Palin - Toxic To Republican Candidates ?

Sarah Palin may be a queen to the teabaggers these days, but it's not like that with Republican candidates -- especially in states outside of the Deep South, Texas and Oklahoma (states where right-wing nuttiness is considered normal). As I said in a previous post, Republican candidates are avoiding Palin like she "had a combination of swine flu, ebola and the black plague."

When she went to Boston about three weeks ago, Republican candidates all found it necessary to be somewhere else that day. This was even true of teabagger favorite, Senator Scott Brown. None of the Republican candidates and office holders wanted to be viewed as tied to Palin's apron strings on election day this November.

Now it looks like the same thing is happening in Illinois. Sarah Palin is scheduled to speak at a fundraiser for the Illinois Republican Party on May 12th in Rosemont. And the line is starting to grow of Republican candidates that will not be appearing at the fundraiser with Palin. Here is the list of no-shows so far:

U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk (running for U.S. Senate)

State Senator Bill Brady (running for Governor)

Randy Hultgren (running for U.S. House)

Bob Dold (running for U.S. House)

State Senator John Millner (running for re-election)

State Senator Dan Duffy (running for re-election)

I expect the list will grow as the date gets nearer. As Paul Green, political professor at Roosevelt University, says, "They don't want to take the risk, but I'm sure they will take the money." Green goes on to say that the candidates in suburban districts don't want to go because the suburbs have been trending toward the Democrats in recent elections.

Blogger Gryphen over at The Immoral Minority puts this fairly new phenomenon in a humorous way. He says:

"I wonder which is more damaging to a Republican candidate?

A picture with the man the Teabaggers love to hate, President Barack Obama? Or a picture with 'Trashilla from Wasilla'?

Somebody should try an experiment. They should put all of the Republicans in a big room with only two exits. At one exit they could place President Obama, and at the other Sarah Palin.

Who wants to bet that the majority of them would either just stay in the room and starve to death or leap out of a window to escape?"