By DOUG E. IBENDAHL • March 22, 2019
.
“We will dominate the battlefield. And we will win, win, win.” – President Donald J. Trump at Lima Army Tank Plant, March 20, 2019.
.
We’re so fortunate that the top leader of the Republican Party is a winner. Actually, it’s even better than that. President Trump is basically offering a master’s degree program on how to fight and win—and it’s all available online and tuition free.
.
Republicans, old and new, and across the country get it. But what in God’s name is going on in Illinois?
.
I attended the quarterly meeting of the Illinois Republican Party’s state central committee in Bolingbrook last month. This group is basically the managing board of the state GOP and it is comprised of one member from each of the state’s 18 U.S. congressional districts.
.
I hadn’t been to one of those meeting in years and I was just curious if anything had changed. The short answer is, no, nothing has changed, except for maybe the length. This one was five hours of tedium, giving new meaning to the Shakespeare play title, ‘Much Ado About Nothing.’
The reality is the Illinois Republican Party simply isn’t organized to win elections.
Don’t worry if you’ve never been to one of these meetings of the state central committee. You can certainly be forgiven for not even knowing about them. No one really promotes them, least of all our state party. You can guess for yourself why that might be the case.
The reality is the Illinois Republican Party simply isn’t organized to win elections.
Bottom line, if you weren’t there last month, don’t worry, you didn’t miss anything. That five-hour meeting had one basic message for the 40-or-so concerned rank-and-file Republicans who bothered to attend and watch: “Everyone just needs to shut the hell up and stop challenging our failed leadership that’s driven the GOP into irrelevance in this state.”
The reality is the Illinois Republican Party simply isn’t organized to win elections. .
Okay, I might be paraphrasing. But only a little.
.
Just a few months ago the Illinois Republican Party suffered one of the most devastating bloodbaths in Republican Party history. And that’s saying a lot because the Illinois Republican Party is no stranger to devastating bloodbaths.
.
And since I don’t believe in misleading my fellow Republicans, here’s some straight talk. Left on its current path, the Illinois Republican Party is headed straight for yet another bloodbath next year.
.
A blind man can see it coming. That’s reality.
.
The only existing firebreak right now to next year’s devastation is the fact the Illinois GOP has pretty much already lost about everything there is to lose. The GOP lost two more congressional seats in November, all of the statewide constitutional offices are now gone, and the small cadre of Republicans who still survive in the super-minority of the state House and state Senate are probably safe in their gerrymandered-R districts (the Democrats who drew the current districts had to put the Republicans somewhere, they couldn’t rig them all).
.
When the remaining GOP state representatives and state senators re-chose the same failed captains to steer their sinking ships (Jim Durkin and Bill Brady, respectively), they officially declared themselves pointless.
.
Frankly I have little sympathy for the remaining Republican office holders in Springfield. To my knowledge, in the entire state House and state Senate, only one person openly supported President Trump during the 2016 election. That was state representative John Cabello of Machesney Park.
.
So, the “unity” talk is all less than honest, and frankly it’s insulting. You don’t ask serious people to unify around bad management and a business model that’s failed over and over again. And you don’t try to give lectures on unity when you haven’t unified in support of the best asset the GOP has anywhere, and that’s Donald Trump.
.
If more of our GOP officials were anything like Donald Trump, they might understand that.
.
The reality is the Illinois Republican Party simply isn’t organized to win elections. Instead its core organizing principle is that a certain group of people, mostly some aging men, should be able to sit on a title, no matter how little productive use they make of that title.
.
I’ll give you just one example to illustrate. Earlier this week the Illinois Republican Party had a Facebook post which was a message from its chairman, Tim Schneider. In it, Schneider was sort of standing up for President Trump, which is all well and good, except I would also note that Schneider didn’t even share that message on his own personal Facebook page, because heaven forbid any of his Cook County friends would get the idea that he’s some kind of Trump supporter.
.
But what’s more telling, in the post Schneider claimed: “I have been unequivocal in my support for President Donald J. Trump.” To back that up, he could only offer two examples: (i) his support for Trump at the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, and (ii) “most recently at our previous State Central Committee meeting in Bolingbrook, I reiterated the Illinois Republican Party’s continued support for our president.”
.
In other words, the only examples Schneider could cite where he’s stood-up for Donald Trump were the National Convention nearly three years ago and two states over, and a meeting with a small choir of only hard-core Republicans last month.
.
At least Schneider is being honest. I live in Cook County, same as Schneider, and I can testify that I’ve never heard Schneider stand-up for Donald Trump in Chicago media, not once. And as you can surely imagine, our President is unfairly attacked in Chicago media pretty much every single day.
.
Granted, President Trump may be less than popular in Chicago and some surrounding suburbs. But how do we expect to change hearts and minds if our top officials who have been handed a unique opportunity to educate (by virtue of a big title) refuse to lift a finger?
.
President Trump is doing HIS job. We’ve never had a harder working Republican official who has advanced the ball on so many positive Republican agenda items as successfully or as fast. The Left certainly recognizes it. That’s why they attack him and his family so viciously, and smear him with lies at every opportunity. Instead of running away from the heat like so many Republicans do, Trump revels in the fight, even though too often he has to soldier forward all alone.
.
Republicans have never been so lucky, and the Republican Party has never had a better story to tell. All of this just makes the Illinois Republican Party’s cowardice even more shameful and unforgiveable.
.
I do want to be clear and say I’m not putting all of the blame on Tim Schneider and the state central committee he chairs. They are just symptomatic of a broken system and the lickspittles who enable it and allow the dereliction of duty to go on, election cycle after election cycle. (Dear lickspittles, you know who you are.)
.
I’m all about unity—when it’s meaningful and productive. So how about this—what if we unify around the proposition that if you won’t publicly stand-up for President Trump, the one Republican who is actually out there every single day fighting for us and winning, then you shouldn’t be sitting around on any GOP title?
.
All of this finally brings me to you, the committed supporter of our President. I have two concrete suggestions for you, action items we can all work together on and unify around. And more crucially, they are positive steps that will immeasurably help Donald Trump in Illinois next year against whichever leftist the Democrats nominate. Tune in to this space in coming days for more.
.
In the age of Donald Trump, it’s all about winners, not whiners. The Illinois GOP already has plenty of whiners who do little more than complain about the Democrats acting like Democrats. We need more Trump-like doers, people who actually want to get things done, and people who are actually excited about the idea of sharing the truth about the Trump Administration’s positive agenda with friends and neighbors.
.
If you are a Trump supporter in Illinois who understands and appreciates what our President is doing, now is the time for you to step up. The Illinois Republican Party simply isn’t going to fix itself. The current team on the field is never going to get the job done. We desperately need new blood, at all levels.
.
With President Trump at the helm we all have a historic opportunity. The old crowd around here has already squandered over two years. It’s time for dedicated Trump supporters to say, enough is enough.
.
Next up in Part 2: How unified Trump supporters can make history and show the Illinois GOP’s old guard how it’s done.
.
Doug Ibendahl is a Chicago Attorney and a former General Counsel of the Illinois Republican Party.
.
TWITTER
