A Party in Freefall

The Illinois Republican Party continues it's free fall into irrelevance this month with the selection by the party of the candidate for the U.S. Senate from Illinois - Alan Keyes.

The Repubulican Party Central Committee in Illinois is on a record run of continuous disasasters, leading the party to record electoral pariah status. Starting with nominating a crook like George Ryan to be our candidate for Govenor. Next they nominated Jim Ryan to succeeed George. Jim Ryan sleep-walked his way through campaigning on the slogan, apparently, of "I'm not George, really" and went down to a resounding defeat. Now we have a Democrat as Govenor. Finally, we have the meltdown of Jack Ryan as our Senate candidate and we face the turnover of the Senate seat from Republican to Democrat control. Nice work Central Committee. Do you have more Ryans to run for office so that every state position could be held by Democrats?

This Senate election affects me for two reasons:

1. I live in Illinois and will be represented by this Senator.
2. I live in the United States and will be affected by whether or not the Senate is Republican or Democratic controlled. With the Senate tied the loss of one seat could tip the balance.

So after the meltdown of Jack Ryan our Central Committee has selected Alan Keyes to run with approximately 2 months to go in a race against Barack Obama. Here's the pros and cons of this selection of Alan Keyes:

Pros:

- he's a well qualified candidate with public service on his resume
- he's brilliant
- he's well spoken and a fierce debater
- he's popular with Republicans and has a built in constituency
- he can raise money on short notice
- he has a shot at winning even with the debacle of our selection process

Cons:

- he's never been elected to office
- he's not from Illinois. He criticized Hillary Clinton for running for Senate from a state she's not from and now he's doing the same thing. Intellectual honesty compels me to mark this as a con. I too criticized Hillary and I can't just excuse it from Keyes because he's my guy.

Really it's all too much to put up with. In the whole state of Illinois can't we find one decent candidate who's actually from our state and who's not named Ryan?

All that being said, Keyes is our man and I will vote for him. Let's Vote!