Progress Illinois

Reader TB pointed out another amusing passage from Chicago Magazine's profile of GOP election shopper Jim Oberweis. This one comes at the very end of the article:

Oberweis resists saying where his breaking point is. The mounting losses and the public sneers do hurt him, Trish Oberweis says, but he seems to view them less as signs than as additional obstacles on his path to inevitable political office. "There was a guy about 130 or 150 years ago who had several losses before he won," he says. "I can't quite remember his name, but he went on to become the president of the United States. His first name was Abraham. What was his last name again?"

Ah, yes. Yet another conservative compares himself to Abraham Lincoln.

Rather than run through all the ways in which Honest Abe would likely disagree with the stances taken by Juvenile Jim, I'll just point one thing out. It's true that Lincoln lost various bids for federal office prior to being elected president in 1860. But before he ever ran for Congress, he served four consecutive terms as an Illinois state legislator. In short, he actually won election to public office at the state level before setting his sights higher. That's more than Oberweis can say for himself.