The Republican Party doesn’t exist to elect people who call themselves Republicans – it exists to elect Republicans who are seriously committed to advancing policies based upon the GOP’s Platform (see the state platformhere, the national platform here).
Allow me to add to that simple fact: the Republican Party does not exist to provide an assist to those who want to further their selfish ambition, get invited to nice parties (like the national convention held every four years), or advance the principles espoused in the Democrat Party’s platform.
One of the more humorous complaints I hear is that the social issues are too controversial and should be dropped. I’ve got news for you – the very people arguing this have done nothing to advance the fiscal message of the Republican Party either.
That’s right – the very same people who have done nothing to move public opinion in the right direction on the social issues have also done nothing to help the public understand the dire state of our state’s budgetary crisis.
I can only name a couple of elected Republicans in Illinois who have spent any time thinking through what it’s going to take to solve the bipartisan fiscal disaster that has been created over the course of the past decade.
If you would like to learn more about the state of Illinois’ finances, here are two websites that have a great deal of valuable information. The first one is Truth in Accounting, www.truthinaccounting.org. Last summer we highlighted their work – and ran their press release which tells the tale in its title:
Truth in Accounting Exposes a 44 Billion Dollar Lie.
I’ll bet you a nice sum that you’ve yet to hear the truth from our Republican General Assembly Caucuses about how this state’s finances must be fixed.
The second organization that has done great work on this issue is Jim Tobin’s National Taxpayers United Illinois – their website is www.ntui.org.
Ladies and gentlemen, political reform is the precursor to policy reform. You will never see policy corrections until we clean up our Illinois Republican Party. The first step on that road is the reinstituting of direct elections for our IL GOP’s governing board – the State Central Committee.
Don’t be fooled by the talk that the social issues are the problem when very few of our leaders bother to honestly address our state’s fiscal mess.
And don’t be fooled into thinking the Republican Party’s leadership doesn’t have a role to play in solving the problems we face. As has been stated on these pages before – a political party is nothing if it’s not messengers with a message.
As we pointed out here, The Illinois Republican Party 2008 Platform says this:
“We call on the Republican delegations in both the Illinois House and the Illinois Senate to present an alternative budget, reflecting our principles, to engender debate on spending and to move along the process of enacting a budget for Fiscal Year 2009.”
Rank and file Republicans are still waiting for that alternative budget. Don’t expect IL GOP Chairman Andy “no litmus test” McKenna or the AWOL members of the Party’s State Central Committee to say a word on the topic either.
