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Reason Number 64,112 as to why Republicans in Illinois lose: opposition to their own party platform.
Here's the setup for latest skit in the Illinois GOP's long-running burlesque show:
At the quadrennial Republican State Convention in Decatur last month, Illinois Republicans adopted the following plank in their party platform, "We call on the Governor and the General Assembly to balance the state budget and provide for a responsible capital development program without resorting to the expansion of gambling..." (page 3 of the "2008 Platform", bullet point #6 for those scoring at home). That plank was proposed and ratified by Republican officeholders and party leaders from across the state.
Got that? No defaulting to gambling expansion to finance the important government responsibility of building roads and bridges in Illinois.
Fast forward to the General Assembly's posture session last week: While the Chicago Democrat junta that runs the state was doing their own vaudeville routine wherein they pretend to care about balancing the state budget, legislation was introduced to massively expand gambling--more casinos, more gambling positions, new forms of gambling--in order to fund a capital development program.
Can you see what's coming? Wait for it...
That legislation did not come close to mustering the magic number of votes for passage, but it was not for the lack of trying by House Republicans. A majority of Republicans (28 of 51 or 55%), including the House GOP Leader, voted for the gambling expansion.
By contrast, the Democrats took the GOP's platform to heart. A majority of House Democrats, including the House Speaker, voted against the gambling expansion legislation.
I am not an opponent of gambling. I was weaned on casino night at my church and, to this day, I semi-routinely venture off to Las Vegas to see the new and wonderful things on The Strip that have been built with my money. So the issue for me is not gambling expansion per se (though I think what has been proposed is a bad idea).
The issue for me is that Amy Winehouse behaves less erratically than the Illinois GOP's party leaders.
This latest about face points to the Illinois GOP's central problem. The party so lacks a core that its only semblance of an identity is the complete absence of one.
Without that core, the Illinois GOP is but a leaf in the wind, being blown hither and thither unbounded by even its own freshly adopted statement of principles.
Having apparently abandoned any effort to argue for market-oriented, private sector-focused ideas as the means to spur economic activity, the GOP's leadership reverts to George Ryan-omics: casinos and public works projects.
Rather than holding up the Chicago Democrat junta and relentlessly (and publicly) asking them to account for their ineptitude, ineptitude that is jeopardizing $6 billion in federal transportation funds set aside for Illinois because of this state's failure to come up with its federally-required 25% match, the House GOP enables the problem gamblers in charge by proposing to tie Illinois' financial future to a spinning wheel.
Until there is an intervention to break the Illinois GOP's strung-out leadership of their addiction to table scraps from Chicago Democrats at the expense of the party's stated principles, the party will suffer more embarrassing episodes of hypocrisy that translate into further humiliations on Election Day.
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