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GOP would rather lose Illinois senate election than have anti-immigration nominee

Thread ID: 14524 | Posts: 5 | Started: 2004-07-13

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Faust [OP]

2004-07-13 07:57 | User Profile

GOP Told Thanks, But No Thanks Senate Rejection Another Setback, Chicago Tribune

Illinois GOP would rather lose senate election than place immigration reformer on ballot.

GOP Told Thanks, But No Thanks Senate Rejection Another Setback

Rick Pearson, Chicago Tribune, Jul. 9

State Sen. Steve Rauschenberger took himself out of the running Thursday for consideration to replace Jack Ryan as the Republican U.S. Senate nominee, leaving GOP leaders scrambling for an alternative candidate to avoid tapping controversial boutique dairy owner James D. Oberweis.

Rauschenberger, a veteran lawmaker from Elgin, said money was the primary issue.

Lacking the personal wealth to self-finance a campaign, Rauschenberger said the failure of GOP officials to deliver a $3 million to $5 million financial plan would render it difficult to launch a campaign from scratch against Democratic nominee Barack Obama with less than four months to Election Day.

“Any candidate will have a harder time trying to make it from a standing start,” Rauschenberger said.

Rauschenberger’s decision was another setback for a state Republican organization in disarray for four years, its credibility tarnished by the scandal-clouded leadership of former Gov. George Ryan, who faces federal corruption charges.

Jack Ryan, who is no relation to George Ryan, was looked on by many Republicans as an energetic new face who could aid GOP rebuilding efforts. He won an eight-way race in the March 16 Senate primary, but then last month said he would withdraw amid controversy over the court-ordered release of sealed files from his divorce from actress Jeri Ryan.

That set off a scramble to find a replacement, with most of the also-rans in the primary asking GOP officials to pick them. Oberweis came in second to Ryan in the primary, but many leaders considered Rauschenberger, who finished third, the more palatable alternative.

That is because Oberweis antagonized many Republicans in the 2004 primary and in an unsuccessful 2002 Senate primary bid by appearing to flip-flop between positions designed to appeal to moderates and conservatives, particularly on abortion.

**What’s more, party leaders grew uncomfortable with the strong anti-immigration themes of Oberweis’ campaign this year as well as his criticism of President Bush’s immigration reform plans.

Republican sources said the White House has registered strong objections to a potential Oberweis candidacy, particularly because of his critique of Bush when the re-election minded president was attempting to broaden his campaign outreach to Latinos.**

Republican sources said an Oberweis candidacy would alienate Bush and result in the GOP presidential campaign writing off a state that it had held only scant hope of winning.

Oberweis, who also is a wealthy investment broker, said he did not feel party leaders were trying to work around him and said some had been quite encouraging. But he also said he deserved the nomination because of his second-place finish behind Ryan in the primary.

“I have said all along that in the Olympics or a horse race or most events, if the winner is disqualified or drops out, the runner-up steps up,” he said. “It seemed logical that they should make an offer to me in that regard.”

State Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka, who is chairman of the state GOP, said she was sorry that Rauschenberger had dropped out and called his decision unfortunate.

“The Illinois GOP continues to vet interested candidates and is still on schedule to announce a candidate in the very near future,” Topinka said. “Working closely with the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Illinois Republican Party is committed to keeping this Senate seat in Republican hands.”

Already plagued by fissures between its moderate and conservative wings, Ryan’s decision to drop out of the race and the state GOP’s inability to quickly target an acceptable substitute has created cracks among the party’s core conservative base.

It has also resulted in an abundance of conspiracy theories among fringe elements in the party over who is in, who is out, whether a fix was in and whether Rauschenberger was being set up to fail or whether he ever was really interested in replacing Ryan.

Ryan has yet to file a formal request with state election officials to remove his name from the ballot, triggering even more whispers among some elements in the GOP. Republican officials in Washington and Illinois said they do not expect Ryan to try to resurrect his candidacy, despite a spate of recent TV interviews, and they anticipate he will formally file his withdrawal papers soon.

The vacuum created by the lack of a candidate has led to a fanciful guessing game, with some GOP hangers-on trying to mount draft movements for Republican-leaning celebrities, including former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka.

Ditka has been a frequent speaker at Republican rallies, including a November 2000 Bush-Cheney event at the College of DuPage that drew 10,000 people. But it was questionable whether Ditka would be willing to forgo his lucrative endorsements, particularly during the football season, to run for public office.

