IF

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) quoted from the Rudyard Kipling poem “If” at a very short press conference:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

There is on more big IF.

What if he is proven innocent?

What if his talk was just talk? What if the conspiracy was just bogus? What if Patrick Fitzgerald pulled the trigger too early and missed the crazy Serb from the North Side of Chicago?

A lot of people have been asking that question quietly, not certain the latter-day Elliot Ness got his man.

Fitzgerald himself hinted that he might not have all the goods on the one-time presidential pretender. He was almost apologetic in his accusations, saying that he had to move fast before Blago appointed a tainted senator to replace the already sainted BHO.

The longer this plays out for Hot Rod and for the Democrats in Illinois, the better it is for Mark Kirk and Illinois Republicans. There is no such thing as a permanent majority, ladies and gentlemen, and this Democratic fiasco is proof of that truism.

Now, can the Republicans be smart enough to press the point in a way that doesn’t put them in the middle of the story, but allows them to pick up the pieces?

The people of Illinois are tired of being a national laughingstock. They are tired of the rampant Democratic corruption, the higher taxes, the crappy public services, the deteriorating infrastructure, the failing public schools.

And this gives Republicans a golden opportunity to clean out Chicago, clean up Springfield, and sweep to majorities in the state House and state Senate.

And that is the big IF.

As Kipling concludes:

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with kings — nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;

If all men count with you, but none too much,

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And — which is more — you’ll be a Man, my son!

Let us hope that Illinois Republicans can find such a candidate to help bring true reform to a great, but greatly flawed state.

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