Earmarks as Political Strategy Fail Republicans Again
March 10th, 2008 by Chris KinnanThe bad news for the GOP this weekend was the loss of former Speaker Denny Hastert’s Congressional District in a special election. That’s despite heavy earmarking by the former Speaker.
March 10th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
I don’t get this at all. You think that Republicans lost Denny’s seat because of earmarks? When Hastert himself wasn’t even running? When Barack Obama, at the height of his star-power, was campaigning for Foster and doing ads for him? Earmarks? Hilarious.
March 10th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Just to be clear, I understand that you’re talking about earmarks as a strategy to hold onto power by delivering money to your district. But Hastert wasn’t running, so I don’t understand what “earmarks” you could be talking about.
March 10th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Interesting….a friend pointed me to some discussions of Foster’s win. Curiously, throughout the campaign, Foster said he would repeal the Bush tax cuts and said he would refuse to cave on telecom immunity in the FISA bill. Oberweis went after him as being in the pocket of trial lawyers, soft on national security, and for trying to raise taxes. Those used to work for you guys.
It seems to me that Foster won because he made more sense and wasn’t just spewing the same old nonsense the GOP has been saying for more than twenty years now. Certainly, “earmarks” weren’t a part of Oberweis’s “strategy.”
I know you guys are all up-in-arms about earmarks as some holy grail fight, but that’s not why you’re losing elections. And I wouldn’t be too optimistic about it being a major role in the upcoming presidential campaign, either.
March 10th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Hastert was earmarking aggressively to the end, and campaigned for Oberweis as well. Of course there were other issues– Obama’s role, a Saturday special election, the war, demand for change– but clearly earmarking failed to deliver votes. Foster also ran on “fiscal responsibility” (ok, I’m reaching a little here). Sample from Foster’s campaign site:
“It is common for our representatives in Congress to come home to and proudly announce their pork projects: a million-dollar road improvement here, a fire engine there, and so on. But what you never see in those press releases is that every single year our district is taxed to pay over $500 Million in interest on the debt built up while George Bush and Dennis Hastert were in charge.”
March 10th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
Come on, you guys are desperately spinning the truth here. This recent election in Haster’s old district had nothing to do with earmarks, period. Saturday elections are good (more people available to vote)! Yea, reminding them of which party has gotten us into this mess (the GOP) prolly didn’t help you guys out that much either.
June 11th, 2008 at 10:45 am
Why isn’t Hastert in jail for stealing from the taxpayers? I am disgusted with all so called “Public Servants”.
DON’T REELECT ANYBODY!