Knows how many houses he owns.

Knows how many houses he owns.

"Oh I'm probably .01 percent," Rauner corrected in response to a previous statement an interview with The Chicago Sun-Times's Natasha Korecki. Rauner's net worth is reportedly close to nearly $1 billion. Rauner, a venture capitalist, owns nine homes and made $53 million in 2013, according to the Sun-Times. [...] "I am a very different person than Mitt Romney: I drink beer, I smoke a cigar, I use a gun, I ride a Harley," Rauner said in the same interview. "I get a crowd going to a standing ovation, I never saw him do that."

This is a novel approach; Republican Bruce Rauner, running in the party's Illinois gubernatorial primary, wants you to know that he's as rich as hell but that the biggest difference between him and Mitt Romney is that he drinks and smokes and people like him. Don't forget modest!

Again, we have to ask: Just what is the Republican Party going for? The "pro-business" billionaire with nine houses who is against the state's current too-generous minimum wage laws wants you to know that he understands the little people because he drinks beer and shoots guns, so make him governor and he'll fix your state up real nice. The takeaway is ... what? That the party just sincerely does not give a damn anymore? That having billionaires finance candidates was too inefficient, so the billionaires are going to cut out the middleman and just do it theirdamnselves?

Why does the party base, people who continue to get screwed by every last thing the pro-business-billionaire-with-nine houses crowd manages to wedge into place, love these people so much?

