Had Enough?

By Kevin Robinson in News on Oct 9, 2006 8:35PM

Chicagoist loves the Capitolfax Blog. Man, that guy is a hoot!

Today Rich Miller has a clever piece up about which direction a candidate needs to head going into the final weeks of a race they are clearly losing. Using an article by AP writer Christopher Wills as a jumping-off point -- the thrust of which is that Topinka has been clobbered by G-Rod with a barrage of negative advertising, hasn't been able to effectively cement doubt about ethics in the minds of voters, and now is in a position of having to do a late round push of advertising -- Miller talks about strategy. The debate that is probably going on in her camp right now is this one: can she effectively present a positive vision to the voters of IL and change her image from shrill and shrieky, or should she just say fuck it, and go down in a blaze of negative advertising glory?

Making this decision even harder on Big Red is that she didn't really score any points in the debate that took place last week. When she should have been talking about health care, education, and the state budget, she came out swinging at Blagojevich. It's true that he's vulnerable on charges of sneaky deals and playing fast and loose with state jobs; polls indicate that most voters aren't terribly confident in the job he's doing managing the state.

Most likely, Big Red is going to get some pressure from inside the state GOP to keep it positive and try to close that 10-point gap, but in the end will have no choice but to go down shooting. Hindsight is always 20/20, but unless Blagojevich is caught sending "overly friendly" IMs to pages, don't expect a shocker on election night.

Thanks to thecapitolfaxblog.com for the video!