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A north suburban state representative who briefly hinted at challenging Michael Madigan for House speaker now says he's exploring a run for the Democratic nomination for governor.

Rep. Scott Drury, a Highwood Democrat in his third term representing a Lake County district, attacked the leaders of both Illinois political parties in his announcement.

"The public feels helpless against a billionaire governor and Democratic machine that refuse to prioritize people's needs over political gain. Gov. (Bruce) Rauner's approval rating is dreadful, and Mike Madigan's is even worse. The public believes Republicans and Democrats share the blame for the state's problems and knows that long-term solutions are needed," Drury said.

"Since taking office, my goal has been to usher in a new era of government in Illinois one defined by credibility and responsibility," Drury said in an email to supporters. "The public does not trust Illinois government. If Illinois is to change course and move forward, it first must establish a strong foundation of trust upon which it can build."

If he enters the race, Drury would have to give up running for re-election to his House seat and would join a field of candidates that includes Northwest Side Ald. Ameya Pawar, state Sen. Daniel Biss of Evanston and wealthy businessmen Chris Kennedy and J.B. Pritzker.

An attorney, a former assistant federal prosecutor and adjunct professor at Northwestern University's law school, Drury's efforts to portray independence from Madigan have served to isolate him from Democratic colleagues. In January, he was the only Democrat to refuse to support Madigan for re-election as speaker, a post Madigan has held for all but two years since 1983.

Drury contended Madigan retaliated for the move by not giving him a gift clock that was handed out in gift bags to the 66 House Democrats who supported the speaker's re-election. Drury also said he was not given a House committee chairmanship and was removed from his previous spot on the House Judiciary Committee. Committee chairmen and ranking members get a stipend to supplement their salaries.

Drury also is unlikely to gain much support from traditional Democratic allies in organized labor, where he has opposed legislation pushed by other Democrats to counter Rauner's efforts to weaken public employee unions.

In addition, Drury opposed a Madigan-backed proposed constitutional amendment to ask voters if a surcharge should be imposed on incomes of more than $1 million for schools. The four Democrats in the race to take on Rauner say they support a graduated tax rate based on income to replace the state constitution's mandated flat tax.

Last week, Drury sought to highlight his independence from Madigan during debate over a stopgap budget to fund social services and higher education. The lawmaker criticized Republicans for failing to stand up to Rauner, who opposed the measure, saying it was time for GOP members to "grow a spine" and "do what you think is right."

"There is no one on that side of the aisle, no one, in that side of the aisle in the last two years has shown the spine to stand up to your leader. All right? There is one person on this side who has. And I can commiserate with you, I can tell you what it's like, if you want to know what is going to happen, but in a lot of ways it's like the shackles being off," Drury said.

Following the heated attack, Drury did not vote on the proposal. He had opposed earlier stopgap spending measures.

Drury has accepted more than $36,000 in help from the Democratic Majority, a campaign fund headed by Madigan, largely for voter lists and campaign staff. He had $280,155 in his campaign fund to begin this year and raised another $4,500 in large donations, including $1,500 from the Democratic Majority and $2,000 from investment trader Blair Hull, who lost a 2004 primary bid for the U.S. Senate to Barack Obama.

"I recognize the enormity of trying to change the status quo in Illinois and the resistance the establishment will put forth to stop the effort," Drury told supporters. "However, as Bob Dylan famously wrote, "the first one now will later be last, for the times they are a-changin'." The purpose of this exploration is to determine whether Illinois is ready for such change."

Also running for the Democratic governor nomination is Bob Daiber, regional schools superintendent from Downstate Madison County.

Chicago Tribune's Monique Garcia contributed from Springfield.

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Democrat who bucked Speaker Madigan mulling governor bid - Chicago Tribune

A rowdy CNN panel ended with journalist April Ryan pummeling conservative Jack Kingston for saying shes a Democrat.

The panel was discussing Sean Spicers claim on Tuesday that Adolf Hitler didnt even sink to using chemical weapons against civilians like Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, a demonstrably false claim the White House press secretary was later forced to walk back.

This statement happened during Passover, a holy time for a community that was the butt of an atrocity, Ryan explained to her fellow panelists during CNNs Don Lemon Tonight.

