Dan Proft whacks away at newcomer to the Governor’s race, Andy McKenna:
Andy, if the wig fits, wear it
Illinois is in a quiet state of crisis. I say a quiet crisis because through years of corruption and neglect, the conditions have been created for Illinois’ financial collapse. The day of reckoning has not yet come but the numbers clearly indicate that it is coming if evasive policy action is not taken.
When it comes and those left in Illinois are forced to confront $20 billion in structural debt and $80 billion in unfunded pension obligations, the consequences won’t be quiet at all. The cacophony will be heard in every business and every home in Illinois, its percussion will be felt by every family and it will resonate through generations.
This campaign has been beating the drum to call attention to the quiet crisis that has been cultivated by Chicago Democrats and ignored or papered over by go-along-to-get-along Springfield Republicans, and I will do so again.
If Illinois is to remain solvent, we must be a growth state that welcomes businesses, young families, and retirees. We cannot remain a high-tax, high-cost state that punishes businesses, shuns college graduates, and chases retirees to Florida. To become a low-tax, low-cost state we must limit what Springfield politicians can spend and reduce what they collect. I am the only candidate, of either party, who proposes to do both.
I propose to reduce corporate income taxes by 50%, personal income taxes by 50%, and eliminate the estate tax. To control spending I will introduce statutory spending caps that limit growth in spending to the rate of population growth plus inflation. I will veto any bill that violates this principle, and make deep cuts in the bloated state budget.
For this platform to succeed, Republicans need to convince “retired” Republicans that we have the courage of our convictions and to offer Democrats, disgusted with the spending and corruption of their party, that there is a credible alternative with a robust platform of solutions. To persuade them, we must advance arguments and policies grounded in conservative principles. We simply can’t afford to be quiet about it.
And that brings me to the subject of Andy McKenna, the latest candidate to enter the Republican primary for governor. His expensive new campaign video and television commercial hail him as the “Quiet Cure” for our state’s problems, but the solutions he offers are so quiet as to be inaudible. This may be unorthodox for a rival candidate to say, but I urge you to watch it. In doing so, after the entertaining intro, you will discover that not one policy position is offered, not one specific solution is advanced or even alluded to by McKenna. Lots of gauzy images of him in imaginary board rooms, strolling down Chicago streets, and winding down the day at his deluxe apartment in the sky in front of a crackling fire.
McKenna offers only poll-tested buzzwords.
In 2006, Rod Blagojevich’s re-election theme was, “Getting Things Done for People”. The details of what things and for which people were purposely absent. It was all about Rod.
Andy McKenna has borrowed that template. He touts himself as “the quiet cure”. What specifically is the cure and who gets it? Why, of course, Andy is the cure. It is all about Andy. Don’t fret about the details.
Andy McKenna’s cure is the same old disease: the politics of self-actualization. No desire and no thought given to the systemic failures we confront or the policy choices to be made. Just a desire to be Governor.
Andy does identify what he believes to be the problem: a culture of corruption that has cut across party lines and generations of politicians. His commercial comically represents this by donning Blagojevich-style wigs on politicians new and old, and even on the dome of the Statehouse. I agree with him about the corruption, but I differ with him in that I don’t think it’s funny. How many jobs are lost, how many businesses destroyed, and how many families separated by the economic distress caused by this endemic corruption? This may be a punch-line on The View or in Andy McKenna’s insulated world of limousine liberals rich enough not to care, but it isn’t funny in Rockford or Danville or Decatur.
And if these kleptocrats are so odious, so ripe for ridicule, who keeps them in power? People like Andy McKenna and other big wigs just like him, that’s who. People who benefit the established political order. Andy McKenna is their favorite kind of Republican: feckless and impotent.
If you have enjoyed the performance of the Illinois Republican Party over the last five years under Andy McKenna, then you must be a Democrat.
If the wig fits, Andy, wear it.