-By Warner Todd Huston
The soap opera As the World Turns was canceled last summer, but apparently the political scene in DuPage County is trying to revive it. Well, if not the show than at least the drama. This one has a Hispanic twist, too. It comes in the person of conservative Rafael Rivadeneira, Tea Party favorite and President of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly of Illinois (“RNHA of Illinois”)…. or is he?
Over last weekend the RNHA held its annual convention in Dixon, Illinois. There Rivadeneira was reelected to the position of RNHA president. But apparently not everyone was happy with the outcome. OK, “not happy” is an understatement. Some were so mad that they spilt the event in half and marched over to another hotel and elected their own slate of leaders.
Now, that’s drama.
But none of this seems very spontaneous. After all, according to Doug Ibendahl the ship jumpers had reserved the hotel space for their rebel conference in advance. That’s what we call planning, that’s what we call a purposeful insurrection, not a sudden split over policy.
Now, some folks out there are pinning this whole thing on a split between Rivadeneira and DuPage GOP Chairman Dan Cronin. One of those “some folks” appears to be Rivadeneira himself. Says Ibendahl:
Rivadeneira told me he believes Dan Cronin is behind the whole thing. He makes it clear that’s his opinion, based on mostly circumstantial evidence. But I also talked to other DuPage insiders who off the record expressed the same firm belief. My phone call to Dan Cronin seeking comment for this story was not returned.
Yep. Drama.
I am not going to go too far into all the details here because I honestly have no idea what is fact and what is fiction in this story. For all the details I point you to Ibendahl. He has a great overview of the whole mess over at RepublicanNewsWath.com.
But one thing seems sure. This seems to be a fight between the old-line DuPage GOP establishment and the new vanguard Tea Party folks. And it’s all gotten very personal.
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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 2001 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, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.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.
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