As President George W. Bush's job-approval ratings continue to slump, Republican incumbents almost everywhere are running away from him as fast as they can. It's gotten so bad that even U.S. Representative Tom Reynolds, the chairperson of the National Republican Congressional Committee, doesn't have the word "Republican" on his campaign Web site's front page.

If you wanted to get an idea of how downright negative the governor's race will be this fall, all you had to do was hang around Republican Day at the Illinois State Fair last week and check your e-mail from the governor's campaign.

One speaker after another ripped into the Democrats during the Republicans' annual event. The speakers focused mainly on Governor Rod Blagojevich and the harm he has allegedly done to Illinois.

Stu Levine has flipped. Things are gonna get crazy real soon.

Levine was a big Republican insider with very close ties to Jim Ryan, Governor Rod Blagojevich's 2002 opponent. Some saw fair-minded bipartisanship when Governor Blagojevich reappointed Levine to both the Teachers Retirement System (TRS) board of directors and the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board. As we soon discovered, the appointments may have been made for entirely different reasons. And now Levine is in a position to create some truly serious trouble for the governor.

Democratic state treasurer candidate Alexi Giannoulias has a new poll that shows he has an 11-point lead over his Republican opponent, state Senator Christine Radogno.

Giannoulias has struggled since shortly before the spring primary. Reporters started looking into his family's bank business, and came up with ties to some seriously shady mobsters. Things went downhill fast.

But all the bad publicity hasn't helped Radogno, a moderate, well-liked Republican legislator from the suburbs who had been considered by some to be the Republican with the best chance of winning a statewide race this November.