Last night on my WLS radio show, Jim Oberweis was superb as an aggressive but pleasant-tempered fighter who gave well-informed critic Russ Stewart more than he took. These programs, where gubernatorial candidates are challenged by outstanding, well-spoken challengers give the public an unduplicated insight into the abilities of the candidates. On usual “meet the press” type programs where one or two bland reporters ask a few questions and appear to be satisfied with any result, no one learns very much. On “Political Shootout” the pairing of one-on-one with a knowledgeable adversary as is Russ Stewart is matchless.
In all fairness, Russ is not a Democrat but leans Republican—yet he takes up the challenge of questioning candidates very closely and challenges them with thoroughly researched arguments. He performs a great service when he does this as does Jeff Berkowitz, another well-schooled analyst, when he appears on my program. Thus far we have had three Republican candidates for governor, all who did well in facing adversaries. Bill Brady and Steve Rauschenberger jousted with Becky Carroll, the best Gov. Blagojevich has to offer—and that’s plenty good—on management and budget. Now Jim Oberweis. Joe Birkett has already been on and did a good job. I’m going to ask the remaining two to come on—starting with Ron Gidwitz and winding up, I hope, with Judy Baar Topinka.
Next Sunday: Kathy Salvi, a Republican candidate for 8th district Congress and a Democratic adversary to be announced.
Tom, I enjoy your show. Illinois needs more conservative women. The problem is that many conservatives really don't want women in high office. If we had more women who will support conservative values, sitting in positions of power, then the argument "oh, you are just a man, you cannot understand women's issues," will finally go by the wayside. It is Judy Barr Topinka a conservative?
ReplyDeleteIs Judy Barr Topinka a conservative?
ReplyDeleteNot by a long shot. There are few true conservative office holders in Illinois. I don't consider Thompson, Edgar, Ryan (LOL) or Blago conservative either.
We don't see many conservatives in our congressional delegation. Hastert is far from conservative.
Then again I don't consider George Bush a conservative. 5 Years into his regime he has already enacted the third largest welfare program in American history (RX Medicare - looking at the long term costs over time for benefits promised), has us entangled in Iraq which will end up in civil war either while we are still there or after we leave. This war has cost us over 2,000 lives and $220 billion and counting. Meanwhile we have a weak border policy which has enabled 11 million illegal aliens to enter and 500,000 additional one to enter each year.
We need to pull all troops out of Iraq and Europe. We need to deploy troops along the border. We need government to look out for America's interests, not foreign interests or multinational interests.