What will the people think of us if we tell them lies?

In a post on the IEA’s Kirk Dillard endorsement, Glen Brown comments and quotes from something I wrote:

“It’s a plan that will fail. In the 2010 Republican Primary there were about 750,000 voters in Illinois. We can expect roughly the same in March. Rauner is polling at 40% – 20 points more than Bill Brady who is in second place. Dillard is last, polling at 11% or somewhere between 70 and 90 thousand votes.

“…The union leadership would require every IEA member and every other union member (although the state AFL-CIO has endorsed Quinn in the primary) to vote for Dillard. That will not happen. The IEA can give Dillard a quarter million bucks for ad buys. But what they cannot do is get out the vote. That requires a state-wide organization that the IEA has let flounder.

“You know how many members they got to the last IEA lobby day for our pension? Less than 500. We once could turn out thousands. I can tell you that more IEA members know about the IEA Dillard endorsement from my blog than they do from the IEA. I don’t mind being called a purist in the context of the kind of gross political calculating that goes on these days. But this won’t work even at a purely tactical level.

“…I have never said anything good about Bruce Rauner… Four years ago (long before almost anyone else), I was writing about the connection between Jonah Edelman, Stand for Children and Bruce Rauner. That was when the IEA was cozying up to SFC, Edelman and Rauner on Senate Bill 7. [Look at] Dillard’s voting record. On pensions and social issues like marriage equality (on which Rauner actually IS Better), how are they different?

“The Illinois Republican Party and all four of its candidates are in the grasp of the Tea Party Right. To make a distinction among them is looking for ‘a needle in a haystack’… In pushing this Dillard endorsement, the IEA is praising Dillard as pro-education. What will the people think of us when we tell such lies?”