It is remarkable that there are still those who choose to invest time and money into attempting to rectify that which appears to be politically irretrievable and out of reach.  It is as if a car mechanic was trying to fix a car from outside the garage.  The garage doors are locked but the mechanic still tries.  Admirable.

In the gubernatorial contest in Illinois we have the solidly ensconced incumbent Pat Quinn challenged by the admirable Bruce Rauner, the “mechanic” looking for a way into the locked garage. 

Rauner’s greatest sin, from the Democrat point of view, is that he is embarrassingly successful.  The veiled suggestion is that anyone who has made that much money must have done something off color.  (Disregard of course Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Jay Rockefeller, John Kerry et al). 

Bruce Rauner boasts that he is fresh and clean from political filth.  Even though he soars with the upper crust and the anointed (curiously he is friends with Rahm Emanuel) Rauner pleads that he will be steady to the course and unswayed by temptations to which others may be subject. He is wildly successful, but that achievement is played in full by the Democrats as an example of what is wrong with the country.  Even though he is a philanthropist, buildings at his alma mater Dartmouth bear his name and he has his MBA from Harvard, disparagingly noted is that he owns seven homes and makes tens of millions of dollars a year.  Democrats make him to be the model for income disparity and decadence. Lost on the Democrats is his ability to make astute decisions.  Perhaps Democrats are unaware there are ways of getting wealthy other than being “public servants”.

Apparent in today’s process of elected officials is that those who wish to confront embedded power, such as the Illinois Democrat machine, must be isolated by their self acquired financial security and must be free of embarrassing entanglements.  Witness Mitt Romney.  The conclusion can be drawn that only people like Rauner (or Romney) can possibly have a chance at dislodging those in such tight political arrangement.  But the successes that place these types in the position to challenge, are precisely that which are held against them by the Democrat Progressives.

Quinn could not be more partisan, more patronizing, more old school, and more emblematic of all that has brought Illinois into its current condition of disrepair.

He has proven inept, and draws suspicions of corruption. 

 “A committee of state legislators received the go-ahead Monday to continue its probe into the Neighborhood Recovery Initiative, a $55 million Chicago area-focused state grant program that Quinn's Republican rivals have called a "political slush fund." Now defunct, the NRI—which aimed to distribute cash to needy neighborhood organizations combating this city's crippling gang-and-gun-violence—became awash with scandal as allegations emerged over managerial incompetence and financial wrongdoing within its loosely organized network.”

Quinn evokes the image of the common man, but also of a man with common talents and unremarkable wisdom.  He is a cog in the wheel that also contains behind the scenes power brokers such as Speaker of the Illinois House Mike Madigan who conveniently has his daughter Lisa as Attorney General, the alleged legal watchdog of the State.  What could go wrong?

Illinois, where the governors make the license plates, four of the last seven have gone to jail. Fair and true is to mention that men from both parties have plied their plate making skills in the slammer.  Also fair and true is that all those past governors have been drawn from the same political well.  Rauner’s attraction is that he is from outside the aquifer.

Though Quinn’s cleanliness is still under suspicion, his close connection to the mechanics that have brought this state to its knees is not up for discussion. In this regard Rauner is indeed fresh.  He is in fact the Democrat’s worst nightmare: smart, able and socially moderate.

This could be Illinois’ last chance to escape the clutches of the Democrat machine that has feathered their own nests while chasing out business and residents.

Illinois residents are fleeing to other States.

“Illinois residents are fleeing the state. When people leave, they take their purchasing power, entrepreneurial activity and taxable income with them. For more than 15 years, residents have left Illinois at a rate of one person every 10 minutes…Recent data from the Internal Revenue Service shows that, in 2009, Illinois netted a loss of people to 43 states, including each of its neighbors – Wisconsin, Indiana, Missouri, Kentucky and Iowa. Over the course of the entire year, the state saw a net of 40,000 people leave Illinois for another state….The data reflects a continuation of a trend of out-migration from Illinois that has lasted more than a decade. Between 1995 and 2009, the state lost on a net basis more than 806,000 people to out-migration.

When people leave, they take their income and their talent with them. In 2009 alone, Illinois lost residents who took with them a net of $1.5 billion in taxable income. From 1995 to 2009, Illinois lost out on a net of $26 billion in taxable income to out-migration.”

Every ten minutes, one person leaves Illinois.  Now that is voting with your feet!

Rauner deserves a chance at governor for the simple reason that the Democrats have failed, miserably and perhaps fatally.

Unfortunately, as Chicago goes, so goes the State.  In reference to Rauner’s uphill climb, the Chicago Tribune noted

“At one GOP forum, he (Rauner) spoke of “friends” telling him how elections were so rigged by Democrats that “there’s still about one-third of the precincts in Chicago where the bosses just talk over what they want the turnout to be, what they want the margin to be. Then they just do that.” 

Perhaps that is one reason, the real reason, why Democrats vehemently oppose voter ID.  As there were precincts in Philadelphia in 2012 in which not one vote for Mitt Romney was cast, even by mistake, Rauner may meet the same statistical impossibility in Chicago.  And as the story goes, “My granddaddy used to vote Republican, as John Prine sang, because Lincoln won the war.  But grandfather died, and he has been voting Democrat ever since. “

Let us hope that Rauner can break his way in.

James Longstreet