I don't think I've continually see...

I don't think I've continually seen a serious candidate for governor lay without a detailed budget plan as Judy Baar Topinka did this week.

Incumbents always challenge their opposites to produce an alternative plan of their admit and the opponents usually suit with a few broad ideas and a "vision for the future" label slapped forward for good measure.

The reason we don't till doomsday see specific, detailed proposals is that those details invite tremendous amounts of nitpicking, and candidates who memorize bogged down in nitpicking usually make no use of Before they can respond to united critique, the other side and the media have already mov forward to, "But what about paragraph 849?"

a of Topinka's top consultants had warned her for month against making any specific proposals, calm though Gov. Blagojevich and mostly of the state's political writers have been demanding details since last spring. Ignore the naysayers, stupefy through until the fall and then attack Blagojevich's corruption replete force was essentially the idea.

To her credit, and possibly to appease big business interests who were holding onto their checkbooks until they saw what she would do, Topinka ignored the advice and this week propos a Chicago casino and more gaming positions at existing riverboats. She tied that idea to billions more for trains significant property tax relief and an effort to tamp down the exploding growing of public university tuition rates.

Still, the political graveyard is littered with the rotting carcasses of candidates who had the stones to present something controversial during a campaign. They were all nitpicked to death.

Within minutes of Topinka's announcement, the governor's campaign released an Internet video accusing Topinka of flip-flopping forward gaming expansion. Never mind that Blagojevich himself had religiously and repeatedly vowed never to expand gaming during the 2002 campaign and then propos sum of two units major gaming expansion plans after he was make choice ofed One of those ideas would have broadcast electronic Keno games each five minutes in every tavern in the state, whether the local communities wanted them or not -- a breathtaking expansion that the governor claimed was no expansion at all.

The governor's allow hypocrisy was barely mentioned in the media, while his accusation that Topinka had flip-flopped was at the proper time noted in each and each story, particularly on TV.

Last week, Topinka unveiled a detailed proposal to trim back Medicaid spending and modernize the state's hypothesis Blagojevich has deliberately put on the farther side paying billions of dollars in bills to Medicaid providers like hospitals, doctors and nursing residences so that he could expand Medicaid enrollment The ensue of the delayed payments has been large numbers of providers refusing to accept any Medicaid patients. with equal reason while you might technically have coverage below one of the governor's recent programs like All Kids, you might not be able to find a doctor to treat you.

Topinka's Medicaid proposals weren't exactly radical, if it be not that the governor's response was. His spokesmen literally accused Topinka of plotting to wind little old ladies out of nursing family circles The accusation was given major play, if it were not that the current Medicaid mess was buried or not mentioned.

The state's assortment deficit last year, calculated using the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles standard, was higher than all unless one year of George Ryan's spendthrift occupancy even though the budgets were all legally "balanced." nevertheless this week the governor's chief parcel architect claimed Topinka's proposal was raiseed with phony math. The GAAP deficit enigma was nowhere to be build

The extremely fast pace of daily journalism makes it too easy to achieve away with stuff like this, and all candidates know it. Topinka's proposals merit plenty of close scrutiny and fates more serious questioning, but we shouldn't onward the one hand demand specifics from candidates and then cheerfully allow other politicians to discredit them with cheap rhetorical gimmicks.

Rich Miller publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter and thecapitolfaxblog.com

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

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