Once a loser always a loser?
CLEARWATER, Fla. — The Republican gubernatorial candidates who finished first and second in the 2010 GOP primary each wound up with an election loss that year, but does that weaken them too much to be legitimate contenders again in 2014?
Without naming names, U.S. Rep. Aaron Schock, himself a possible GOP gubernatorial candidate in two years, suggested that might be the case during an earlier sit-down with the Chicago Sun-Times.
But state Sen. Bill Brady and Sen. Kirk Dillard, who each came up short in 2010, had a far different take Thursday, the final day Illinois delegates met at the Republican National Convention in Tampa.
“I’m glad Congressman Schock wasn’t around to advise Abe Lincoln, Ronald Reagan or, for that matter, Jeb Bush,” said Brady, referring to a lineup of past candidates who made it big after an initial stumble or two.
“Everyone’s got a right to their opinion. But I frankly think my last election gives me great strength to do whatever [wife] Nancy and I choose to do in the future,” said the Bloomington Republican, who lost to Quinn by a mere 31,834 votes out of 3.7 million cast.
Dillard had a similar answer to the idea of an electoral loss making a gubernatorial candidate look weak.
“Well, Congressman Schock, that wouldn’t have allowed Abraham Lincoln to become president of the United States or Jim Edgar ever to become the governor of the state of Illinois. People lose elections for different reasons,” the Hinsdale Republican said.
“Last time, I came within 193 votes of being our nominee, with four people from my county of DuPage running,” he said. “Not always is a loss a bad thing. In fact you learn a lot from it.”
The mini-dustup between some of the possible gubernatorial wannabes came as Illinois’ 350 delegates and their guests started their final day in Tampa hearing a lineup of speakers needle President Barack Obama, tout GOP chances in Illinois’ fall elections and laugh at imprisoned ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s misfortunes.
Former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu, a one-time aide to exPresident George H.W. Bush, spoke glowingly of the day a vanquished Obama is driven from the White House and comes back to Chicago looking for a new home.
“Maybe Tony Rezko can help him again,” Sununu said to laugh- ter, referring to the 2005 land deal between Obama and Rezko that increased the size of Obama’s Kenwood yard — a transaction Obama later characterized as a “mistake.”
Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Peter Roskam painted the Democrats as incredibly vulnerable in Illinois after scandals like that of Blagojevich disgraced the state.
“It’s a complete absurdity that the land of Lincoln, the birthplace of Ronald Reagan, has become a punch line,” the Wheaton Republican said. “We don’t have to live like this.”
But the best punch line of the day probably came at Blagojevich’s expense.
Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka told delegates how impressed she was by Mitt Romney’s humanizing disclosure that he irons his own shirts.
“I think it’s neat he can do it because I don’t know how. My mother always told me don’t learn how because you’ll always get stuck doing it,” she said.
Then, state GOP chief Pat Brady chimed in.
“I understand one of the first jobs you get in federal prison is the laundry room. Maybe Rod is ironing shirts today,” Brady said. “You can’t go a whole convention without any Rod Blagojevich jokes now, c’mon.”
TAMPA, Fla. — So, here’s Sen. Dick Durbin by a satellite truck in a parking lot just outside the security perimeter of the Republican National Convention.
A fish out of water? A skunk at a garden party? No. And yes. Durbin was dispatched by the Obama campaign as part of a “truth squad” to counter the claims being made here by the Mitt Romney team.
The Romney campaign will have its own truth squad in Charlotte next week for the Democratic convention.
“I wish my Republican friends well for their national convention,” said Durbin Thursday under a broiling Tampa sun. “And I hope they wish us the same. But we’d just like to keep the record straight.”
“Truthiness,” a term coined by Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert, is defined by Wikipedia — the source of all knowledge these days — as a “truth” that feels right without the bother of “evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts.”
In the smash-and-grab world of SuperPAC-funded campaign commercials and take-no-prisoners politics, there’s a lot of “truthiness” out there to tackle.
“Oh listen, both sides break the rules when it comes to this, let’s be real honest about that,” said the senator. “I happen to think that the SuperPACs . . . are plowing more money into this effort on the negative side than we’ve ever seen before. But the nature of campaigns is pretty rough and tumble.”
And indeed it was at breakfast Thursday morning when John Sununu, former New Hampshire governor and chief of staff for President George H.W. Bush, appeared before the Illinois delegation to fire up the troops.
Sununu first suggested that “perhaps Tony Rezko,” a former fund-raiser and friend of President Barack Obama currently doing time in federal prison, “can help him again.”
“Tacky,” was Durbin’s response. “But you know John Sununu is entitled to his point of view. Yep, and Durbin his. The former governor went on to suggest that Vice President Joe Biden’s recent statement at a Virginia rally that Mitt Romney’s approach to governing will put people “back in chains” was not an accident.
Biden’s remark got all kinds of criticism. Some Republicans saw it was a blatant slavery reference designed to appeal to blacks. Then again, some prominent African Americans condemned it as racially insensitive and stupid.
Durbin’s argued, “Maybe he could have chosen his words better, but Joe Biden doesn’t have a racist bone in his body.”
The truth? More like truthiness. It depends on your point of view. What you believe. Whom you like. Whom you don’t.
But for those who want to dig deeper in this campaign, fact-check commercials and claims, there are some websites that do an excellent job of tracking both sides. And they have faulted the accuracy, at times, of both Team Obama and Team Romney.
Among the best: FactCheck.org, PolitiFact.com, and Fact-Checker. com.
Then again, you might want to skip this search entirely. And adopt Stephen Colbert’s approach to politics. “I love the truth,” he said. “It’s the facts I’m not a fan of.”