Dupage Policy Journal

State Rep. Jeanne Ives (R-Wheaton) thinks it is time Republican lawmakers have a meeting of the minds to have any chance of saving themselves from themselves.

“Republican Party leadership should meet and openly discuss [outgoing Gov. Bruce] Rauner's wholesale betrayal and ineptitude,” Ives, who narrowly lost to Rauner in the Republican primary, told the DuPage Policy Journal. “The result should be throwing out the current head of the Illinois GOP [IGLOP}, Tim Schneider.”

With Illinois in dire straits and many voters desperate for change, Ives said, Republican leaders should consider it a personal insult that the party did as poorly as it did in November’s general election, when Democrats easily captured both chambers of the legislature in Springfield as well as the governorship.

Cook County Commissioner Sean Morrison

“The ILGOP’s massive inability to win campaigns in the worst-run state in the nation is embarrassing,” she said. “Every aspect of our campaigns should be reassessed.”

According to the Illinois Review, Ives joined Sean Morrison, Cook County GOP chairman and Cook County commissioner, in calling for immediate action. The two have been publicly backed by John McGlasson, an Illinois GOP State Central Committee member .

Ives said many of the party’s issues could be solved by Republicans simply electing to be real Republicans again.

“We have a party platform,” she said. “If leaders and candidates would agree to uphold the well-thought-out tenets of the Republican Party platform, there would be no division.”

Finally, Ives said, it is time that Republican lawmakers make sure voters are well aware of why the state is as bad off as it is right now.

“Our minority status in the legislature gives us an opportunity to place the blame squarely where it belongs, on the Democrats who have run this state into a fiscal mess,” she said.