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The Great Illinois Republican Civil

The Great Illinois Republican Civil War has started. Circle up and fire folks. O’Malley and his clan have decided to committ hari kari in the same fashion as Republicans in California and New Jersey.

As a Democrat, I suppose this should make me happy. It doesn’t. I grew up in Illinois and always admired the moderate Republicanism of Jim Thompson and Jim Edgar. They provided a great check excesses of the left and still respected education funding, infrastructure and individual liberties. Jim Thompson provided the infrastructure that makes Illinois an ideopolis now. Without him, Illinois may well be Missouri with good farmland and a big crumbling city. Instead, Chicago is a world class city (Washington and Daley deserve credit for this as well), education is good in most areas (see posting on Blog St. Louis about rural ed), and Illinois is relatively good on social issues.

No more. Now there will be a huge blow-up in the Republican Party between those moderates who have a motto of “Let’s not get excited,” and the jihad wingnuts who are more worried about homeschooling and abortion than infrastructure. I imagine the wing-nuts will eventually win and we’ll see the Democrats take over the state for years to come. Wingnuts are bad for bidness and Illinois is a bidness state.

That is too bad. Many Democratic leaders in the State of Illinois need to be checked. I like Madigan for what he gets done, but he is all too happy to use state resources to further his political goals (separate from policy goals). Republican cronieism provides a check on that. But it won’t if there aren’t any Republicans left in office.

Bingo! Brazen lying eventually gets

Bingo! Brazen lying eventually gets discovered. The ‘energy crisis’ was a sham and now there is actual evidence of it. Why would the government enter into an agreement to keep it secret? Things that make you go hmmmmmmmmm…..

Perhaps this would have been more clear if Governor Blowhard wasn’t mucking up the whole debate, but the Bush and Cheney were lying. How do we know they were lying? Well they are competent businessmen in the energy industry. If they got it wrong, they couldn’t have been mistaken because they were competent, right?

But no, they had to push the Murkowski Solution? What is the Murkowski solution? Feet Stink? Drill ANWR

When not whining about Democrats

When not whining about Democrats and Howell Raines, Kaus does some good stuff. If correct, this is the scoop of the day.

The problem with the analysis is that Davis is so incredibly obsessive he probably has 13 interest groups ready with attack ads against Arnold and Riordan. I doubt Arnold can hold up to the ugliness. Riordan is a different deal and here in Misserah, he’d be a liberal commie pinko along with Rudy Guiliani. So I’d be all for Riordan taking on the blowhards. The problem is with the mediocre race he ran in the primary, it is unclear Riordan want to be governor.