Will Rod Grow?

Tom Roeser wrote a piece on July 16th in which he detailed the acceptance of Republicans by the Georgetown crowd. He referred to it as “Standing Tall in Georgetown.”

When a Republican got mature enough in Washington, he abandoned the reasons that got him elected to please the media and political elite, he was “Standing Tall in Georgetown.”

Political novelist and New York Times Washington Bureau newsman Allan Drury came up with the term.

What’s it mean? Here’s what Roeser says,

”Georgetown in Drury’s 1959 novel (‘Advise and Consent’) is the same Georgetown as exists today, the home of culturally literate, guilt-ridden and politically correct affluent white liberals who formulate much of the media agenda.

“If you are a repentant conservative and embrace liberal dogma supposedly heedless of what it will do to your career… because you are an idealist… you will

(a) stand tall in Georgetown and be invited to its cocktail soirees and

(b) thereupon get a huge bunch of favorable media attention in the main journals that excite liberals: the ‘Washington Post,’ ‘New York Times,’ ‘Christian Science Monitor’ and powerful media interests in the east.

“That will enable you to catapult to the topmost stature overnight…being depicted as one who has 'grown'…has become ‘mature through sobering events.’

“The intriguing thing is that while STIG gets adulatory coverage for its protagonists in the short-run, thus far all of them have failed to score with the subliminal object: the presidency.”

So, the question I raise today is whether Governor Rod Blagojevich will be tempted by House Speaker Mike Madigan’s challenge to endorse a state income tax hike?

Will he mature enough to become a real tax hiking Democrat? (Not that I concede that he hasn’t hiked lots of taxes already.)

What should the Illinois counterpart of “Standing Tall in Georgetown” be?

Do the media biggies live on the North Shore? In Downtown Chicago condos?

I couldn’t have cared less before starting this story.

I don’t think being praised by John Kass’ “Bipartisan Combine” quite fits.

Maybe someone can come up with a better description for the change in media attitude that Blagojevich’s breaking of his promise not to raise income or sales taxes would bring about.

And, what would be Rod's Reward?

Perhaps an end to cartoonists' ridiculing him.

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The article with Mike Madigan's pitch for an income tax hike comes from July 19th's Chicago Sun-Times. The clown depiction of Governor Rod Blagojevich with his $600 hairdoo was drawn by Springfield's State Journal-Register cartoonist Chris Britt and re-printed in the Chicago Tribune, which, like the Northwest Herald, does not have its own cartoonist, on July 18th.

And, of course, there is more on McHenry County Blog.