By Pete Speer -
In response to Mark Rhoads' 3/2/14 commentary "Does the GOP label mean anything in Illinois?, I don't see you objecting to Republican support of the merde being being thrown by Democrat statists at Bruce Rauner.
The Republican Party has been tarnished. Conservative political principles have been ignored. Conservative economic objectives have been silenced. The Tea Party grew based on these principles and objectives. It succeeded in 2010 on the national level by drawing in social liberals who recognized the primacy of conservative political and economic principles. We acquired a majority in the House of Representatives and closed the gap in the Senate.
In 2012, we lost many of those gains. Why? Tea Party caucuses to increase their vote accepted the plea of the Social Conservatives to incorporate their views. The Party of Statism spent time and money luring the social liberals back to its nest. They did this through a concentrated social media effort designed to tag the opposition as wanting to rule from the top (national level) down.
They characterized themselves as protectors of individual rights and all Conservatives as Fascist, the very essence of Statism. Fearing for their rights, social liberals returned to the Democrat ranks. They were successful. The U.S. House majority shrunk, the U.S. Senate became veto proof.
Our failure in Illinois was almost unbearable. The GOP gubernatorial candidate snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. That permitted, without opposition, the Democrat 2011 redistricting. The future of the American republic is at stake, and it depends on the recapture by the states of the leadership promised them by the Tenth Amendment.
And that depends on electing a governor on the Republican ticket in Illinois. As much as I would like it, we know that when the legislature convenes in January we will likely not control either house. We need a candidate who will carry the ticket, who will assist the General Assembly candidates to maximize the votes they will get in their Districts.
The successful nominee must carry on his back sufficient new members to at least rid both houses of that veto proof majority. That is the minimum achievement level, It will provide the basis for further cumulative achievement in 2016 and 2018 and finally the Holy Grail in 2020 when we must, with a Republican governor take one or both of the Houses and draw our own redistricting maps.
Our flag is the one of Economic Conservatism providing functioning family units with the freedom, opportunity, and ability to obtain interclass mobility, risking their future with family support, and with perserverance after failure to reorganize and try again.. That search, by the way, is the basic reason for out migration from this state.
That should be our constituency. If we cannot find it, if we can not inspire and motivate it, this Republic will surely perish from this earth.
The Legislature of the State of Illinois has divided the State into political Districts. Control of the government goes to that party which can elect as a single District the governor and can in sum in each house of the legislature win a majority of the contests. Party discipline is used to enforce members to vote the platform which its leaders have intelligently written to ensure the broadest base of campaign support for its candidates. The Primary election system is used to set forth the positions which the winning candidate in each party will assume im the General Election to win the particular race.
There are certain core issues which bind together the coalitions that are identified as political parties. I submit that these are concentrated in the areas of of economics and politics, of freedom and opportunity, of the role of the family as a necessary unit of governance in a Republic. In the area of public policy they deal with the centralization of government versus the the essential role of the states and their delegation of responsibilities to the lowest possible unit of government which is, after all, responsible for the good order necessary in a civilized society.
There is a tendency among Republican social conservatives to use the term "RINO' as a prejorative with respect to Republican social liberals, as if they were not true Republicans. Some of the newly minted Republicans in 1856 and again in 1860 would thus have so described Republians who went farther than the platform and wanted to abolish slavery. That is correct. The first two Republican platforms were not planked to abolish slavery. In fact, had the three Democrats running under different party names had been coalesced into a single Democrat Party, Lincoln would likely not have been elected.
Theodore Roosevelt tore apart the Republican Party in 1912 and caused the election of Democrat Woodrow Wilson. In 1948, Truman lost both the left and right wings of the Democrat Party. Wallace on the left and Thurmond on the right, fell away. Of course, our Republican Dewey ran a front porch campaign, as if he deserved to be President. He lost, too. Truman energized the Democrat Party center and won on economic issues.
It doesn't take reading leaves at the bottom of the teacup to determine what is needed to win the various political races. We saw the earlier peaking of the Tea Party in 2010 and its weakening in 2012. To win in 2014 we must recapture what was lost in 2012.
