Act is so wonderful, then why does Pritzker have to lie when he defends it?

    John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

      If Pritzker is serious about flaws in the pro-criminal SAFE-T Act, he’ll call for a special General Assembly session to repeal it

      Posted: October 2, 2022 by John Ruberry in crime, culture, elections, media, News/opinion, politics
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      By John Ruberry

      The foremost political issue in Illinois is crime. And we have plenty of other issues to choose from, including negative population growth and endemic corruption. The election of Kim Foxx as Cook County’s state’s attorney in 2016–her campaign was funded by radical leftist billionaire George Soros–set forth a rise in crime in Chicago and its inner suburbs that accelerated during the COVID-19 lockdowns. 

      The spirt of Foxx’s catch-and-release philosophy of law enforcement will go statewide, but only worse, on New Year’s Day when the SAFE-T Act goes into effect. In case you missed my last two posts at Da Tech Guy, I cited a Democrat, Will County state’s state’s attorney James Glasgow, who had this to say to Fox Chicago’s Mike Flannery about the SAFE-T Act, “There are forcible felonies that are not detainable: burglary, robbery, arson, kidnapping, second degree murder, intimidation, aggravated battery, aggravated DUI, [and] drug offenses.” Which means these accused felons walk free with the promise of returning for trial. An exception for flight risks, which a former Cook County assistant state’s attorney, John Curran, who is now a Republican state senator, says is almost impossible to use for jailing accused criminals. Curran told John Kass last month in his Chicago Way podcast that the SAFE-T Act passed the state Senate at 5:00am in the morning on the last day of a veto session of the General Assembly. He was given one hour to read the 764-page bill.

      Some critics of the SAFE-T Act are calling it “the Purge Bill,” a reference the 2013 movie, The Purge, where crime goes unpunished for a 12-hour span.

      As I noted before, Pritzker notoriously claimed that the SAFE-T Act was about “making sure that we’re also addressing the problem of a single mother who shoplifted diapers for her baby, who is put in jail and kept there for six months because she doesn’t have a couple of hundred dollars to pay for bail.” I called on the fact-checkers–even contacting them directly–to vet that statement. I’m considering offering a $1,000 reward to the person who finds Pritzker’s “diapers mom.”

      Kass, a former Chicago Tribune journalist who was essentially demoted after his woke colleagues falsely claimed that a column he wrote blowing the whistle on Soros was anti-Semitic, now writes essential articles at John Kass News. He’s been at the forefront of the battle against the SAFE-T Act, and he’s calling for its repeal. Illinois’ Democrat governor, billionaire J.B. Pritzker, is promising unspecific changes to it after next month’s general election. He’s up for reelection, his opponent is state senator Darren Bailey. 

      Kass says, and I’ve been expressing the same view, that the Democrats are panicking about the SAFE-T Act. As they should, it’s a dangerous law that is a threat to public safety. He’s asking that Pritzker call an immediate special session of the General Assembly, “eat a few platters of steaming hot crow,” and repeal the SAFE-T Act. “J.B. Pritzker has the supermajority,” Bailey told NBC Chicago, which Kass recalled in his column. “Why hasn’t he called the legislature into action? Literally a text or a phone call, we could be demanded to meet in Springfield within a few hours. Why aren’t we meeting tomorrow at 9 o’clock hammering this thing out?” I believe I know the answer to that question. Pritzker wants to run out the clock.

      Kass suspects that the SAFE-T Act is a woke exercise in credential building for the governor’s possible run for president. I’ll add my own theory. In addition to minting a badge of honor for himself, Pritzker is prepping himself for receiving a Nobel Peace Prize as the prophet who, at least in Illinois, atoned for the murder of George Floyd. Only the aftermath of an in-force SAFE-T Act will anything but peaceful.

      Ads from the People Who Play By The Rules PAC focusing on violence have been very effective, even though at least three Chicago television stations have banned “The Scream.” A more recent ad, even more disturbing than “The Scream,” shows a robbery and a bloody assault that occurred last Sunday on Chicago’s CTA Red Line train. A few hours earlier my daughter was a passenger on the Red Line. One of the perpetrators in this attack has been arrested. He’s now locked up, amazingly, bail was denied to him. But the People Who Play By The Rules PAC has this message for Illinoisans, the attack you’ll below is “a non-detainable offense under Pritzker’s Purge law.”

      Bailey, in my opinion, is still a decided underdog in the gubernatorial race, but the downstate farmer is closing his gap with Pritzker according to a recent Fabrizo, Lee, and Associates poll.

      Twice last week non-political acquaintances of mine told me, “Hey John, you are wrong about the SAFE-T Act, I read a fact-check about it.” I exposed the phony SAFE-T Act fact-checks in an entry on my own blog a few days ago. Yet once again, and almost certainly not for the last time, I am compelled to point out that fact-checkers are primarily propagandists for various leftist narratives. And if you are told by someone that you are incorrect about the SAFE-T Act and they cite a fact-check as evidence, this needs to be your response: vomit on that person. 

      Back to Pritzker: If he is really serious about addressing the numerous flaws in the SAFE-T Act, he’ll call for that special session of the General Assembly with the purpose of repealing all of it. His feeble and non-specific calls for changes to the SAFE-T Act are empty promises. 

      Early voting for the November election in Illinois began last week. One way to block a Pritzker run for president is for voters to evict him from the governor’s mansion. A whole bunch of new state legislators in Springfield is needed as well.

      By the way, no Republican legislators voted for the SAFE-T Act.

      John Ruberry regularly blogs from suburban Cook County at Marathon Pundit.

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