State of ILGOP

IlliniPundit, Illinois Review, ArchPundit have all commented on this Aaron Chambers article which does it's best to account for the current state of IL-GOP and affirms that our party is essentially non-existent in terms of power.

The article spends most of it's time digging into the issues of corruption and the so called "George Ryan factor", which the article maintains singularly mitigates the GOP's power in the state. I tend to agree that corruption seriously undermines the public perception of the party. What I won't agree with is this idea that is best expressed Illini Pundit, that there is a double standard on corruption between Republicans and Democrats.

I've gotten into some vociferous arguments with some Democratic friends because I somewhat agree with Rep. Cross. I think, especially in Chicago, there's a tolerance level amongst rank-and-file Democrats for corruption by Democratic officials, because it's such a tradition: Daley, Daley, Rosty, Blago, etc.

On the other hand, when a prominent Republican is corrupt, Republicans either leave the Party in shame (and in droves, as happened after George Ryan's conviction) or they try to eliminate the corruption (as many are trying to do with Kjellander). Of course, Ryan was convicted, and neither Blago nor Daley have been charged, but Ryan's popularity plummeted as soon as the corruption became widely known. Blago and Daley were just re-elected overwhelmingly.

My belief that comparing Blago and Ryan on the corruption scale (at this point at least), is essentially akin to comparing O.J. Simpson to John Wayne Gacy. One was maybe caught but narrowly escaped. The other was definitely caught with a lot of dead bodies in his basement.

I don't believe that there is any particular bias - be it in the general public, in the media, or internally within the GOP voters - that holds Republicans to higher liability or standard when a conservative turns out to be crooked. To the contrary, I'm certain that the reason why the Ryan Factor has been such a malignant stain has been our absolute inability to mount a coherent defense separating the party from Ryan.

This is probably best attributed to some of the factionalism that Chambers describes, as we're yet to find a central message or vision that goes party wide, something that we desperately need to find our way back into power. Meanwhile, while the party is either busy fumbling around looking for this message (or maybe just sticking a torpedo to everyone else's) GOP voters have become less enthusiastic while centrist and moderate folks have been lulled into a trance to punch [D] when they get to the polls, probably best exhibited in the last gubernatorial race in which Topinka failed to energize any vote and was beaten essentially by folks who were probably just punching Dem's down the line anyhow.

The best wisdom in the whole piece comes from Jim Edgar:

Edgar adds that local organizations, from county chairmen to precinct committeemen, are the true machinery of a statewide campaign. "The state party can be helpful, but it's not the 800-pound gorilla," he says. "The 800-pound gorilla in this is still the local party organizations."

I'd go one step further to say that we're not just sickly and weak on local party organizations but even our statewide grass roots organizations who could potentially help shift power back in our favor come up drastically short in both form and function with very little quality control between local chapters. If we had local fronts and grass roots movements, it would be a simple task to remove the Ryan factor. Even at times, efforts are duplicated by different factions within ILGOP. Take for example, we have an Illinois Young Republican organization and a Republican Young Professionals ::cough cough:: Roeser front ::cough cough:: organization.

Now, don't me wrong. I'm not saying that YR organizations are the perfect tool for political organizations, but it's certainly a start towards some real deal activism that doesn't involve getting together wearing Nixon tshirts and sipping on lite beer at Nick's Uptown. Now, if that's the case, that we have motivated younger conservatives with plenty of political energy, why have two organizations serving the exact same function and usurping each other's human resources?

A better question is, why don't these organizations have more significant web presence to grab the interest of other like minded people? Why is it I have to search them out instead of them taking advantage of the great audience of the blogosphere and community message boards to try to establish something that's forward moving.

I could fill a thousand blog posts with the grabasstic nature of Illinois GOP related web sites, but that doesn't make the point any clearer. IL-GOP by virtue of not having a clear working relationship with it's local organizations and grass roots efforts is permanently disconnected from Illinois voters and it shall remain tarnished by George Ryan - after all he is the last GOP flavor in most people's mouths. Until that connection is made again you might as well say there is no Illinois GOP. We can be assured that's what the Democrats think.

As usual, xposted at my joint.