Rahm’s Search-and-Destroy Nixon Fixation Jeopardizes His Lead. Moseley Braun’s Name-Calling Her Black Opponent Destroys Her, Leaving Chico a Long-Shot but Preferred for Feb. 22.
Q. What’s this? Just when he looks inevitable Rahm’s threatening businesses which cooperate with Chico? A. Yep, this is the same old Rahm who can’t stand prosperity. The dead fish in the opponent’s bed, the plunging a steak knife into a table to show what he will do to his enemies. When Gery Chico tried to hold a news conference at a gym to underscore his belief that Emanuel’s tax policy on so-called “luxury services” the forces of the Little Weasel threatened the gym owner and the guy caved. This because they know the Little Weasel made a mistake on his tax plan and can’t get out of it. He’s going to tax rich gentlemen’s athletic clubs but not average-guy’s gyms? How do you write tax policy like that? You can’t. Right now Chico’s got him on the ropes and if it continues, Rahm’s toast.
Q. But-but you were for Rahm getting on the ballot weren’t you? What’s this—a switch?
A. Yeah. I was for Rahm initially because the crazy lady was running second and as I wrote then with Chico in single digits, I thought a vindictive little weasel without a moral core but with a vested interest in his own success was preferable to somebody who could easily turn Chicago into Detroit in one term—whereas it took Coleman Young twenty years to do it.
That possibility has diminished. Moseley Braun has taken care of that eventuality all by herself by assailing the other black woman in the contest as being “strung out on crack.” (The same derogatory reference she used years ago to call George Will a Ku Kluxer because he criticized her Nigerian deal with Dictator Abacha). The spectacle of someone who’s a U of C lawyer, former prosecutor, former Senator unable to handle her own financial affairs with four mortgages on her Hyde Park house is sad. But she’s history.
The logical improvement to Rahm is Gery Chico who throughout the campaign has been making far more persuasive arguments. Frankly we all ought to be indebted to Axelrod whose commercials for Rahm are cinema verite—showing a sullen, laconic tight-fisted little arrogant Napoleon…presaging what we’re likely to get. So I don’t regret having supported Rahm staying in the race.
But now’s the time to pick the better of the two top candidates. Ergo: we don’t have a choice between moi and l’deluge —but between two candidates, one skilled and reasonable and the other who while accomplished in feathering his own nest is obviously the same Nixonian clenched fist “I’ll-get-you-you so-and-so” type I knew when we were on public radio a quarter-century ago. Frankly I had hoped him growing up, working in the Clinton White House, becoming an investment banker and making $18 million, getting elected to Congress, serving on Ways and Means, running the D Triple C, getting to be White House chief-of-staff had matured him. Nope. He’s the same little twerp.
Q You think there’s still time to elect Chico?
A. Of course. Two weeks plus is an eternity in politics.
Q. Your take on the Egyptian crisis? A. I think Obama’s follies are coming home to roost and his legacy could well be the guy who lost Egypt in the same way Carter lost Iran. This junketing all over the world, bowing at the waist to potentates of color and saying we’re the Muslims’ friend showed our allies they can’t count on us and our enemies that they can exploit our weakness.
Q. The federal judge’s ruling that ObamaCare is unconstitutional?
A. It gives real resonance to the Republican drive for repeal. Before the Court acted, repeal was seen as a impotent ploy. Not now. It’s become Number One for 2012—much as the Supreme Court’s nix of Truman’s seizure of the steel mills inflamed the presidential campaign of 1952 when governmental usurpation first became an issue. It gives oomph to the drive for repeal or better still, that the Supreme Court itself will invalidate it.
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