If you saw a campaign commercial warning that a candidate for Illinois state representative planned to use that position to dismantle the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal, the Great Pyramid of Giza and the Great Wall of China, would you be motivated to vote against that person?
Or would you think it was a ridiculously unbelievable scare tactic, since an Illinois state representative has no authority over architectural treasures in foreign lands?
Rep. Kate Cloonen (D-Kankakee)
What about a campaign commercial warning that a candidate for Illinois state representative, once in office, will vote to raise taxes in Indiana, cut services in Iowa and outlaw string cheese production in Wisconsin?
You wouldn't give that threat any credence either, would you, knowing that an Illinois rep has no say in the policy of other states?
But what if that same would-be Illinois rep was alleged to have designs on Social Security and Medicare, determined to scale back or eliminate both once elected?
You'd have to be a pretty dumb cluck to fall for that one, too, what with Social Security and Medicare being federal programs over which state representatives have no control.
In any one of these cases, you'd probably feel insulted that someone thought you were so ignorant and gullible as to fall for such an obvious attempt at deception and manipulation, and you'd probably want to give the dirty trickster responsible for it a piece of your mind.
As it happens, Democratic State Rep. Kate Cloonen posted just such a campaign commercial on her Facebook page last month, warning that the woman seeking to replace her in the 79th District, Republican Lindsay Parkhurst, “would cut Social Security and Medicare.”
A reliable Madigan machine member like Cloonen may have trouble finding genuine accomplishments to tout during her campaign for re-election (other than the score she got while playing Candy Crush during a budget session), but that doesn't give her (or Madigan) the right to play us for fools.
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