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As expected, Ives joins call for ILGOP shakeup

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Illinois

* Let’s circle back to Hannah Meisel’s report this morning…

“We no longer have a governor to lead us, so it’s up to us and it’s up to me to lead this party forward,” [Illinois Republican Party Chairman Tim Schneider] said. “You’re never going to have to fire me. Because if I can’t do this job, I’m going to quit. But I’m not going to quit because we can win and we can achieve victory and we can do great things as an Illinois Republican Party.”

It was about then that outgoing State Rep. Jeanne Ives (R-Wheaton), who narrowly lost to incumbent Gov. Bruce Rauner in the March primary running far to the right of the governor, picked up her belongings and exited the room.

“I’ve got better things to do with my time to listen to that,” Ives told The Daily Line when asked why she was leaving the meeting only an hour in.

* From the Illinois Conservative Union…

Almost one month has passed since the November 6th midterm elections. Many have analyzed the losses suffered by the Republican Party in Illinois. To the base of the Party – Conservatives who stand firmly on the adopted Republican Party platform – the causes are abundantly clear. Party leadership made no attempt to unify the Party, failed to support good candidates and failed to effectively communicate to voters the principles of the Republican Party. Due to this failure of leadership and lack of accepting any responsibility for the losses, Illinois Conservative Union (ICU) calls for Tim Schneider to step down from his position as Chairman.

“It’s obvious that some of those in Party leadership are out-of-touch with mainstream grassroots Republicans. The grassroots want leadership to support the Party platform; support candidates approved by the Party base—not those hand-picked by leadership; support and defend the Constitution of the United States and support the policies of the President”, said Babette Holder-Youngberg, Communications Director for ICU.

“They [IL GOP leadership] need to know we will work with them and be a force multiplier or we will work around them, but we are the workers in the Party, from every corner of the state,” said Jeanne Ives, Senior Fellow, ICU.

The group was founded by the West Suburban Patriots. It has no active political action committee, but it does have a Facebook page with 420 “likes” and several conspiracy theories.

posted by Rich Miller
Monday, Dec 3, 18 @ 4:56 pm

Comments

“Support policies of OUR PRESIDENT” !!! I see Cullerton at 42 and MJM at 76-77!!!

Comment by Wow Monday, Dec 3, 18 @ 5:13 pm
So West Suburban Patriots speak for the people. And everyone else is an unpatriotic mope. If they don’t want candidates hand picked by leadership, what’s to keep them from running their own candidates?

Comment by Anonymous Monday, Dec 3, 18 @ 5:14 pm
The Republican party in Illinois does need to find a way forward. This ain’t it.

Comment by Pundent Monday, Dec 3, 18 @ 5:16 pm
Ives and this group are unified.

Purity.

To this President, to the platform, to the grassroots…

… let’s not look to win 60 and 30, under the Reagan Rule… no… that’s surrender, and R _ _ _, and we can’t have a big tent.

Its these type of groups that will crush a party into continued minority status.. for the grifters to peel those away they can call phony… to “the cause”

I’ll know in 38 seconds where the party will be, and if Ives and her ilk decide they will dictate terms of membership, and those terms are “purity forever”… I’ll be one of the the “lapse Republicans” that the party will permanently lose.

It’s up to Brady and Durkin to think Reagan… and build by inclusion, and heed some Baise and Edgar words too.

I’ll know. It won’t take long… I’ll know.

Comment by Oswego Willy Monday, Dec 3, 18 @ 5:17 pm
I always like it when a group labels it patriot, American, or whatever because if your not with them then automatically you must be a commie. I am officially without a party and will not live long enough to see a viable state wide Republican Party

Comment by DuPage Saint Monday, Dec 3, 18 @ 5:18 pm
God, Guns, no Gays, and “Santorum Law” for pregnant rape victims will make the IL GOP as irrelevant as the CA GOP …

Comment by Smitty Irving Monday, Dec 3, 18 @ 5:24 pm
As Jeanne Ives tries to take the Illinois Republican Party further to the right, she is going to alienate the centrists in the middle. Rauner tried to buy the Republican party, and his ownership led to their defeat. He also tried to follow an ideological pro-business agenda and it cost him the governor’s race. Jeanne Ives wouldn’t have beaten JB Pritzker. She’s so far to the right in this center-left leaning state, there’s not much more room for her to go. The only place she would have a chance of winning are the rural counties in Illinois, which Bill Brady proved aren’t enough to win. Rauner won every county but Cook in 2014. Jeanne Ives won’t do that.

