IL-18: You Have Got To Be Kidding Me

In a recent column in Roll Call, Stuart Rothenberg takes a moment to lament the diminished spotlight for a talented crop of young men and women running for Congress across America.  Now, that’s all well and good, except when you don’t know what you’re talking about.  

Here’s Rothenberg’s “assessment” of IL-18 GOP candidate Aaron Schock, who is running for the open seat of retiring Rep. Ray LaHood:

If you like your candidates young, you’ll find Illinois state Rep. Aaron Schock (R), 26, more than interesting. He was elected to the Peoria school board in 2001, even before he graduated from Bradley University.

In 2004, Schock knocked off an incumbent Democratic state legislator in a Democratic district, and he turned back a major challenge two years later. A conservative who says he focuses on constituent services, Schock is the GOP nominee for retiring Rep. Ray LaHood’s (R) open seat.

The clean-cut hopeful looks like the president of a College Republicans chapter (and acts far older than his years), and he sounded well-versed on most matters. If you can be a seasoned political pro at 26, Schock is. It’s a bit scary, actually.

“Well-versed on most matters”?  Stu, were you lost in his dreamy eyes or did you flat-out forget to ask him about his downright scary foreign policy musings on selling “Pershing nuclear missiles” to Taiwan?  You may have read about this thoroughly whacked-out and amateurish suggestion in the press as something that Ray LaHood himself blasted as “outrageous”:

In his announcement address in late October, Schock said that if China didn’t work to persuade Iran away from development of nuclear weapons, “we will sell Pershing nuclear missiles to Taiwan for their defense. Non-proliferation will either be enforced universally or not at all – it is their choice. The Chinese will come around, I have no doubt.”

“My advice on that is that he should have done his homework, and I think it’s an outrageous statement to be making,” LaHood said, “particularly when you have as your No. 1 employer in the Peoria area Caterpillar (Inc.), that has developed many, many relationships with the Chinese, including establishing facilities in China.

“To make a statement that you’re going to arm one country with nuclear weapons to attack China I think shows a fairly high level of not doing your homework, and… immaturity and not using good political sense.”

Sure, Schock eventually backed off from the plan, but not before his campaign manager dismissed his skeptics as ivory tower eggheads.  Schock claimed that the idea was “more in jest” than anything else, but that didn’t quite jibe with his campaign manager’s depiction:

In a phone interview with the Journal-Register’s political writer, Bernard Schoenburg, the day Schock retracted the statement, his campaign manager, Steve Shearer, said Schock’s proposal was “not just something that he pulled out of his pocket. … It’s a deeply thought-out policy.”

So, the GOP’s golden boy in IL-18 is a nutter on foreign policy?  It’s a bit scary, actually.