Bailey: Action Items For The IL GOP

Written by David E. Smith

Former State Senator Darren Bailey (R-Louisville) has been posting personal video content on his Bailey for Illinois Facebook page for years now. These updates include political commentary, campaign updates, a Christian devotional readings and prayer. Since these video commentaries are very informative and encouraging, I often share these postings on my own personal social media platforms.

One such recent video post deserves much greater attention by a much greater audience.

In his video post on Tuesday, August 6^th, Darren highlighted some issues that have been on the minds of grass-root conservatives for some time regarding the Illinois Republican Party. He highlights four points that we list below along with the transcript of his commentary.

However, the most important call-to-action item – one that will resonate with conservative voters across the state – is the emergence of so-called “Republicans for Harris,” – yes, extreme left-wing Kamala Harris.

This group of unprincipled politicians aim to peel away votes from Donald Trump. Illinois mugwumps Adam Kinzinger, Jim Edgar, Ray LaHood and Joe Walsh are among the high-profile snollygosters publicly endorsing Harris and encouraging others to vote for her. (Read more HERE.) Their duplicity is astonishing.

Darren also brings to our attention something called “The Edgar Fellows Program” – an initiative launched by former Illinois Governor Jim Edgar (RINO) to develop “leadership and governing capacity in Illinois.” The program focuses on fostering respectful and collaborative leadership to address major policy issues, emphasizing the importance of statesmanship over partisan, ethnic, and regional rivalries. This program is run through the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois.

Darren’s is absolutely correct to call for a censure of these traitors. Not only should township and county Republican organizations issue resolutions to censure these individuals, so should the Illinois Republican State Central Committee (SCC). Therefore, we encourage you to take action and speak out. The corporate media is celebrating these turncoats and giving them a platform to denigrate the Republican nominee. We must make it clear that they DO NOT speak for us.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to the members of the Illinois Republican SCC to urge them to censure Kinzinger, Edgar, LaHood and Walsh. Republican officials should not ignore those who claim the “Republican” mantel but then openly disparage policy planks, principles and publicly work against the GOP nominee for POTUS.

To be clear, we are very grateful that these things are being discussed, and for our part, we hope you will consider these important points of reformation and speak out to the Republican State Central Committee to encourage them to heed these changes.

The following four points, attributed to Tom DeVore, former GOP candidate for Illinois Attorney General, are summarized here:

1.) The Illinois GOP should stay out of primary races.

2.) The Illinois GOP should stay out of the campaign efforts of Springfield’s House Republican Organization (HRO) and Senate Republican Organization (SRO).

3.) The Illinois GOP should fully support Republican nominees over Democrat nominees – especially in state-wide races.

4.) The Illinois GOP should reject donations from groups who engage in activities that are contrary to the Republican Party, i.e. Illinois Teachers Unions.

Watch Darren’s video commentary here or read the transcript below for more important information.

Transcript of Darren Bailey’s August 6, 2024 video commentary:

And guys, I’m telling you, and you know it, we got some problems ahead. We have problems in our own party. Maybe last week, last week ago, last Tuesday, or Monday or Wednesday, I don’t even know, look back, you’ll see that Thomas DeVore and I did a Facebook Live together, and it was pretty amazing. He’s a very creative individual, and he came with four points, and we’re going to slowly be pushing this out there. And this is some stuff for the Illinois Republican Party to address, actually, and I know I do this a lot. I’m going to have state central committee people get ahold of me and say, Hey, why didn’t you talk to me about this and blah, blah, blah. Well, it just doesn’t work like that. It’s a little too slow. What works is getting you fired up and you en masse getting ahold of your state central committee people and Kathy Salvi, the Illinois State chair. They’re all wonderful people. They need our encouragement.

And when people come in force to say, Hey, we’re demanding change, well, that’s when change gets done. Tom DeVore, and I know I’ve said it 100 times, I’ve posted the names, every congressional district has a state central committee person. Find out who that is. Go to your county GOP. And when I talk about some of this other stuff, I’m going to talk about censoring some Republicans here in a little bit. But Tom came up with four pretty awesome points, and we’d like to see these eventually make their way into the bylaws of the Illinois GOP, and this is for the state party of his first basically stay out of primaries. I mean, just stay out of primaries. Let the people of each district voting area, let them decide. Let the candidates that saw even footing. If you got a message to get out, let the candidates get it out. There’s no need.

If you’re a good elected official, then your record should speak on itself. You’ve obviously gotten out and you’ve met the people of your district, so you shouldn’t have anything to fear. The only fear that you should have is if you voted for some bad bills and now you got somebody coming after you. That’s what you should fear. But many times, the Republican Party, and that’s my … If you look at my history of every race that I’ve won, I’ve ran against people who have went off the rails. I don’t want to be a politician in and of myself, but I believe in accountability, and I’m sick and tired of what’s going on. So number one, the Illinois State GOP, stay out of primaries because they are, they’re donating. If you’ve ever donated money to them, a lot of money, a lot of resources, mailing discounts sometimes get handed to the incumbent, and that needs to stop.

