Step Two

Before there was ever Republican Tom DeLay or Duke Cunningham, Scooter Libby, Jack Abramoff, or Claude Allen there was the Republican Governor of Illinois George Ryan. Yesterday’s conviction of the former Republican boss stems from an almost 8 year investigation into a license for bribes scandal when Ryan was Illinois’ Secretary of State, totaling over $3 million of personal kickbacks and political payoffs. Lost in this whole mess is a story that places Illinois at the center and at the beginning of a national saga of a confusingly tangled web of Republican scandals, indictments and finally convictions.

Presently Illinois is thought of as a blue state. But for the near century prior to the 2000 presidential election, Illinois was merely a swing state follower voting for the winner of every presidential election, Democrat or Republican, except twice. Since 1998, however, the state has taken a leading edge in a Democratic trend brought about precisely because of Republican incompetence that only now the rest of the country is beginning to notice.

The conviction of George Ryan and his henchman Larry Walker adds a permanent stain to the home state of the Republican Party. Illinois also boasts the home of three Republican presidents, Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant and Reagan-- and a black eye to Republicans who have seen their vast majority decay even as they hoped their savior Alan Keyes would deliver them back to their pinnacle days of statewide dominance, political buyouts and liberal Republicanism.

It’s not enough that the media barely mentions Ryan’s party affiliation or the fact that Ryan’s chief of staff is already serving time in federal prison, but the most damning of all this would be if the Democrats cannot relate this culture of corruption that began in Illinois to the very same Republicans who are leading us today in Washington.

Tags:
Bush, George Ryan, Corruption, Illinois, Republicans