-By Warner Todd Huston
One of the Daily Herald’s bloggers is wondering if the attack page against Congressman Randy Hultgren put on Facebook by a Rep. Walsh supporter qualifies as “cyberbullying.” It is an absurd charge, but the page in question is an interesting page of which to take note.
For those unaware, because of Democrat’s having redisticted Illinois and because the state lost a congressman because we lost residents in the last census, Rep. Joe Walsh (currently elected to the 8th District) announced that he will run against Rep. Randy Hultgren (currently of the 14th District). Instead or running again in the newly reconfigured 8th District, Walsh is challenging Hultgren in the 14th District.
Walsh feels he has to do this because his District was turned from a moderately GOp District to a leans Democrat District and because a lot of his constituents were switched over to the 14th district. This out come, where it is Republican against Republican, is precisely what the Democrats wanted. And boy are they getting it.
The Facebook page titled TruthAbout RandyHultgren” is a pretty stark page of charges against Randy Hultgren’s political affiliations and voting record. It calls into question Hultgren’s claims of being a pro-lifer, outlines Hultgren’s flip flops, and shows his votes in favor of unions, among other things.
In many cases it is written as if Randy himself is writing the entries. “Hey guys! Meet my political ‘hit man,'” begins one entry. Another entry goes, “My opponent @RepJoeWalsh is BROKE but I gave Planned Parenthood $108 BIL of YOUR TAXES”
The venerable Illinois Review makes a spare entry about the page saying, “It’s getting ugly out there”
Indeed it is.
The Walsh campaign disavows any knowledge of who runs this Facebook page and the only way to see it is to “like” the page and join the friends list. But it does show that this primary between two Republicans is going to be a tough one.
One thing is sure, Hultgren has a bit of a disadvantage in records. He has many years in state government to go with his one year as a Congressman so there is a lot of votes to look at. Walsh, on the other hand, has but this one year of voting to review.
My guess is that the party establishment will side with Hultgren. Even though they didn’t back him in 2010 (the party bigwigs wanted little Hastert to win in the 14th), they are definitely against Joe Walsh so they will certainly come to the aide of Hultgren.
What we’ll see here is a fight of the populous Walsh with his retinue of Tea Party groups backing him and his more conservative voting record to Hultgren’s Party support and slightly less conservative voting record. It will be hard fought, for sure.
Just what the Democrats want.
For info on the two campaigns:
http://www.hultgrenforcongress.com/
http://walshforcongress.com/
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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.
For a full bio, please CLICK HERE.
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