Illinois's Incompetent GOP

A professor once described the North Carolina Republican Party as a circular firing squad. The same could be said of the Illinois GOP, split as it is between moderates and conservatives, and with the threat of fractures emerging even among conservatives. Of course Rick Pearson's right, there is no better time to launch a revival than when the state's Democrats are at one another's throats in Springfield. There are also bigger underlying pressures - for example, Senator Dick Durbin and Mayor Daley aren't exactly warm friends, representing different wings of the Democratic Party. Chicago's collar counties are slowly going purple, and Republican incumbents at both the state and federal level there may come under serious electoral pressure if that shift isn't reversed.

A truly visionary program would focus not only on reviving the GOP's fortunes in suburbia but also trying to make inroads into Chicago's minority communities. Any statewide candidate has to win roughly a quarter of Chicago's votes (legal, that is, not the "vote early vote often" ones), which is presently almost impossible unless of course they effectively reach out to the city's blacks and Hispanics.