Cross-posted from Blue Downstate
While I was writing this blog post about the attacks against venture capitalist and Republican candidate for Governor of Illinois Bruce Rauner by fellow Republicans at the Republican Day event at the Illinois State Fair earlier today, I stumbled upon this piece by Bill Kelly of the conservative blog Illinois Review.
I’ll let the first two paragraphs of Kelly’s piece speak for themselves:
The Godfather is making it official, sort of. According to sources, Mayor Rahm Emanuel is telling insiders that he wants his friend, venture capitalist Bruce Rauner ― not former White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley ― to be the next governor of Illinois.
There’s only one problem: Rauner is running as a Republican in the GOP primary next March. The multi-millionaire has been banking impressive political contributions from out-of-state donors but claims he is just a down-to-earth political “outsider” who is willing to take on Illinois’ corrupt pay-to-play system.
Again, this is coming from a conservative website that is citing unnamed sources, so the validity of this report is questionable. However, if the reports that Rahm Emanuel, the Democratic Mayor of Chicago, is backing Bruce Rauner, a Republican candidate for Governor of Illinois, are found to be true, then that would be the single biggest instance of a Democrat stabbing the party in the back in the party’s history.
However, there’s also the possibility that this could be simply a right-wing hit piece designed to paint Rauner as an ally of Rahm in an attempt to make him politically toxic to the Republican primary electorate in Illinois, which tends to be full of right-wing extremists these days.
Additionally, Michael Sneed, a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, has also indicated that Rahm may be open to the idea of supporting Rauner.
You have to ask yourself this question: Is Rahm Emanuel stabbing the Democratic Party in the back?