-By Warner Todd Huston
The final answer is, “no,” Chicago-based Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr. is not endorsing a Republican to take Barack Obama’s old Illinois U.S. Senate seat. But Jackson is making news by seeming to be toying with the idea of abandoning the troubled Democrat candidate, Alexi Giannoulias.
And, in the end, that’s all this is. It’s Jesse Jackson, Jr. employing the ages old Chicago Democrat game of fishing for payoffs.
The game goes like this: Long-time Democrat strong-man wants a pay off of one kind or another so he pretends he might support someone surprising, someone that isn’t the expected pick. Party bigwigs rush to payoff said strong-man so that he will support the usual suspect. Strong-man gets big rewards and ends up supporting the usual suspect anyway.
But news outlets like Politico have fallen for the “gosh, I might not support…” game.
Politico did flirt with the truth of the matter by reporting that not one of Chicago’s big three African American Representatives supported party primary winner Alexi “the Mob Banker” Giannoulias.
Neither Jackson, who remained neutral, nor Danny Davis and Bobby Rush, both of whom supported another primary candidate, are too pleased with a Giannoulias candidacy. And here is why Jackson is pretending to lend moral support to Republican Mark Kirk is meaningless for Kirk, at least meaningless as per an outright endorsement. Jackson is merely expressing to Illinois Democrats that he and his fellow black party members are unhappy that Giannoulias won the primary and angling to get the state to look to serve the black Democrat political establishment in the future. It’s a warning as well as a bid to be paid off to support Giannoulias.
Politico is correct, though, that if these African American congressmen keep their voices out of the upcoming Senate race, it will not help Giannoulias and will tend to benefit Mark Kirk.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 200 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDailyReview.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
Huston has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events and is currently the co-host of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Conservatism” heard on BlogTalkRadio. Huston’s work has appeared on Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Neil Bortz, and Michael Savage. He has appeared on the G. Gordon Liddy show, dozens of local shows from coast to coast, and many blogtalk radio shows.
Mr. Huston has appeared on local TV news to discuss his writing, has been a guest of CNN’s blogger lunch, and has appeared on Breitbart TV’s B-Team show.
Warner is also the editor of the Cook County Page for RedCounty.com and has a blog on the Tribune-Owned http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/publius-forum/ChicagoNow.com website. He is a well known writer on Illinois politics.
He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of PubliusForum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
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