Ana, Ana, Kingston said, incorrectly referring to Ryan by the name of another panelist, Ana Navarro.

Thats not Ana, Lemon interjected.

Im April, this is April, Ryan said.

Not all colored girls, are the same, Jack! Navarro said while Lemon laughed. But Kingston wasnt finished.

You might not be criticizing him because youre a Democrat, Kingston said to Ryan. Youre criticizing him because you dont like Trump.

I never said I was a Democrat, I never said I was a Republican! Ryan shot back. You dont know my politics!

Shes a journalist, Navarro pointed out. The segment quickly derailed as Kingston tried to insist Ryan was a partisan voter.

Im a Democrat because Im black? Ryan asked.

He thinks youre me, thats the problem hes having, Navarro joked. Jack, do me a favor: quit while youre behind.

Watch the video below, via @igorvolsky:

So much is going on in this clip. Its really amazing pic.twitter.com/J0XxcH1ON8

igorvolsky (@igorvolsky) April 12, 2017

Link:
'I'm a Democrat because I'm black?': Watch CNN's April Ryan battle Jack Kingston over political partisanship - Raw Story

New York Times

Syria, North Korea, Republican Party: Your Wednesday Briefing New York Times Flight operations on the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson, which has been sent to the Korean Peninsula. President Trump is seeking Chinese help in deterring North Korean weapons tests. Credit Matt Brown/U.S. Navy, via Associated Press. (Want to get this ... and more »

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Syria, North Korea, Republican Party: Your Wednesday Briefing - New York Times

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There are only so many hours in the day or neurons in our minds to devote to politics, but it's nonetheless important that we raise our sights above the daily displays of the Trump administration's bumper-car incompetence to take in the bigger picture. When we do, it becomes clear that Trump's highly personalistic, anti-ideological presidency is an expression of a much broader trend in the GOP namely the thoroughgoing dissolution of the party's ideological coherence.

This breakdown in unity and consistency within the Republican Party can be seen across a range of issues. Over time it will render the party increasingly incapable of governing and most likely prepare the way for a much more dramatic shift in the party's direction in 2020 or beyond.

Health care. The House Freedom Caucus wants to gut ObamaCare, including provisions that force insurance companies to cover "essential health benefits" (like maternity care, hospitalization, and mental health services) and preclude them from charging more for consumers based on their gender or medical history. In place of these provisions, the HFC prefers a market-based system that would supposedly lower costs and increase efficiency and innovation while leaving millions fewer covered by health insurance. Party moderates, meanwhile, including the so-called "Tuesday Group" in the House, would prefer more marginal adjustments to the Affordable Care Act. Adding to the chaos, a recent poll shows that a plurality of Republican voters favor a single-payer system that most of the party's elected officials, as well as nearly all of its lobbyists and activists, passionately denounce as "socialized medicine," and which many Democrats consider too left wing to touch.

Taxes. Since Ronald Reagan, promises to cut taxes have formed the core of the GOP's appeal to voters. But today, the agenda has fallen into disarray. Some, like Grover Norquist and assorted billionaire funders, want cuts, cuts, and more cuts, the better to "starve the beast." But other Republicans are more worried about the deficit and so prefer to pair revenue trims (or even modest enhancements) with specific spending reductions. Still others, including (on some days) the president himself, want to experiment with consumption taxes (like a border adjustment tax). Put it all together and we're left with a bundle of contrary impulses and priorities when it comes to the GOP's signature issue.

Foreign policy. Both parties are dominated by hawks liberal internationalists on the left and neoconservatives on the right. The supremacy of the neocons in the GOP has persisted despite their leadership of the #NeverTrump movement and continued skepticism about the president's competence, instincts, and entanglements with Vladimir Putin. Yet those who reject the neocon conviction that every global problem can be remedied by the generous application of American military power received a significant boost when Trump ascended to the White House, bringing Mr. America First (Stephen Bannon) with him to the West Wing and placing him (temporarily) on the Principals Committee of the National Security Council. That, like everything else in the Trump administration, was not to last. But the churn at the top of the party around such fundamental issues has reinforced the impression that everything is up for grabs in today's GOP, including its stance toward the wider world.

