From GOP hopeful Ted Dabrowski:
Illinois Republicans want their party to make arguments, not excuses
Excuse my paraphrasing of Public Enemy, but to answer a question recently posed by the media — “What’s the point of Illinois Republicans?” — the point is to fight the powers that be.
In one sense, that question posed by the Tribune Editorial Board is insulting.
In another sense, it is fair.
It is fair insofar as the leadership of the party has for a long time provided little vision or fighting spirit for anything resembling conservative ideas.
The expectation of waiting around for another couple of election cycles and hoping we get a better legislative map before we kick up any dust is the kind of lead-with-surrender approach that has made the Illinois GOP a superminority party.
The question is insulting because rank-and-file conservatives around Illinois already know what the point of the opposition party is supposed to be.
They also know that the Chicago political press corps has for years generally operated like the communications shop for Democrats.
Let me fill in the blanks for the media and GOP leaders alike. Illinois Republicans want their party to make arguments, not excuses.
Former Tribune columnist John Kass is correct when he argues that a bipartisan combine has decimated Illinois economically, driving a historic number of productive people and thriving businesses away.
And after more than five years of Gov. JB Pritzker, where do we stand?
Since the governor took office, Illinois has suffered the nation’s fourth-worst job growth, the sixth-worst gross domestic product growth and the seventh-worst wage growth.
But Pritzker is more concerned with
- currying favor with the extreme part of his base in pursuit of his presidential ambitions. Like making Illinois the abortion capital of the Midwest.
- Or forcing girls to compete with boys in sports.
- Or jamming diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives into classrooms.
- Or allowing for Illinoisans’ electricity bills to spike in pursuit of quixotic green energy goals.
- Or turning the suburbs into repositories of video poker halls and weed dispensaries.
It is progressives such as Pritzker, not conservatives, who are obsessed with so-called social issues that cater to their fringe at the expense of sound economic policies.
I love Illinois just as all conservatives do, but I am dismayed by what it has become under the tenure of Pritzker and his supermajority.
The point of the Republican Party is to conserve the amazing assets Illinois has developed — e.g., its infrastructure, industry, universities, arts, et al. — while developing new ones.
Both require systemic change in Illinois.
When Jimmy John’s founder Jimmy John Liautaud announced that he was moving his company’s headquarters out of Illinois in 2012, he said the thing that really galled him was not the state’s taxes so much as its policies.
“What I mind is how they spend the tax. I would stay, but the way they spend the tax is what’s really driving me away,” he said.
Since then, the bait-and-switches with taxpayer money that drove Liautaud away have exploded.
The point of the Illinois Republican Party is to run a state government that asks and answers the tough questions:
- What should state government do?
- What should it not do?
- And how should it be financed?
Answer those questions, apply the money accordingly, measure the results and report back to the people.
It is not complicated if you run a state government with the modesty, frugality and integrity with which most Illinoisans live their lives and run their businesses.
The integrity part is particularly important.
The point of the Republican Party is to stick to our governing principles, propose reform policies grounded in those principles and pursue those policies when we are finally entrusted with political power.
Now is not the time to be coy.
We must draw the contrast between an Illinois political ruling class that divvies up the spoils of state government among cronies, versus an Illinois Republican Party that seeks to govern by earning the trust of families who simply desire personal safety and affordability in the state they chose to call home.
As the Roman philosopher Seneca observed, “To live is to fight.”
That is the point of my gubernatorial candidacy.
To put in the fight to bring the Illinois Republican Party back to life — and the state with it.
Ted Dabrowski was president of the conservative advocacy group Wirepoints and is running for governor of Illinois.
