-By Warner Todd Huston
Thus far about the only GOP gubernatorial hopeful in the news has been Bruce Rauner (brucerauner.com). With his many promises to rewrite the whole Illinois Constitution to fix what ails us and his deep pockets he was early out of the chute. But this week a video slamming Kirk Dillard has also popped up showing that the race is just starting to warm up.
Of course Rauner, with all his millions of dollars, has hit the ground early with TV ads most of which slam current governor, Democrat Pat Quinn. Rauner is acting as if he is already the nominee, ignoring his competitors and going straight at Quinn and other lifer politicians.
Whatever you think of all Rauner’s many and varied promises, pretending he is the only one in the race is probably a good strategy. In any case, as things stand now, he is sucking up all the oxygen in the race.
But, wait. Today came a snide attack on Kirk Dillard (www.dillardtracy.com).
Obviously someone thinks he is a threat.
A video titled”Kirk Dillard Presents a Holiday Tribute to Jim Edgar,” came out that treats Dillard as s childish, star struck fan–and maybe a stooge–of former Governor and one-time Dillard boss Jim Edgar.
The video is chock full of images of Dillard gazing admiringly at Governor Edgar and is amusingly played to the rock tune I Touch Myself, by the 1990s Australian band the Divinyls.
The video was posted on a Youtube account under the name “Michael Martin” and ends with a message saying that the video was “brought to you by Kirk Dillard and your friends at MSI.”
For those of you who may have forgotten (as I had at first), MSI stands for Management Services of Illinois. The reference refers to a scandal from August of 2000 that linked aides of Edgar and then Senate President James “Pate” Philip to MSI, a company that was accused of bilking the state out of some $12 million dollars.
So, what does this all have to do with Dillard? Well, obviously this video is trying to link Dillard to this criminal fraud. Of course, it is clearly a commission of guilt by association. But its sting comes from the fact that Dillard has often referred to Edgar as a mentor and has enthusiastically accepted his endorsement multiple times over the years–including this year as he vies for the 2014 race for governor.
So, there you have it. There is at least one salvo at Kirk Dillard slowly developing race for the GOP nomination for Governor.
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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
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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, MrConservative.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
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