Who'd You Rather? Governor Santa, or Governor Scrooge?

Who would you rather have as governor: Santa Claus … or Scrooge?

Pat Quinn and Bill Brady have dueling ads out this week. Brady’s ad depicts Quinn as an irresponsible Santa for giving raises to his staffers, while Quinn once again calls Brady a stingy rich guy who stomps on women’s rights.

Brady’s ad makes Quinn sound as carefree and profligate as a Jingle Elf in the Macy’s Christmas Parade:

It’s Christmas in July, and Pat Quinn thinks he’s Santa Claus. His personal staff got raises, some as much as 20 percent. What did we get? We got the bill. A proposed 33 percent tax increase courtesy of Pat Quinn. It’s no wonder the Tribune calls Quinn ‘downright clueless.’ Families are suffering, and the last thing Illinois needs is Pat Quinn tossing our money around while we can’t even pay our bills.

Brady, obviously, would prefer that Quinn treat his employees the way Ebenezer Scrooge treated Bob Cratchit. Scrooge tried to make Cratchit work on Christmas. Quinn is giving his employees 24 days off!



Maybe Brady should also have included this quote from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol: “What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money and for finding yourself a year older and not a penny richer!”

It certainly applies to the way Quinn is running Illinois.

Quinn, meanwhile, is calling out Brady as a mean old miser for refusing to allow women to go to a doctor, spend time with their children, or earn a living.

People are asking -- what kind of politician sides with insurance companies to oppose mammograms, and opposed the creation of Family Medical and Maternity Leave?

It’s the same Bill Brady who wants to give tax breaks to millionaires and the biggest corporations, but now says we should roll back increases in the minimum wage.

When it comes to protecting our pocketbooks, Bill Brady sides with the wealthy corporations, while the rest of us need a governor on our side.

And Quinn could have thrown in this quote from Scrooge, attributing it to Brady: “If [the poor] would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”

As he did in his last ad, Quinn is targeting his message toward women. This ad shows a woman in a hospital gown (presumably not getting a mammogram), a woman cuddling a baby (presumably on her own personal time) and a woman wearing a kerchief doing some undefined blue-collar job (and presumably not earning a living wage at it.)

As we all know, Scrooge had no use for women, either. He was a crusty old bachelor who was alone in his bed when the Ghost of Christmas Past came visiting.

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