A lot is being written nationally about the fact that Democrats in New York and California escaped the Republican title wave that hit last week. My guess is that Illinois is being left out of most of that discussion because we picked up several U.S. House seats and the governor’s race was close.
A Wall Street Journal editorial blamed some of the NY and CA Democrat victories –
– on unforced errors like the dysfunctional Empire State GOP establishment, or on the fact that California’s Democratic voters outnumbered Republicans by 13 points over the national average, according to exit polls.
Both of those points have parallels in Illinois. The Journal continued:
But the larger warning concerns the power that lies at the iron triangle of public employee unions, high taxes and social budgets that are larger than the economies in other states.
Illinois isn’t far behind when it comes to that iron triangle. Over the weekend Governor Pat Quinn took the first step towards helping Illinois catch up to the New York and California fiscal disasters:
The Founders knew that it takes more than “light and transient causes” to rile up the public because all experience has shown “that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”
Thomas Paine said it too: “A little matter will move a party, but it must be something great that moves a nation.”
With Illinois Democrats holding onto our state government despite the “long train of [fiscal] abuses,” it’s clear that train will have to get longer before voters will “throw off such government.”
So we’re not alone. Both California and New York elected Democrats who promise more of the same bad behavior. The National Center for Policy Analysis reports this about California:
[T]hanks to decades of antibusiness policies promulgated by a series of left-leaning legislatures, its economy and finances are a mess, and it is hemorrhaging jobs, businesses and productive entrepreneurs to other states.
The NCPA concludes their post with this:
This has been building for decades. In the end, only the voters of California can change things.
What Roger L. Simon writes on PajamasMedia.com about California can be re-written for Illinois:
The only solution is for Illinois to suffer – and to suffer badly. The citizens of this state need a serious beat down. Otherwise there is no chance we will wake up.
The Illinois GOP, its leadership, rank and file, and elected officials have an important role to play during the next two years in the “wake up” process. One bit of advice is this: over six and a half years ago I suggested that our Republican caucuses should outsource their communication offices. Sadly, it still reads well after yet another election cycle: The Need for Republican Outsourcing.
