Rahm Emanuel Injected With Truth Serum

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who has previously served as a Congressman from one of the wealthiest parts of the city and later as President Obama’s Chief of Staff, proudly declared the largest city in the Midwest a “Trump-free zone” during a recent appearance on “Late Night With Stephen Colbert.”  Liberal protesters had successfully prevented Trump from holding a rally at the University of Illinois at Chicago in March 2016 ahead of the Republican Presidential Primary in Illinois; which he ended up winning.

Emanuel had previously tried to declare Chicago a “Chick-fil-A free zone”, describing the company as inconsistent with “Chicago values,” but he ended up losing that battle and Chicago residents now have the opportunity to enjoy chicken, waffle fries, breath mints and friendly service every day except Sunday.  As nearly 4,000 murders have taken place during his roughly seven-year tenure as mayor, Emanuel clearly has more important things to worry about.

Chicago City Hall may soon end up as a Rahm-free zone.  Emanuel won re-election to his post four years ago and will have to face the voters of Chicago again early next year.  Anyone who has bothered paying attention to the news would know that parts of Chicago resemble a war zone. Some of the lawmakers who represent the most violence-plagued parts of Chicago have pushed back on Emanuel’s virtue-signaling, including State Representative Lashawn Ford.  During an appearance on “Fox & Friends” last week, Ford said that Emanuel “must take away the thought that Chicago is a Trump-free zone. Taxpayers deserve to have the President come in and bring resources to the community.”  President Trump has repeatedly offered to help Chicago, going back to the earliest days of his administration. Based on interviews conducted by Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk and Fox News Contributor Gianno Caldwell, both natives of Chicago, many Chicagoans feel that Mayor Emanuel has failed them.  They definitely have a point, considering the fact that Emanuel has prioritized making Chicago a sanctuary city for illegal immigrants while doing little to provide sanctuary for law-abiding citizens who do not feel safe in their city.    

The “nonpartisan” mayoral race has already attracted quite a few candidates, including Garry McCarthy, former Superintendent of the Chicago Police Department.  Emmanuel had fired McCarthy, a registered Democrat, in response to the shooting of Laquan McDonald; despite the fact that a civilian oversight board oversaw the investigation into the shooting of the knife-wielding black teen, not McCarthy.  In addition, McCarthy had nothing to do with suppressing the video of the shooting until after he had safely secured a second term. Emanuel, who seems to have his eye on higher office, engineered that cover-up.  The mayoral race will take place on February 26, with a runoff occurring five weeks later if no candidate manages to capture 50 percent of the vote.

While Emanuel hopes to run for a third term, he may not have the option if a proposed ballot measure that would impose term limits on Chicago mayors ends up passing this fall.  While the ballot measure has collected more than 86,000 signatures, it still faces a challenge. Even if the ballot measure ends up passing, Team Emanuel has argued that the new term limits law would not apply to them since he has already begun campaigning for a third term.  Former Democratic Governor Pat Quinn, a vocal supporter of the ballot proposition, pointed to an Illinois Supreme Court case finding that a term limits bill in the Village of Broadview applied to the sitting Village President.  Just for a historical perspective, when the 22^nd Amendment to the United States Constitution, which imposed term limits on United States Presidents, went into effect, it did not apply to the President at the time, Harry Truman.  However, Truman ultimately decided not to run for a third term in 1952 in the wake of his low approval ratings.       

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, New York City found itself in a similar situation.  New York City voted reliably Democratic in Presidential elections (and still does) but the violence in the city had reached critical mass by the time the 1993 mayoral election came around.  Rather than re-electing SJW Mayor David Dinkins, New Yorkers elected Rudy Giuliani, a Republican focused on restoring Law & Order as Mayor of the Big Apple.  Giuliani effectively made New York a “renaissance city” the same way that Buddy Cianci increased the curb appeal of Providence.  Giuliani served as mayor of the nation’s largest city for two terms and even flirted with running for an open Senate seat in 2000 until prostate cancer and revelations of an extramarital affair derailed his campaign.  Giuliani left office shortly after the 9/11 terror attacks and learned the hard way that campaigning as a pro-choicer does not get you very far in a Republican Presidential primary.  Although he decided to spend the latter part of his tenure as a “food fascist” obsessed with cracking down on large sugary beverages, Giuliani’s successor, Mayor Michael Bloomberg largely kept the policies implemented by Giuliani such as “Stop & Frisk” in place.

