There’s”a tug of war” among Cook County Republicans over leadership, Sneed reports in Sun-Times, citing Illinois Review, with Bruce Rauner backing chairman Aaron Del Mar, Palatine township committeeman, over challenger Chris Cleveland, “hard-charging 43rd Ward GOP committeeman.”

Hard-charging indeed. At the Feb. 5 joint city and county GOP meeting atParthenon Restaurant, Cleveland showed a video of TV news clipsshowing how he and his fellow city Republicans worked Mike Madigan over, getting him to withdraw his perennial pseudo-Republican opponent.

Cleveland came onsharp-as-a-tack, an energetic guy with a lot to say. Same for the city GOP chairman, Adam Robinson, in his talk to the group at meeting’s end. Del Mar was a no-show.

Clevelandpresents a credible challenge to Del Mar, whom Sneed’s “party purists” consider “lethargic and lazy and [who] didn?t even attract enough endorsed candidates to fill out a party ballot,? according to “a top party source.”

That’s something…

. . . to Oak Park:

OAK PARK, Ill.—When I walked along the snow-covered sidewalk, my feet made a slight crunching sound. A cold spell lowered the temperature to 15 degrees below zero, making me hunch my shoulders. When I looked up though, my eyes were drawn to houses designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, the maestro of modern architecture. . . .

. . . writes Eiji Hirose, Yomiuri Shimbun Correspondent for The Japan News. For him or her it was a “Trip Through Time,” about “Turning a suburb into a masterpiece,” with attention (naturally) to Frank Lloyd Wright.

In case you Oak Parkers and others have gotten blase about it all.

James C. Bennett and Oak Parker Michael J. Lotus on fairness in America, from their America 3.0: Rebooting American Prosperity in the 21st Century?Why America’s Greatest Days Are Yet to Come :

State of the question:

Americans . . . expect others to work and earn what they get, and to be paid what they have earned. They think that the rewards of life should be granted to those who have earned them in an open, competitive process, while recognizing that there is a certain amount of luck involved.

Major problem:

Crony capitalism, where the winners routinely get picked based on political clout, is a system that contradicts and degrades all of these values, and seeing it in operation angers many Americans.

Chicago:

The “Chicago way,” where clout and connections determine all the important outcomes, has not been America’s way in most places, and we don’t want it…

Senator Don and others had a problem last June, how to pay for things. Voters were waiting, hands outstretched. But the wherewithal was running short, he judged. So he decided to return to the well. Amend the constitution, ditch the one-size-fits-all flat tax, and raise more moolah!

He filed the senate bill on the last day of the session, early enough to “build momentum” in the months ahead, he told The Daily Herald, even get people used to the idea of paying more to live in Illinois. It would be by way of a brand-new progressive income tax. A fair tax, he called it on the hustings last summer, and the bill’s synopsis has it.

Gone will be the “non-graduated rate . . . [so] that this may be a fair tax,” It says. Which is b.s., as if this amendment is…

Doug Truax hits the air waves tomorrow. Listen up.

Let us now praise Ike Carothers, or at least point out how he is not an absurdist candidate, made for horrifying Democrats and amusing Republicans.

First, he has a point about being forgiven, of course, even by voters. Depends what he did badly and what he did well and (frankly) how his constituents fared, comparatively speaking, especially in Chicago and Cook County, where standards are lower.

The question in any case is how, all things considered, a candidate stacks up against opponents. There are no paragons here. As for Republicans, we live where Democrats decide and others reside, so primaries matter. A.

Consider, therefore, the bad old Ike. In June 2006, when City Hall patronage chief Robert Sorich was standing trial, prosecutors had a list, not a little one, of clouted job seekers and their political sponsors. Ike’s name turned up more . He was the kind of clout-wielder…

Truax the man:

Today theChicago Tribune endorsedpolitical newcomer Doug Truax in the U.S. Senate Republican primary race, saying he was the best positioned to oust U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.

It’s a major snub to ice cream mogul and state Sen. Jim Oberweis who was elected to his position in 2012 after making five failed runs for higher office.

“Conventional wisdom doesn’t dictate how dyspeptic voters will treat a profoundly partisan Democrat who helped lead passage of Obamacare — and who’s in his 32nd year in Congress,” the Tribune wrote.

“Oberweis has more name recognition and money than does Truax. If Republicans don’t look deeper, those variables could determine this race. But with one eye on the issues that confront voters and another on Illinois’ imperiled future, the Tribune today endorses Doug Truax.”

More more more here at the Sun-Times’ excellent new politics blog, Early and Often.

. . .  TO STOP RAUNER — AND PUNISH MADIGAN AND QUINN

Illinois Review has it:

Pro-union groups such as Republican Fund for Progress & Jobs, the Fund forProsperity & Jobs, the Illinois Freedom PAC and the Democrat Governors Association are raising money, running ads, and preparing to put boots on the ground – all to try and stop Bruce Rauner from winning the GOP gubernatorial nomination.

For teachers and public sector unions, stopping Rauner in the primary would prevent them having to spend possibly historic amounts of money on the November General Election.

Insiders tell Illinois Review it would also allow the unions to teach Gov. Quinn and House Speaker Madigan a lesson after they passed and signed a pension reform bill over the objections of the unions.

If state Sen. Kirk Dillard wins the GOP nomination, the teachers unions and AFSCME (which have endorsed Dillard) will, we are…

Choose Doug Truax to face Dick Durbin
The best candidate to challenge Sen. Dick Durbin

The Chicago Tribune
March 5, 2014

Illinois Republicans have had few successes in – how to phrase the problem delicately? – the 21st century. One of those successes, though, has grown into a respected, independent and, at 54, relatively young member of the U.S. Senate. And if lightning sparked by the public fury over Obamacare strikes this November, the people of Illinois could end up with two such Republican senators: incumbent Mark Kirk and promising political newcomer Doug Truax.

Not that political polls will tell you so: With a four-way joust for governor dominating attention as the March 18 primary approaches, many Republicans have yet to focus on their party’s two candidates for U.S. Senate. What’s more, conventional wisdom dictates that longtime incumbents such as Dick Durbin can’t lose. But conventional wisdom doesn’t dictate how…