Illinois Republican Party

Democrats for Rod
1/13/2009

Chicago Tribune Editorial Board, January 13, 2009

So it's settled: Caving to political pressure and a group bout of multiple personality disorder, Senate Democrats said Monday that they expect to seat Roland Burris this week.

That five-week melodrama of Harry Reid, Dick Durbin and other senators alternately renouncing any Rod Blagojevich appointment and then cooing in Burris' ear? That's over. Senate Democrats want you to burn your notes: Forget and maybe you'll forgive.

Yet the senators have made that impossible. Instead they've provided Illinois voters—the voters they elbowed out of this Senate choice—with two years of rich reminders:

• Every time voters see Roland Burris, they'll think of that other notorious RB, Rod Blagojevich. Burris wants this Senate seat so desperately that he'll even accept it from a guy who allegedly tried to sell it.

• Every time we meet the big-shot Illinois Democrats who endorsed the governor for re-election in 2006—even though FBI agents were on him like white on rice—we'll think of Rod Blagojevich. Whenever you see a Democratic pol on the stump, look him or her in the eye and ask, "Did you endorse Blagojevich in 2006? How could you do that?"

• Every time we hear Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan try to explain why he wanted a special election to fill Barack Obama's Senate seat but then didn't even try to schedule it, we'll think of Rod Blagojevich. (Madigan, you'll remember, co-chaired Blagojevich's campaign in 2006.)

• Every time we see members of Madigan's House who played along with this scheme by not publicly demanding a special election to rescue the people of Illinois from scandal, we'll think of Rod Blagojevich.

• Every time we encounter one of "The Blagojevich 26," the Illinois state senators who didn't vote to let you decide whether to add a recall amendment to the state constitution, we'll think of Rod Blagojevich. (Twenty-five of "The Blagojevich 26" are Democrats. The leader who put them up to this cheap trick? Departing Senate President Emil Jones. That's right, he too co-chaired the Blagojevich campaign in 2006.)

• Every time we think of Dick Durbin and recall his unequivocal demand for a special election—"No appointment by this governor under these circumstances could produce a credible replacement"—we'll think of Rod Blagojevich.

Blagojevich will be leaving us soon.

We will, though, have his chosen one, our junior senator, to remind us of how a governor about to be defrocked defied his own lawyer's pledge and filled Obama's seat. Of how Illinois Democrats, more obsessed with holding that seat for their party than with the scandal that threatened it, didn't try to preempt Blagojevich and give us citizens the election some of them said they wanted—until they just took the seat for themselves.

Two years from now, maybe citizens will have done something about all of that. We can't reiterate too often that the first target date is Feb. 2, 2010. Polls open at 6 a.m. that day for the Illinois primary election. That's a Tuesday—385 days from this one. You can take any party ballot you wish.

From: Chicago Tribune

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