Quick Hits – February 5, 2018

She really is nuts!

It’s bad enough that, on rare occasion, I actually have to admit my wife is right about something. But it’s downright horrific when I have to admit that someone else’s wife is right about something.

You see, in a previous piece I proposed that, while Wheaton State Rep and GOP gubernatorial candidate Jeanne Ives embraces some social stances I simply can’t condone, she wasn’t the kind of conservative that would put her in U-46 School Board member Jeannette Ward’s batshit crazy ranks.

But I wuz wrong! And friend, U-46 Citizen Advisory Council Chairman, and guinea pig lady extraordinaire, Lisa Hopp, wuz right! As it turns out, Ives is in fact, nuttier than a slice of your great aunt’s fruitcake.

Perhaps she could get away with pleading ignorance when State Senator Bill Brady had to urge her to un-invite a keynote fundraiser speaker who’d declared that blacks are intellectually inferior to whites. Ignorance does seem to be her stock in trade.

But there’s no way she can possibly explain away her latest anti-Rauner attack ad, which pretty much consists of a number of ne’er-do-wells consecutively thanking our Governor for letting them single-handedly bring down Western Civilization.

To wit, the commercial contains:

• A man hiding his identity as he thanks Rauner for “making Illinois a sanctuary state for illegal immigrant criminals.”
• What appears to be an Hispanic man in a lovely red dress thanking the Governor for “signing legislation that lets me use the girl’s bathroom.”
• A young woman in a pink pussy hat who cheerfully thanks him for “making all Illinois families pay for my abortion.”
• And a CPS teacher who thanks Bruce for “making the rest of Illinois bail out Chicago teachers’ pensions.”

Yes Virginia! Truth really is stranger than fiction.

Even if this kind of least common denominator pandering manages to rile the wacky conservative faithful into propelling Ives to a primary win, this ain’t Texas. There’s no way the purple people who inhabit the Land of Lincoln will put her in that Springfield mansion after this stunt.

I’ll keep saying it! Give me evil over stupid every time. On occasion, you can fix evil, but you can’t fix stupid!

But wait, there’s more!

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any more interesting for the Illinois GOP, it did! In an effort to top Ives, their ostensible 3^rd Congressional District nominee, Arthur Jones’, resume includes, but is not nearly limited to:

• Being an ardent holocaust denier
• Being an ardent anti-Semite
• Speaking at KKK and neo-Nazi events
• Shredding the Israeli flag
• Calling the Confederate flag “a symbol of white pride”
• Marching through Skokie, Illinois, in full Nazi regalia
• Opposing interracial marriage and school integration

On the plus side, he did disavow Donald Trump for “surrounding himself with too many Jews.”

Granted, Jones has no shot at unseating Dan Lipinski in that demonstrably Democratic district, but as you might imagine, the enigmatic Mr. Jones has managed to garner quite a bit of press coverage with headlines like, “Illinois Nazi Gets Republican Nomination.”

Of course, Illinois Republican Chairman Tim Schneider and all the other Republican  regulars summarily disowned him, but wouldn’t you think they’d be smart enough to run some sacrificial lamb just to keep Jones off the main ballot? It ain’t like Jones hasn’t run for that seat at least three times before!

But since they weren’t, the words “Illinois Republicans” and “Neo-Nazi nominee” will be inextricably intertwined until Tuesday, November 6, 2018. And that’s not good for a super-minority party brand that’s already being hijacked Jeanne Ives and her intolerant band of merry miscreants.

And ain’t that the real rub?

This morning, a high-ranking Republican Kane County elected official and I were lamenting the fact that the current crop of Illinois – and national – Republicans are far too willing to sacrifice the Party’s future for the smallest of short-term gains.

To wit. I’m utterly shocked at the Springfield denizens who support Ives. Should she manage to make it through the primary, not only will the Democratic nominee make mincemeat out of her, but her anti-coattails will likely mean an even greater Springfield Democratic supermajority.

Transgendered people are the real problem in Illinois, right?

How can they miss that, like newspaper readers, church goers and AOL users, the old, white males who’ve driven the “being primaried” phenomenon are dying out – fast! And when they disappear, so does the Republican Party.

If Roy Moore can be defeated by a Democrat in Alabama…

But instead of reclaiming their party, the average moderate Republican voter, many of whom went at the black president with all teeth bared, seem more than willing to let these end-of-the-bell-curve loons hijack the Party of Lincoln.

So, now, a self-avowed Nazi is running for Congress under the mantle of the Illinois GOP. Having been raised in a rare South Evanston Republican household, I never thought I’d see the day.