[Peace-discuss] The Hill on prospects Kirk will face a Tea Party challenge

[Robert Naiman]

Doesn't look very promising.

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Joe Walsh eyes comeback bid
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/senate-races/232793-joe-walsh-eyes-comeback-bid
February 16, 2015, 05:30 pm
By Cameron Joseph

Controversial former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) is talking up a Tea Party
challenge to Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.).

“I am very seriously considering challenging him in a primary,” Walsh told
The Hill on Thursday. “Mark Kirk has got to be challenged.”

The one-term lawmaker isn’t backing off his inflammatory comments that made
him a conservative star, though, as he weighs a quixotic comeback bid.
Walsh was elected in the 2010 Tea Party wave and become one of the
movement’s loudest voices during his single stint in Congress before losing
to Rep. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) in 2012. Duckworth is now weighing a
general election challenge to Kirk.

Walsh has since built a local following in the Chicago area with his
conservative talk show — and if anything has upped the controversy level
with a string of racially charged comments in the past few years.

In a 2013 column about the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I
Have a Dream" speech, Walsh wrote that he hopes "one day black America will
cease their dependency on the government plantation, which has enslaved
them to lives of poverty, and instead depend on themselves, their families,
their churches, and their communities.”

He didn't stop there.

“Found out if I said Redskins or Cracker or Redneck Bible Thumper, I could
stay on. But if I said N----- or Spick, they cut me off,” he tweeted last
May after being briefly suspended from his radio show because he kept
trying to use racially charged terms on air to prove a point about the
Washington Redskins team name.

The former congressman defended his habit of making inflammatory comments
to The Hill.

“Independents and even moderates in this state have gotten to a point where
they really like and respect the fact that a politician says it like it is.
All these things that Joe Walsh says that are controversial, privately and
even publicly a lot of voters like what I like to say,” Walsh said.

“When I say things like ‘Democrats purposely have made blacks dependent on
government,’ a lot of blacks think that's true, even a lot of African
Americans in Illinois I've talked to resent the fact that Democrats have
taken them for granted,” he continued.

Despite Kirk’s somewhat frequent splits with conservative, Walsh is the
only Republican threatening a challenge —a longshot one, at that.

Both GOP and nonpartisan strategists in Illinois say no one who could give
Kirk a tough primary race is even looking at one.

Observers speculate that Walsh is likely looking to stir controversy to
boost ratings. Many think that he’s ultimately unlikely to run and is a
longshot, at best, if he does.

“I really have not heard any rumblings at all in terms of a serious primary
challenge [to Kirk],” said former University of Illinois-Springfield Prof.
Kent Redfield. “What Former Congressman Walsh does these days is sustain
his career as a talk show host and political gadfly… It's about him and
promoting himself and promoting his positions. He's just not viable.”

Walsh argued that Kirk’s 2012 stroke, which has left him with slightly
slurred speech and forced him to use a wheelchair much of the time, was
scaring off other potential primary foes. But he said that the senator’s
health is part of the reason he shouldn’t win another term.

“I think because of his overall physical condition I don't know anyone else
would consider challenging him and that's just plain wrong,” he said. “If
you privately talk to people who would ordinarily primary him, they'd all
say ‘he's got no business running, but I can't challenge him, look at who
he is, people are going to say I'm mean spirited because I'm challenging
him.’ Because of sympathy for Mark Kirk I don't know of a serious candidate
who would challenge him besides me.”

Kirk, a top Democratic target in liberal-leaning Illinois, hasn’t had the
best week. Last Wednesday, he blamed Democrats for the current standoff
over Department of Homeland Security funds, saying “all the dead Americans
from that should be laid at the feet of the Democratic caucus” in the event
of a terrorist attack.

He was signing a different tune by Thursday after taking heat from
Democrats.

“I generally agree with the Democratic position here, I think we should
have never fought this battle on DHS funding,” he later told reporters.
“Had I been consulted which I wasn't, I don't think we should have ever
attached these issues to DHS funding. I always thought that DHS — the
burden of being the majority is the burden of governing.

Kirk has long used much harsher rhetoric on foreign policy than other
topics, and those familiar with the senator’s thinking say he likely
overstepped with the comments and wasn’t aiming to bolster his conservative
credentials.

“I think he realized he came on a bit too strong, and made an unfortunate
comment,” said one Republican close to Kirk. “He was just really fired up.
It might have just been a bad second.”

And Kirk, who insists he's definitely running despite his health issues,
doesn’t seem particularly worried about a primary challenge.

“I always thought that when I ran for Senate I would get a challenge from
the left and the right. In Illinois you have to thread the ultimate
needle,” he told The Hill. “Based on the polling, I'd say a Republican
candidate would be very foolish to come up against me… that'd be a pretty
stupid move.”

===

Robert Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
(202) 448-2898 x1
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