Morton Grove is not Bill Brady country. The congresswoman there, Jan Schakowsky, is one of the most liberal politicians in Washington. The Cook County village also voted 2-1 for Barack Obama. In the February primary for governor, Pat Quinn got 6,000 votes in Niles Township, which includes Morton Grove. Brady got 167.
That means Brady is going to have to import some right-wing ringers if he wants a big crowd at this Sunday’s Chicago Tea Party, which begins at 1 p.m. in St. Paul Woods.
Give Brady credit for conviction. Until now, he has confined his Tea Partying to small Downstate towns [Ed's note: wellll, he attended Tea Party events in Palatine and Libertyville (thx @landofdafree)], where the movement’s message is more likely to attract local support and less likely to be heard by skeptical big-city reporters.
Brady will be the only big-name Republican at the Tea Party. The other guests include Joel Pollak, who’s running against Schakowsky and state senate candidate Cedra Crenshaw. Maybe the others are staying away because the Tea Party is a liability to the Republican Party, not just in Morton Grove, but throughout Illinois. According to a poll in today’s Tribune, the Tea Party’s endorsement turns off more voters than it attracts:
Though some disaffected, conservative voters have turned toward the tea party movement and its promotion of limited government and taxation, it appears to have gained only limited traction in the state.
The poll found 37 percent of voters said a tea party endorsement made no difference in deciding a candidate to support and 31 percent said an endorsement would make them more likely to vote against a candidate. Only 18 percent of voters said a tea party-backed candidate would be more likely to get their vote.
Even among Republicans, and those who called themselves conservatives, a plurality of voters said tea party support made no difference in their choice of a candidate.
That, apparently, doesn’t bother Brady. He’s not going to abandon the voters who won him the primary, just to appear moderate. We’ll soon find out whether the rest of the state agrees with Brady, or whether it thinks, as Alice did, that he's presiding over "the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in all my life!"
