Oberweis for the Republican Primary
Not for any serious reason—I just want good material and I don’t have to try hard when he’s around.
I’ll be writing columns and blog entries on the gubernatorial campaign for seven months or so, and, as Oberweis continues to show again and again, he’s better copy than any of his opponents.
It is like when I asked whether God could like me enough to really have the Illinois GOP bring in Alan Keyes. It ended up not taking divine intervention, but just a couple crazy State Senators.
Eric predicts an Oberweis victory and I’m not sure he’s wrong. Yesterday I would have said it was possible, but Judy had the upperhand–with a winter storm in spring on the way, the motivation of movement conservatives may be high enough to trump the less committed voters in the center of the spectrum.
I don’t know if AFSCME is phone banking for Judy and Joe, but she is going to need all the help she can get if it is as bad as weather as some of the forecasts suggest.
On a more serious note, I think it is important for the two parties to put up candidates who will hold the other party accountable. Oberweis isn’t that guy. Blagojevich won’t have to paint him as a nut, he is a nut and he’ll be batting practice for Blagojevich who is one of the better campaigners I’ve seen in Illinois. Not so hot at the governing thing, but a hell of a campaigner.
I tend to agree that Oberweis is going to surge. Although many have panned the “draw straws gambit”, the goofiest part of it — 10 to 1 odds in his favor — ensured that he got millions of dollars of free media in the last few days, all of it making the point that he believes he’s far more likely than the others to give Judy a run for it.
Goofy, but a helluva lot more effective than any pundit has given him credit for.