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| Edgar: Election Day Losses for GOP Could Have Been Worse |
A former Republican governor has lots to say about Tuesday's election. Jim Edgar says Republicans running in Illinois were in danger of losing more seats, but is pleased that Democrats picked up only three seats in the Illinois House and none in the Senate.
Edgar says one of the problems that Illinois Republicans face is the fallout from Congress' tough rules on immigration. He says the national Republican Party will be in trouble if it doesn't bring Hispanics into the fold after losing them over a crackdown on immigration. Edgar says the backlash by Hispanic voters also meant fewer votes for Republicans running for the Illinois legislature. "I think what happened on immigration in Congress set us back a long way," Edgar said. "And I think we've got to demonstrate to new Americans and potential new Americans that we're not hostile on immigration."
Edgar says President-elect Obama's choice of Congressman Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff already shows that Obama is not just looking for people who think like he does. "To me he's an opposite of Obama," said Edgar, who now is a political science professor at the University of Illinois . "He wasn’t in the Obama inner-circle. He was a Clinton person, and I'm a little surprised that the first person out of the box is somebody from the Clinton administration, even though he's now in Congress and he's from Chicago."
Edgar also says it's appropriate that Obama -- the nation's first African-American president -- will take office in the 200th anniversary year of Abraham Lincoln's birth.
(Illinois Radio Network) |
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| 11 06 08 by Newsroom |
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