“…that Independent Voters of Illinois is part of the Daley machine (no surprise there)”

True. Of course, our beloved president and his two closest advisers (Axelrod and Emanuel) were/are also part of the Daley machine. But then, that is no surprise either.

I dithered about that “were/are”. But it’s like the mafia. Once you are made man, you don’t get to quit.

There’s one silly thing about giving this trend much weight though. Independents, real ones anyway, are more likely to vote for the candidate and not the ideology.

Right now, I ID more strongly with conservatives because they are the only ones speaking to the issue that concerns me most, dangerously high levels of deficit spending. But I’ll still vote in any given election for the candidate thatI think is most capable of doing the job they are seeking.

For example, we’re going to have our election to replace Sen. Kennedy soon. Martha Coakley is a fairly liberal democrat running against the GOP’s Scott Brown, who is mouthing the right things about spending. But Coakley seems to have a good grasp of various issues and feels shrewd and sensible. Meanwhile Brown feels to me like something of a wide-eyed dope who would be a little bit out of his league as a Senator. He gives me every reason to think that as a Senator, he’d be an obedient follower of party leaders and not an independent thinker determined to put our state first as a senator.

So if I bother to vote, it’s gotta be Coakley. I doubt I will bother though. Brown is going to get pounded like a tent stake when the votes are counted. The only question in my mind is whether Brown can get into the 45% range.

I know folks like instapundit have been doing their share to plump Brown, and I have nothing against GOP optimists hoping for the upset. So if you’ve talked yourself into Brown, I wish you the best, but we have nothing to debate. You have to be from around here to understand what a bad joke the MA state GOP is these days.