Comment by Hottot Monday, Dec 3, 18 @ 5:27 pm
Maybe the GOP just didn’t attack Madigan enough. Maybe they should have tried to link every dem candidate to Madigan. That would work, right?

Comment by TheEastWind Monday, Dec 3, 18 @ 5:34 pm
Here’s the rub;

There are districts where this path of Republicanism, that 80%, where it will win the day.

If this group then welcomes, as a party, where pro-choice members can win in districts, or can have less than an A+ rating from the NRA… or be pro-labor, pro trade labor groups… you know, see districts where 80% of the platform can work and…

Oh… what’s that…

===“They [IL GOP leadership] need to know we will work with them and be a force multiplier or we will work around them, but we are the workers in the Party, from every corner of the state,” said Jeanne Ives, Senior Fellow, ICU.===

Get it, forget it.

Natch.

Comment by Oswego Willy Monday, Dec 3, 18 @ 5:39 pm
Honestly, it might be best for moderates to just step out of the way and let the “Trumpites” take over. No matter how successful they are, there is no path to victory with Trump’s name on the ballot in two years. If they drag the party to ruin, it might offer an opportunity for a rebuild in the distant future. With all of the infighting, it’s hard to see how this party can survive this political era.

Comment by NIU Grad Monday, Dec 3, 18 @ 5:42 pm
= It’s obvious that some of those in Party leadership are out-of-touch with mainstream grassroots Republicans. =

By the election results, it’s obvious that these self-proclaimed “mainstream grassroots Republicans” are out of touch with the mainstream of Illinois residents. Of course DuPage Saint is likely correct, the “patriot” group regards anyone who isn’t like-minded as un-American.

Comment by cover Monday, Dec 3, 18 @ 5:43 pm
Does Jeannie get her official tricorner hat with her fellowship?

Comment by TominChicago Monday, Dec 3, 18 @ 5:50 pm
You can all laugh, but she’s probably not wrong about party leaders being out of touch with grassroots republican voters. Individual party supporters, the ones that make calls and knock on doors and look forward to voting in coming elections are simply not moderates. And they don’t support moderates (Bruce Rauner can attest to this). And the moderates in GOP can not win elections in Illinois without them.

Plus let’s say she and her cohorts in IL political power structure were to leave Illinois overnight - would Schneider and the moderates be able to convincingly separate their brand of GOP from trump and senate republicans nationally? No, at least not enough to win a bunch more seats. They’re stuck with each other for the foreseeable future

Comment by Lester Holt’s Mustache Monday, Dec 3, 18 @ 6:10 pm
Illinois GOP. a party without a state. If only there were a better state where they may roam. Texas maybe. They have lost their way. Go ahead and hitch your wagon to Ives. Let’s see where that takes ya.

Comment by Generic Drone Monday, Dec 3, 18 @ 6:12 pm
As a Democrat, I suppose I should take joy in the dysfunction and divisions in the ILGOP, but in reality I do not. Granted many of these problems are self inflicted and their current problems could have been predicted years ago.

I know I am showing my age, but I remember the GOP as being a party of some principled conservatives who were respected by the Democrat majorities in the GA. And these were people who had to be acknowledged as having alternative and reasoned ideas on legislation.

I am thinking about people like my former Senator Dave Luechtefeld. He and I could not have been more different, but we could always have reasoned disagreements on issues and always parted as friends.

Willy, my friend, I feel for you. Can you imagine how I feel when when 80% of my neighbors and “friends” religiously vote for the Republican candidates regardless of their “purity” and only because they are not from Chicago and not connected to MJM. The ILGOP has its problems, but downstate Dems face problems as well.

And my party is not immune either from the “Purity” test. We have our internal problems as well, especially here in Southern Illinois. Our candidates have fallen in past years to those Republicans who have appealed to the lowest common denominator and message to win their campaigns.

The times we live in, money and personalities are changing the norms of what used to be fairly predictable political discussions on policy, and the diminished lack of civility has only made matters worse.

Comment by illini Monday, Dec 3, 18 @ 6:17 pm
- illini -

We’re two sides of the same coin… of trying to govern Illinois from the middle, away from the extremes.

It’s a good place to be.

Be well.

Comment by Oswego Willy Monday, Dec 3, 18 @ 6:36 pm
It’s so cool that the Republicans in Illinois still consider themselves a party. It’s really more of an intimate get together.

Comment by Ducky LaMoore Monday, Dec 3, 18 @ 6:41 pm
@Willy - Thank you, my friend.

Comment by illini Monday, Dec 3, 18 @ 6:47 pm
Is it obvious Ives would have done that much worse than Rauner? McCann might not have run, and those votes may have gone to Ives. Plus, I think having two women at the top of the GOP ticket (Gov, AG) might have caused people to give them a second look.