Crime/drugs. The GOP remains broadly "tough on crime." But in recent years, several high-profile Republicans have shown a willingness to work with Democrats on various forms of criminal-justice reform, especially reductions in mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses. Yet Trump comes from a faction of the party that is far more interested in emphasizing "law and order," and his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, shows every sign of working against any reform at all. If anything, Sessions seems eager to move in the opposite direction, toward a re-intensification of the drug war, including harsh sentences for convictions.

Immigration. The GOP has been split on immigration for many years, with the party's rich donors and the Wall Street Journal crowd firmly leaning in the direction of open borders and the grassroots of the party taking a far more draconian line, including support for the forcible deportation of undocumented immigrants (invariably denigrated as "illegals"). For a long time, the former group held the preponderance of the power in the party and found themselves checked from time to time by the latter. But with Trump's election that balance has been upended. Now it's the anti-immigrant forces who hold the power and their opponents who've been placed on the defensive. But regardless of who holds the cards at one time or another, the fact is that the party is, and shows every sign of staying, deeply divided on the issue.

The two areas where the GOP remains broadly unified are social policy (especially abortion) and the Supreme Court. Given the importance of the Court in adjudicating our most polarizing disagreements on social policy, it makes sense that the party largely stuck together through the rancorous year-long battle to succeed the late conservative justice Antonin Scalia, which included a successful effort to deny a hearing or vote to the nominee of a Democratic president and culminated in the nuking of the judicial filibuster in the Senate.

But don't let such steadfastness fool you. On just about every other issue, the Republican Party is in a state of disarray, its once-unifying ideology crumbling before our eyes.

All that remains to be seen is whether the Democrats can exploit this massive vulnerability.

More here:
The Republican Party is dissolving before our eyes - The Week Magazine

Its possible to get carried away with outrage. Sometimes people mean to say relatively innocent things and they come out sounding wrong. Politics doesnt need to become an indignation factory, and not every Republican gaffe is a sign of incipient fascism.

But Sean Spicers Holocaust comments are important, not just for their shock value for their sheer, breathtaking WTF-ness but for what they tell us about the architecture of the modern Republican mind.

I should have stayed on topic, Spicer lamented later to CNNs Wolf Blitzer. Fair enough.

But these remarks were more than just a digression. Spicer reflects his entire party, not just himself or the man for whom he works. And his most disturbing words the passing phrases that revealed so much got less attention than they deserved. Here are seven keys to this very odd, yet somehow very Republican, snafu.

1. Spicers a mainstream Republican.

Spicer doesnt come from Steve Bannons white nationalist/right-wing populist cadre. Hes a product of the mainstream Republican Party, years in the making. He worked on GOP political campaigns after graduating college, then became Communications Director for the Republican leadership on the House Budget Committee. He took a similar role with the Republican House Conference, co-founded a PR firm, and became Communications Director for the Republican National Committee in 2011.

Spicer was reportedly recommended for his White House role by Reince Priebus, the former RNC chairman turned White House Chief of Staff. In one of the few signs of good judgment Donald Trump has ever displayed, the president has reportedly been angry at Priebus over that recommendation ever since.

2. Spicer was trying to score points.

Spicer wasnt trying to shock and outrage the American people. He was trying to win a rhetorical battle against Russia. He said, You, lookwe didnt use chemical weapons in World War II. (Was he considering the fact that we, the United States, did use nuclear weapons in that war twice? Probably not.)

Yknow, you had someone who is despicable as Hitler who didnt even sink to the, to the, to using chemical weapons. So, you have to, if youre Russia, ask yourself, is this a country that you, and regime you want to align yourself with?

It sounded as if Spicer expected the press room to respond with a collective, Oh, snap! Instead, of course, the press room responded with whatever sound a roomful of people makes when it calls forth the memory of millions of people being rounded up and murdered with chemical weaponry.

3. It seems to have been a talking point gone terribly wrong.

Its also worth noting that Spicer was apparently using, and mangling, an administration talking point given to other administration officials as well. Later in the day, Defense Secretary James Mattis told reporters,

Even in WWII chemical weapons were not used on the battlefield. Even in the Korean War, they were not used on battlefields. Since WWI theres been an international convention on this.

