Cook+County

-By Warner Todd Huston

Fred Barnes, editor of the Weekly Standard published a piece that 8th District candidate Joe Walsh referenced this week. Barnes didn’t just talking about Walsh, though. Here is the except of what Barnes had to say about several other Illinois Republican “Rebels on the Right.”

The grass-roots revolt in the Illinois primaries was all the more telling because it was a near-total surprise. Ethan Hastert’s name, rather than an asset, “actually worked against him,” says a Republican official who supported him. The Chicago Tribune and the Sun-Times endorsed his opponent, Hultgren—another surprise.

For Hultgren, the key to winning was staying to the right of Hastert. “I believe we need real conservatism in Washington,” he declared. “I’m proud to call myself a real conservative.” He won, 55 percent to 45 percent. He faces Democrat Bill Foster, who won a special election after Hastert’s father resigned, in the general election on November 2.

The success of Dold in the House seat being vacated by Representative Mark Kirk “came out of nowhere,” Representative Aaron Schock of Illinois told me. Schock had endorsed the favorite, Coulson. Dold defeated Coulson, 39 percent to 30 percent, in a multiple candidate race.

Once again, the winner ran against Washington and excessive spending. Dold labeled Coulson “a Springfield insider” as a legislator and one who voted for “tax and spend” bills. As a social moderate, Dold nicely fits the district, which President Obama won with 61 percent of the vote in 2008. Kirk, by the way, won the Republican primary for the Senate seat once held by Obama.

What distinguished Walsh’s victory was the role of tea party activists. Without them, he would have had little chance of winning. After his victory—Walsh got 35 percent in a six-way race—he traveled to Nashville to speak at the National Tea Party Convention. “I ran as a tea party candidate in the primary, and I’m going to run as a tea party candidate in the general,” he said.

When Melissa Bean, the Democratic incumbent, learned that Walsh would be her opponent, she expressed relief, regarding him as the weakest of the Republicans in the primary. Her reaction was reminiscent of how pleased aides of President Carter were in 1980 when Ronald Reagan emerged as his Republican opponent. They were happy to have escaped the awesome juggernaut of a Howard Baker campaign.

Please do go on over to Barnes’ piece and read what he had to say on races in other parts of the country.
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Weekly Standard on Illinois Rebels”