One leading Republican acknowledged privately that a Ditka candidacy was “wishful thinking,” but also called the Ditka speculation a creation of the electronic media.

Ryan announced on June 25 that he would withdraw from the Senate nomination amid the release of divorce files in which his former wife alleged he took her to sex clubs and asked her to perform sexual acts in front of strangers.

Ryan has maintained that the media would not allow him to talk about issues in the race and some Republican leaders maintained that he misled them and underplayed the seriousness of the allegations in the divorce files.

Ryan has appeared recently on several conservative-oriented cable TV talk shows. On Wednesday, he told Fox News interviewer Sean Hannity that he had not changed his mind about getting out of the race but facetiously indicated he could reconsider if thousands of people flocked to his Wilmette home and begged him.

The Republican State Central Committee had hopes of being able to advance its mid-July timetable for naming a Ryan replacement, sources said, but that was while Rauschenberger was considered a candidate.

On Thursday, former federal prosecutors J. William Roberts and Tyrone Fahner began initiating background checks on the remaining GOP contenders.

Rauschenberger said his decision to drop from consideration was “absolutely not” because of the vetting process.

Rauschenberger said he believed a Republican could defeat Democratic nominee Obama, who led Ryan by 20 percentage points in a Tribune/WGN-TV poll even before the revelations from the divorce file.

Rauschenberger said Obama wasn’t even the Democratic favorite until damaging disclosures from Blair Hull’s divorce sank Hull’s campaign.

“Two rich guys, two sealed divorces” have helped Obama, Rauschenberger said. “If we can get a candidate to define Barack Obama, this guy can still be beat, even if Illinois is a tough state for Republicans.”

[url]http://www.amren.com/news/news04/07/09/oberweis.html[/url]

darkstar

2004-07-13 15:31 | User Profile

'Republican sources said the White House has registered strong objections to a potential Oberweis candidacy, particularly because of his critique of Bush when the re-election minded president was attempting to broaden his campaign outreach to Latinos.'

I think a better headline might be 'White House would rather lose senate election than place immigration reformer on ballot, at a time when it is attempting to destroy the white race for fun and profit.'

Quantrill

2004-07-13 15:48 | User Profile

[QUOTE]'Republican sources said the White House has registered strong objections to a potential Oberweis candidacy, particularly because of his critique of Bush when the re-election minded president was attempting to broaden his campaign outreach to Latinos.

'Broaden his campaign outreach to Latinos'? Talk about euphemism! He was trying to ram a mass amnesty of millions of Mexicans down our throats! That goes a little beyond 'campaign outreach.'

Okiereddust

2004-07-13 17:23 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Faust]GOP Told Thanks, But No Thanks Senate Rejection Another Setback, Chicago Tribune

Illinois GOP would rather lose senate election than place immigration reformer on ballot..................

**What’s more, party leaders grew uncomfortable with the strong anti-immigration themes of Oberweis’ campaign this year as well as his criticism of President Bush’s immigration reform plans.

Republican sources said the White House has registered strong objections to a potential Oberweis candidacy, particularly because of his critique of Bush when the re-election minded president was attempting to broaden his campaign outreach to Latinos.**

Republican sources said an Oberweis candidacy would alienate Bush and result in the GOP presidential campaign writing off a state that it had held only scant hope of winning...............

“The Illinois GOP continues to vet interested candidates and is still on schedule to announce a candidate in the very near future,” Topinka said. “Working closely with the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Illinois Republican Party is committed to keeping this Senate seat in Republican hands.”

Yeah you can see the real winners they come up with to keep those nasty anti-immigration candidates on the ballot

............Ryan announced on June 25 that he would withdraw from the Senate nomination amid the release of divorce files in which his former wife alleged he took her to sex clubs and asked her to perform sexual acts in front of strangers.

And amazing (or not amazing) he's still a (neo)conservative hero

Ryan has appeared recently on several conservative-oriented cable TV talk shows. On Wednesday, he told Fox News interviewer Sean Hannity that he had not changed his mind about getting out of the race but facetiously indicated he could reconsider if thousands of people flocked to his Wilmette home and begged him.

The conservative establishment can accept a pervert exhibitionist, but immigration restrictionists - well you've got to draw the line somewhere.