That was the point Spicer was probably instructed to make. The inclusion of Hitler was probably his own act of improvisation an act that went very, very wrong.

4. This was the most horrifying comment of all.

When reporters reminded Spicer about Hitlers use of chemical weapons in the concentration camps, Spicer said:

I think when you come to sarin gas, there was no (Hitler) was not using the gas on his own people the same way that Ashad [sic] is doing. (emphasis mine.)

Ive tried to parse this sentence several different ways, and can find no other way to interpret it: Spicer is saying that the Jews and other victims were not Germanys own people when Hitler gassed them.

More than 500,000 Jews lived in Germany, and over 191,000 in Austria, when Hitler came to power in 1933. Of the 240,000 who remained in these two countries by the start of World War II, an estimated 210,000 or 88 percent were murdered during the so-called Final Solution.

Not their own people? Jews in prewar Germany and Austria enjoyed full political, social, and economic equality. They participated fully in cultural and civic life. Jews played a leading role in Viennese intellectual and artistic circles. The completeness of Jewish integration is often cited as one of the main reasons why so many Jews stayed until it was too late. They simply could not believe that they were being systematically exterminated by a society that had accepted them so fully.

By saying that Jews, gays, Romany, and others murdered in the camps were not Hitlers own people, Spicer seemed to suggest that a nation is only reflected by its dominant social group. Religious and other minorities are always the other, no matter how integrated they may be by law and rights.

5. Or maybe this was his most horrifying comment.

In no way was I trying to lessen the horrendous nature of the Holocaust however, I was trying to draw a contrast of the tactic of using airplanes to drop chemical weapons on innocent people. (Emphasis mine.)

What? The men, women, and children who died in the camps werent innocent? Try again, Sean.

Any attack on innocent people is reprehensible and inexcusable, Spicer added. Good to know.

6. Republican scapegoating of minorities didnt begin with Trump.

The othering of concentration camp victims, and the taint of guilt applied to their memories, are presumably inadvertent. But words reflect thought processes, both conscious and unconscious. Spicer wouldnt be the first Republican to scapegoat a religious minority, just as Trump wasnt the first.

Republican candidates Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich targeted Muslims in their 2012 presidential campaigns. Rep. Steve King had been making racist remarks for years before his bigoted other peoples babies comment got media play last month.

In fact, race baiting, stereotyping, and othering of minorities have been core elements of Republican rhetoric since the days of Nixon and Reagan.

Thats not to suggest that Sean Spicer intended to marginalize or other the Jewish community or any other with his remarks. But when you become accustomed to thinking of minorities as less than full participants in a national community, it can become a hard habit to break.

7. Spicer quickly moved from the horrifying to the banal.

When pressed, Spicer attempted to draw a distinction between Hitlers use of chemical weapons and Assads aerial bombardment of civilians. That distinction, which was both morally and logically incoherent, was expressed in the following fashion:

I understand your point. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. There was not, in the, he brought them into the Holocaust centers, I understand that. But Im saying, in the way that Assad used them where he went into towns, dropped them down to innocent, into the middle of town, it was brought. So, the use of itI appreciate the clarification. That was not the intent.

This was apparently the first time the term holocaust center has been used to describe the locations where Nazi genocide was conducted. (Common terms, as most people who are not Sean Spicer know, include concentration camps and death camps.)

Holocaust center seems like a fine Republican phrase. The GOP believes that corporations are people, after all, and idolizes the buzzwordy world of the private sector. So why not inject some corporate-speak into that gravest of all conversations, the conversation about mass death?

Holocaust centers? Thats the way people talk when theyve come to think of a nation as a body of identical-looking people and of government as a profit center for themselves and their friends.

Holocaust centers? It makes the largest and most horrifying murder machine in history sound like a network of Federal Express hubs for the transshipment and extermination of human souls.

Get used to the moral outrage and the corporate lingo. Welcome to Republican America, circa 2017. All our operators are busy helping other customers. We appreciate your patience. The Center will be with you shortly.

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7 Secret Keys To Sean Spicer's Very Republican Holocaust Gaffe - Huffington Post