Gov. Bruce Rauner saying last week that he tried to back out of his own job during the recent campaign shows just how thin the Illinois GOP bench is. 

He couldn’t find anyone to fill in for him. 

Rauner, in a simultaneously infuriating and fascinating interview with WLS-TV in Chicago, said he approached several people with a proposal. Battered after a primary and desperate to fend off what looked like an embarrassing defeat to Democrat J.B. Pritzker, Rauner envisioned dropping out of the race and teeing up a hand-picked replacement, pending  Republican State Central Committee approval. 

Easy as that. Input from voters? Nah. I’m good. 

“I said, ‘I’ll step aside. I’ll give you huge financial resources," Rauner told WLS. "You run for governor. I’ll support you. You have as good or better chance to get elected than me.’ All four of ’em said, ‘No. Too tough. Too unlikely. Too difficult.’"

For a governor who has come off as being politically tone deaf, even this was a stunner and confirmed what we feared — that his sincerity, and real desire to keep going another four years just wasn’t there. ​At minimum, it was dishonest. At worst, the tactic upended the democratic process. 

This guy won the nomination (barely). He campaigned. He had supporters. Now he wanted to engineer a tap out? 

And he did it to himself and didn’t do enough to mend the party fences. Rauner eked out a 3 percent victory over state Rep. Jeanne Ives of Wheaton in the March primary, a narrow win partially because he signed several pieces of legislation that angered social conservatives, including expanding immigrant rights and access to abortion. Ives pounced. 

But he was in talks about backing out weeks after that victory. The Chicago Tribune’s sources said the list included state Sen. Karen McConnaughay of St. Charles; Todd Ricketts, finance chairman of the Republican National Committee and a Cubs owner; and Erika Harold, the GOP nominee for attorney general, who ended up losing her race. 

They had reason to turn him down. In the general election, Democrats engineered a statewide sweep and the writing was on the wall. 

For conservatives and even moderates, this highlights a growing problem in state government — there are too few marquee Republicans. There are some bright spots, including Harold, state Rep. Tim Butler, R-Springfield; and state Rep. Steve Andersson, R-Geneva. But they are exceptions. 

Obviously, Rauner’s days are done. And if his heart wasn’t in the game, he shouldn’t have run for a second term in the first place. It would have saved us the trouble. We’ve had enough governors who try to manipulate the political system to benefit the few. He should have let the democratic process play out.