After twenty years of relative peace and prosperity in New York City, voters chose to elect Bill de Blasio, Dinkins on Steroids, in 2013.  de Blasio abolished the “racist” Stop & Frisk policy. A recent National Review article sums up the status quo in New York at the beginning of de Blasio’s second term as “Litter. Garbage.  Filth. Homeless people are camped on sidewalks, benches, and storefronts.  Drug addicts casually light up and shoot up al fresco.” 

While voters in New York City will not have the chance to choose a new mayor until 2021, Chicago voters have an opportunity to take their city in a different direction much sooner.  It looks like Emanuel may have finally realized that, at least to some degree.  To paraphrase Michelle Obama, for the first time in his adult life, Emanuel said something that actually made sense.  Emanuel gave a press conference addressing the outburst of violence in Chicago last weekend that killed twelve people and left 63 others injured.  After reciting the usual left-wing talking points about guns, the mayor correctly pointed out that “there is a shortage of values about what is right, what is wrong, what is acceptable, what is condoned, and what is condemned.”

Bingo!  Conservative televangelists mocked by the left as scornful and out-of-touch could not have done a better job at pinpointing one of the factors that has led to poverty and violence in the inner cities. Liberal policies have done absolutely nothing to address the “shortage of values.”  If anything, the left-wing policies caused the “shortage of values” in the first place.  Half a century ago, liberals concocted a master plan to undermine the nuclear family, which began with subsidizing illegitimacy; causing the number of children born to unwed parents to skyrocket, especially in the black community.  As Charlie Kirk pointed out during his recent appearance on “Fox & Friends,” in the 1960s, the proportion of single mothers in the African-American community stood at 18 percent.  Today, the single motherhood rate in the African-American exceeds 75 percent.  Only a fool would fail to see the connection between single motherhood and out-of-control crime.  Historically, the family has served as a child’s first teacher, instilling the “values about what is right, what is wrong, what is acceptable, what is condoned, and what is condemned.” 

In the absence of parental guidance, children often have nowhere to turn but the culture, which encourages self-destructive behavior such as violence, drug use and sexual promiscuity. However, these practices also lead to dependence on the government, which explains why liberals have not come out more forcefully against them; a higher number of people on the dole helps their electoral bottom line.  In addition, the dictates of political correctness prevent anyone from saying anything about the illegitimacy rate without facing accusations of racism.

Liberals predicted that the abolition of the nuclear family would allow government to come in and save the day. Saul Alinsky, the late Chicago-based community organizer who effectively ended up as a policy entrepreneur for radical leftism, encouraged his disciples, many of whom ended up playing a major role in Chicago politics as well as national politics, to “increase the poverty level as high as possible; poor people are easier to control and will not fight back if you are providing everything for them to live.”  President Obama attempted to address the issue of fatherlessness within the African-American community with his “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative but it seems as if the program has met the same fate as the Secure Fence Act of 2006.  President Trump has proposed a similar initiative called the Urban Revitalization Coalition, which he hopes will reverse the plight faced by urban America.  The Urban Revitalization Coalition has a 13-point plan focused on the areas of wealth creation, education, affordable housing, transitional housing, energy, banking, youth empowerment, women’s empowerment, small business, health and wellness, faith-based organizations, criminal justice reform and community accountability organizations.  

While government-led initiatives such as “My Brother’s Keeper” and the Urban Revitalization Coalition have good intentions, it will take a lot more than these programs to get Chicago back on the right track.  For starters, Chicago has not elected a Republican mayor since the Great Depression and the Democrats dominate the City Council, controlling over 95 percent of the seats.  Chicago obviously needs fresh ideas if it wants to experience a renaissance of its own.  Hopefully whoever ends up winning the Chicago mayoral election will institute the policies of Rudy Giuliani that led to a 56 percent drop in violent crime, a 73 percent drop in homicide, a 66 percent drop in burglaries, a 40 percent drop in assault and a 67 percent drop in robberies from 1990 to 1999. Giuliani, who has now become an object of liberal scorn by taking on the role of attorney to President Trump, has already endorsed Garry McCarthy for the top job in Chicago.  Giuliani’s “tough love” approach to crime allowed him to Make New York City Great Again.  While the situation looks bleak right now, the right leader could still stitch together a “tough love” agenda that would Make Chicago Great Again but far more importantly, Make Chicago Safe Again.