Comment by DarkHorse Monday, Dec 3, 18 @ 7:17 pm
Can someone point out for me any Ives achievements?

Comment by Just Me Monday, Dec 3, 18 @ 7:23 pm
=== “It’s obvious that some of those in Party leadership are out-of-touch with mainstream grassroots Republicans. The grassroots want leadership to support the Party platform … ===

I’ve heard that harangue from the far right throughout my professional career. Almost all of the GOP successes at the state level during that time resulted from ingnoring the advice of the radical right and picking centrist candidates.

Comment by Norseman Monday, Dec 3, 18 @ 8:01 pm
I’m not sure if it qualifies as an “achievement” but she almost beat a guy that lost by 15 points.

Comment by Pundent Monday, Dec 3, 18 @ 8:04 pm
Not joking, but the R party is morally bankrupt and if there is a schism in Illinois it may lead to something new that rises from the ashes. Since we only allow ourselves two parties in this country, it would help if one of the two was not demonstrably insane. If the R party has to die, then maybe the new party could start in our fair state. They keep saying they are the Party of Lincoln, how about a party that actually mirrors something of what old Abe stood for. I can’t for the life of me think of what one would call that new party, but not Republican.

Comment by w9gp7 Monday, Dec 3, 18 @ 8:22 pm
Wow — so now the HQ company CO is talking about being “force multipliers”? What will the next militarist metaphor be? But that’s Ives: Never throws water on a fire she has a bucket of gasoline handy.

Comment by Flapdoodle Monday, Dec 3, 18 @ 9:08 pm
Even a mighty tree begins as an acorn that fits in your pocket…

Comment by Anonymous Monday, Dec 3, 18 @ 10:27 pm
The greatest perversion of the English language is the abuse of the word “conservative.”

For many years now, any reactionary, misogynist, racist, mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging dingbat can call themselves “conservative” and get an attaboy from the despicable Murdoch media empire.

Thank goodness for the Never Trumpers amongst us. They are true conservatives, and patriots.

I watched McConnell, Ryan and Pence today sing the virtues of a great patriot, a great man, and all I could think was “Vichy, you have no shame.”

It’s the Curse of the Southern Strategy, and that’s how we ended up with the grotesquery of Trump.

Ike was a conservative. He sent the 82nd Airborne to enforce a Supreme Court order, protect the black kids from a murderous mob, and integrate Little Rock High at the points of bayonets.

Dirksen was a conservative. Back in the day, he did the heavy lifting to kill old Jim Crow (who’s back again; thank that nice man Chief Justice Roberts for that).

Reagan was a conservative. So was HW. They did not yank the crank of vile racism for personal gain, like the totalitarians on the march today across the world, led by the current president.

Check out Reagan and HW, back in the day.

They were Republicans. They were conservatives. They were decent, grown-ups, not hateful grievance peddling juveniles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ixi9_cciy8w

Comment by wordslinger Monday, Dec 3, 18 @ 10:40 pm
=== Even a mighty tree begins as an acorn that fits in your pocket… ===

Presuming it’s a very wet and dirty pair of pants.

Comment by Norseman Monday, Dec 3, 18 @ 10:59 pm
I’ll just put this in this thread to point out the demographic shift not only in IL GOP voters, but in electeds as well

New breakdown by gender of Illinois legislative bodies

House
Dems go from 34 women to 37 exactly 50 percent of 74 seats

Reps go from 13 women to 7 16 percent of 44 seats

Senate
Dems go from 13 Women to 18 Women 45 percent

Reps stay even with 2 women 11 percent

Stark change

Comment by ArchPundit Tuesday, Dec 4, 18 @ 8:29 am
To quote the great Michael J. Madigan.. “When are you guys going to fold up your tent?”

The ILGOP is not going anywhere with Trumpism or Raunerism. Time for a real plan, and insanity ain’t it. Good luck to the moderates in ILGOP.

Comment by Anonymous Tuesday, Dec 4, 18 @ 9:04 am
Another reason why the ILGOP is the permanent “Moon Party.”

Comment by Anonymous Tuesday, Dec 4, 18 @ 9:19 am
“senior fellow”

Comment by Molly Maguire Tuesday, Dec 4, 18 @ 10:45 am
ILGOP should focus exclusively on an agenda that makes Illinois attractive to growing businesses and young families. Focus on education, pension reform, property tax reform, tort reform, and good governance initiatives. Leave the social conservative stuff to the national GOP.

Comment by Chicagonk Tuesday, Dec 4, 18 @ 1:04 pm