Why did we get Obama in 2008?
Because a good conservative bailed in 2006.
Namely, conservative Republican Senator Peter Fitzgerald from Illinois, who chose not to run for re-election in order to spend more time with his needy son in his formative years, according to statements he made on Tom Roeser's "Political Shoot-Out" radio program at the time on WLS, Chicago. I know. I was there. I listened in front of my fire.
One wonders, then, why he ran for the Senate in the first place.
In addition to that, Peter Fitzgerald was a real conservative in a state full of Republicans who were not. He famously rubbed them the wrong way. But I honestly don't know what he expected.
At any rate his voluntary departure after one term helped open the way for another Illinois State Senator like he had been, one Barack Obama, to run for the Senate seat in 2006, a seat by the way which Senator Carol Mostly Wrong had once held.
And the rest is history.
Now, Senator Jim DeMint from South Carolina is bailing out to head up the Heritage Foundation, having brought a few so-called conservative people into the Senate.
South Carolina was the state which quoted a Tea Party member as saying during the Republican primary election that she loathed Mitt Romney to the core of her being. The state ended up going big for Speaker Newt Gingrich. So I rather doubt we'll get a similarly dramatic turn in Senate representation, but it still is upsetting that conservatives bail just when we need them the most.
Since DeMint seems happy with the idea that a Republican governor will appoint his successor, isn't that an argument for doing it all the time?
Repeal the 17th Amendment.
