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Change the game

Talk about a game changer. On Tuesday, voters in Massachusetts — Massachusetts! — stopped a runaway health care reform bill in its tracks by electing a Republican U.S. senator who preaches lower taxes, smaller government and fiscal restraint.

Any questions?

There's nothing like a resounding defeat in a race that politicians took for granted to send them a message: You're accountable. There's a corollary message for voters: You're in charge.

We hope you're listening, Illinois. Because if Massachusetts was mad, you ought to be furious. Massachusetts doesn't have a former governor imprisoned for corruption in office. Massachusetts didn't remove its last governor for putting state government up for sale, then watch its lawmakers phony up a handful of ethics bills and congratulate themselves for cleaning things up. Massachusetts isn't threatening to overtake California as the nation's worst fiscal train wreck while its politicians plot to raise taxes so they won't have to stop their wasteful spending and reckless borrowing.

Illinois voters, it's time to take a page from the Massachusetts playbook. Change the game. The options are right in front of you. From the top:

Remember how so many top Illinois Democrats — Sen. Dick Durbin, House Speaker Michael Madigan, then-Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn — wanted you to have a special election to fill Barack Obama's vacant U.S. Senate seat, until they realized their party might lose any such election? Remember how then- Gov. Rod Blagojevich instead got to craftily appoint Roland Burris to Obama's seat?

Remember how angry you felt by that maneuvering?

Burris isn't on the primary ballot but two potentially good senators are. We hope Democratic voters are still angry enough to choose proven corruption-buster David Hoffman as their nominee. And we hope Republican voters select veteran congressman Mark Kirk as theirs.

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You'll find similarly good candidates up and down the ballot. A new Tribune poll shows the Republican primary for governor is a three-way fight. Businessman Andy McKenna is our choice. It's heartening to hear the candidates talk about fiscal discipline, but McKenna set that tone early and stuck to it.

McKenna wants to roll back state spending to 2006 levels until revenues rebound. He has offered specific ideas. He thinks the state shouldn't spend more than it takes in, and he's willing to risk work stoppages to get costs under control.

The two other front-runners, Kirk Dillard and Jim Ryan, have spent months talking about cutting programs but still haven't offered much in the way of specifics. They say a tax increase is a last resort, but can't seem to articulate Plan A. That doesn't inspire confidence.

Illinois' fiscal mess can't be remedied simply by scouring the budget for cost efficiencies. Medicaid and the state pension plans need complete overhauls, for starters. McKenna has the instincts and the business skills to meet the state's responsibilities while making reforms that could save billions of tax dollars.

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More . . .

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