Some straight talk for Illinois Republicans

Trump and his team are going to put America back on track. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could do the same with our Illinois Republican Party?

“Men don’t follow titles. They follow courage.”

-- William Wallace to Robert the Bruce in Braveheart

That line may have only been voiced by actor Mel Gibson in a now classic 1995 movie, but who would deny its truth?

The courageous leaders versus the title collectors. We see it all through history and in every endeavor.

On the political front, let’s compare the results of one man, Donald Trump, who chose the courage route, to the folks allegedly running the Illinois Republican Party where hoarding titles is the be-all, end-all.

It almost goes without saying that Donald Trump has come to epitomize courage. For nearly a decade now he’s stood up to vicious, unprecedented attacks on multiple fronts simultaneously from deranged journos, corrupt prosecutors, left-wing lunatics, and even from a few jealous Republicans.

But Trump never wavers and just keeps on fighting for us.

And as if that weren’t enough, the man is shot in the face in July, doesn’t miss a beat, and come November scores an incredible national victory which will surely go down in history as one of, if not THE greatest comeback in American political history.

That’s what courage looks like and that’s why Americans line up by the tens-of-thousands for hours to attend a Trump rally.

It’s also why so many people across the country are willing to donate their time volunteering for Trump on the ground.

That’s the kind of energy, love, and dedication a leader with courage inspires.

So, America is back on track (or soon will be), and so is the Republican Party on the national level.

That’s the good news.

But what about in Illinois, and specifically where the Illinois Republican Party is concerned?

The reality is this was yet another election cycle where the GOP in Illinois significantly underperformed the party nationally.

Going into this election, the GOP in Illinois had already just about lost everything that could realistically be lost in the state.

The best spin that can honestly be put on things this year is that the Illinois GOP’s performance sucked marginally less compared to some other recent elections.

The Illinois GOP gained no seats in either the State House or State Senate, but at least it didn’t lose any additional seats this year after the horrible election of 2022. In other words, the GOP in Springfield maintains the same super-minority status in both chambers, or more to the point, the same level of irrelevance.

No U.S. Senate seats were up in Illinois this time but of course all 17 U.S. House seats were. The GOP made no pick-ups. We still hold only 3 of the 17 seats in Illinois.

Donald Trump’s win is really the only thing Illinois Republicans had to celebrate this election—and for that celebration we have to thank other states which actually did their job.

Yes, Trump only lost Illinois by 11 points this time—a significant loss for sure, but a substantial improvement from his 17 point loss in the state in both 2016 and 2020.

It speaks volumes about the state of the Illinois GOP when we feel like we can pat ourselves on the back for a statewide loss that’s only in the low double digits.

But the reality is Trump received just 2,188 more votes statewide this year compared to four years ago.

In a state where a combined total of 5,633,310 votes were cast for all candidates for President, that increase is a rounding error.

To the extent the losing percentage narrowed in Illinois for Trump this time that’s entirely due to the fact the bottom fell out of Kamala Harris’s support. No doubt some of Joe Biden’s 2020 voters in Illinois switched over to vote for Trump this time, but it’s clear a lot more simply didn’t vote for Harris.

We Trump supporters got lucky. We were lucky to have such an outstanding candidate in Donald Trump, and we also caught a big break when the Democrats slated the exceptionally awful Kamala Harris to replace old Joe.

Absent those two big factors this thing easily could have gone a different way. I for one was seriously concerned that the Illinois GOP’s laser focus on titles over actual productive work might very well cost Trump the White House. Illinois Democrats wanting to volunteer for Kamala saw little reason to stay in Illinois.

Illinois Democrats could see the Illinois GOP had neglected to install even a speedbump to discourage Democrat travel to other states for canvassing and GOTV work. And so that’s exactly what they did. Illinois Democrats flooded to battleground states for months to canvas, and particularly to Wisconsin. I witnessed it firsthand when I was in Wisconsin volunteering for Trump.

It’s surely no coincidence that Trump’s victory by less than 30,000 votes in Wisconsin was the narrowest win of all the battleground states.

Thankfully, it all worked out. Fortunately, the GOP in enough other states stepped-up for Donald Trump.

As far as Illinois, I knew it was going to be yet another disappointing election for the GOP here when I attended our Republican State Convention in Collinsville in May. Once again it was a shameful affair where all the stops were pulled out to ensure the Republican rank-and-file would not have their vote restored for state party leadership.

When a small handful of selfish mediocrities (to be gracious) are willing to lie, cheat, and rig a party convention just because they know they would never get one of the big titles if Republican voters in the state had any meaningful say about it, OF COURSE you’re going to suffer another bad election cycle.

Or, to say it a different way, if you screw your own voters in May, OF COURSE the Democrats are going to beat you again in November.

And the reason I know that is because I’m not five years old. And this stuff isn’t rocket science.

The reality is the Illinois Republican Party is just going to keep spinning its wheels until Republican voters get their vote back in their state party. We need that broom to sweep out the deadwood, the incompetent, and the do-nothings.

We need that broom if we ever hope to get leaders of courage—instead of the useless title collectors who have already shown they are perfectly willing to further wreck our party just to satisfy their own selfish interests.

State GOP Chair Kathy Salvi says she favors restoring direct elections for all members of the Illinois GOP’s state central committee, the state party’s governing board. She can prove she’s serious about it by calling a SPECIAL Republican State Convention for early 2025, and there we could finally give Republicans back their vote—a vote which never should have been stolen from us in the first place.

If the Illinois GOP could hold a corrupt, horribly rigged state convention like it did in Collinsville in May—an unprofessional amateur show which sent Republicans home MORE demoralized and which actually hurt GOP prospects going into November—then it certainly should be able to host a productive state convention for a change for the purpose of getting the Illinois GOP out of the ditch it has been in this entire century.

Donald Trump is going to be our President again and I couldn’t be more excited about it. It’s going to be a fun four years. The idea that meanwhile we would all just keep sitting around in Illinois with a state GOP that’s a national laughingstock is beyond ridiculous.

The title collectors clearly have no problem with that, but serious people certainly should.

Trump and his team are going to put America back on track. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could do the same with our Illinois Republican Party? The Illinois GOP simply isn’t Trump Strong. The title collectors have failed us.

We can do much better. And we need a better class of people in charge.

If you agree and would like to join Republicans going the courage route, we would be honored to add your name to the ever growing list of direct election supporters. You can view that list HERE.

Just send me an email to restoredirectelections@mail.com and ask to be added.