This is just another example of why immigration restrictionists of all types so badly need a viable electoral/political alternative to the GOP and the conservative establishment, and why all our feuding just amounts to fiddling while Rome burns.

edward gibbon

2004-07-13 17:34 | User Profile

[url]http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:gETL6CFrDEcJ:www.newyorker.com/fact/content/%3F040531fa_fact1+barack+obama&hl=en[/url]

[CENTER][SIZE=4][I][B]New Yorker [/B] [/I] [/SIZE] [/CENTER] May 31, 2004[B][CENTER]THE CANDIDATE[/CENTER][/B] [CENTER]by WILLIAM FINNEGAN [/CENTER]

[QUOTE]The climax of Barack Obama’s 1995 memoir, “Dreams from My Father,” occurs in rural Kenya when the author sits between the graves of his father and his grandfather and weeps. Obama, then in his late twenties, hardly knew his father and never met his grandfather, but in the course of writing the book he had learned their stories in devastating detail. Both were proud, ambitious men who travelled far from the Luo-speaking villages where they grew up—indeed, Obama’s grandmother still has her son’s Harvard diploma hanging in her house nearby. Their respective struggles in the world ended painfully, in bitter loneliness. Beside their graves, Obama, a middle-class American, both mourns and, for the first time, understands his African forebears.

People in Illinois seem largely unaware of Obama’s long, annealing trip into their midst, although they often remark on his unusual calm. Now forty-two and a state senator, Obama emerged, in March, from a raucous primary as the Democratic nominee for the United States Senate. In a seven-person field, he received a remarkable fifty-three per cent of the vote—he even won the “collar” counties around Chicago, communities that supposedly would never support a black candidate. And everyone recalls that, as the votes were being tallied at his headquarters on Election Night, he seemed to be the least agitated person in the place.

Obama’s Republican opponent in November will be Jack Ryan, a wealthy political neophyte. The seat they are competing for is now held by a Republican, Peter Fitzgerald, who is retiring. An Obama victory thus would move the Senate Democrats, at present outnumbered fifty-one to forty-eight, one seat closer to a majority. It also would make Obama only the third African-American to serve in the Senate since Reconstruction.

On a raw, rainy late-April day in Springfield, the state capital, Obama, who represents a district on Chicago’s South Side, ducked out of the statehouse for a meeting with labor leaders from southern Illinois at an A.F.L.-C.I.O. building down the street. “This is a kiss-and-make-up session,” he told me as we entered a ground-floor conference room—the state A.F.L.-C.I.O. had supported one of his opponents in the Democratic primary. [B]Twenty-five white males, in windbreakers and golf shirts, sat around the room. They represented the building trades—the painters’ union, the carpenters.[/B]

Obama, lanky and dapper in a dark suit, his shoulders almost strangely relaxed, seemed to know most of the men there. He broke the ice with a joke at the expense of Ed Smith, a huge, tough-looking delegate from Cairo. Obama had met Smith’s mother on a recent downstate swing and had discovered that “she’s the one who really calls the shots there.” Smith laughed, and the other delegates said they wanted her phone number. Then Obama gave a short, blunt, pro-labor speech. The men eyed him carefully. Heads began nodding slowly, jaws set, as he drove his points home: “two hundred thousand jobs lost in Illinois under Bush; overtime rights under threat for eight million workers nationally; the right to organize being eroded.” Then he said, “I need your help,” and took questions.

The questions were terse, specific, well informed. They dealt with federal highway funding, non-union companies coming in from out of state on big contracts, the implications of the Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement. Obama listened closely, and his answers were fluent and dauntingly knowledgeable, but he kept his language colloquial. “It’s not enough just to vote right,” he said. “You gotta advocate. You gotta reframe the debate, use informal power. A lot of these bills coming up now are lose-lose for Democrats.”

“That’s right,” somebody said. “[COLOR=Red][I]I have a reputation as this abstract guy talking about civil rights,[/I][/COLOR]” Obama went on. “But anybody who knows my state legislative district knows I fight for our share of resources. And I will fight for Illinois highway dollars.”

He mostly told the union men what they wanted to hear. Then he said, “[COLOR=Red][I]There’s nobody in this room who doesn’t believe in free trade[/I][/COLOR],” which provoked a small recoil. These men were ardent protectionists. A little later, he said, with conviction, “[B][I]I want India and China to succeed[/I][/B]”—a sentiment not much heard in the outsourcing-battered heartland. He went on, however, to criticize Washington and Wall Street for not looking after American workers.

Later, I asked him if he wasn’t waving a red flag in front of labor by talking about free trade. “Look, those guys are all wearing Nike shoes and buying Pioneer stereos,” he said. “They don’t want the borders closed. They just don’t want their communities destroyed.”[/QUOTE]White males have virtually lost their power base in the party of Jews, Blacks and homosexuals.