Number two, this one’s a little confusing, but the Illinois GOP should not support basically the Senate Republicans or the House Republicans. They just need to stay neutral, let them do what they want to do, because here’s the deal. When you run as a state representative or a state senator, you’re expected to pay dues to the House or the Senate Republican organization, and these dues really only do one thing. I call them the Incumbent Protection Program. So it’s just an unsaid fact that if you are the incumbent, they’re going to do everything that they can to protect you. Now, they don’t always do this because we witnessed this with the house. Whenever my good friends, Blaine Wilhour and Adam Niemerg ran, and two woke candidates decided to run against them, supported by the teacher’s Union, we’re going to get to that on item number four, and the house, they just stepped back and stayed out of it.

So we’re demanding that Illinois State GOP stays out of the House and the Senate organizations and actually encourages them to leave these primaries alone, and we have to focus on beating Democrats. And too often our funds get exhausted in these primaries. And too often when there’s a primary, it’s because a true conservative is running against someone who doesn’t have a conservative voting record, so that’s the fact.

Number three, once the primary winner emerges, the Illinois GOP should do absolutely everything, everything to get behind that candidate to win the general against a Democrat. And I can tell you firsthand, and you know this if you’ve been following us, that it was an absolute disaster when the Illinois GOP as a whole got behind Richard Irvin, a true Democrat. Get ready because they’re winding him up to run for something, possibly US Senate. So you ask, well, wouldn’t we rather have a Republican as opposed to someone like Dick Durbin? No, not necessarily, because if you elect someone like a Richard Irvin, he’s going to get in there, he’s going to muddle the waters. He does not stand by our party platform of conservativism and absolutely everything about his record as mayor of Aurora proves it. It’s a mess.

So no, just because you call yourself a Republican and just because you run for an office, if you don’t have an adequate voting record, you will actually, in my opinion, hurt the cause. Let the Democrats own it. It’s the same way when I was in the House and the gas tax was voted on it and half of the Republican caucus in the House got behind this gas tax. And the leadership, when I stood up and spoke and said, this is the nonsense, the leadership, said, Darren, you don’t understand. This is going to pass and we’re going to get things out of this. No, make the Democrats own it because that way that’s how you win elections.

So anyway, I’m getting off of my notes here, but demand that the Illinois State Republican Party get full force behind, do everything within their power, host fundraisers, make connections, prop them up. You go back during the Governor’s race and you probably will not find one post, one article. They still can’t say my name. They still can’t because we’re too conservative for them. They still refuse to mention the election of 2022.

Okay, number four, probably one of the biggest ones, do not condone donations from groups who engage in activities that are contrary to the Republican Party. Case in point, the Illinois Teachers Union, IEA, IPACE, Illinois Political Action Committee for Education. That’s the teacher’s union. They have turned into a grossly woke group that is destroying the future of our children, and they give millions to Republican candidates, weak Republican candidates, usually incumbents, or when they tried to root out Adam Niemerg and Blaine Wilhour. So demand that the Illinois Republican Party stand up against this stuff. Kathy Salvi is the chair of the Republican Party, and each congressional district has a state central committee person. Find out who yours is and contact them and share some of this.

So let’s talk about a few more items regarding the Illinois Republican Party. Today is the first day of what’s called the Edgars Fellowship program. You get nominated to this or you can apply, and our illustrious Jim Edgar, who was a governor [inaudible 00:11:35] during the late eighties and the nineties, he’s the one, the Edgar pension ramp, remember? You want to know why our pensions are in such a disaster here in Illinois? It’s because of Jim Edgar and the fact that they couldn’t pay the bills back then. So he came up with this wonderful idea of let’s push it off for a few years. So he got the unions to agree to wait for two years, and we’ve been disastrously behind ever since.

So Jim Edgar, Republican governor that was Secretary of State before that, everything’s great, right? No, the man’s not a Republican. He would never get behind me. He was behind Pritzker when I ran for governor, and guess what? He, along with former Congressman Ray LaHood, I think Ray LaHood was also a cabinet member of some sort with President Trump during the first term, they have publicly, with many other people across many other so-called Republicans across the nation, come out and endorsed Kamala Harris. I mean, what kind of sickness is this? So I’m going to ask you to consider getting a hold of your state central committee person and your local county GOP, and I’m going to ask these organizations to come out and officially censure Jim Edgar, Ray LaHood, Adam Kinzinger and Joe Walsh for supporting coming out and signing your name to a letter that you are going to be voting for Kamala Harris. Let’s make one thing clear. Jim Edgar never did support Trump, didn’t support him in 2016, and he was vocal, he came out about that. So let’s censure these guys.

What a censure is, it’s a public statement. Imagine all of your TV stations, radio stations, newspapers, just a headline for a day or whatever that Illinois GOP or your county GOP publicly censors. It’s just a public humiliation, a slap on the wrist. So I can’t imagine it getting any worse than this, but it does, JB Pritzker. Anyway, the Edgar’s Fellowship program, back to that. There are a few Republicans attending that, and Jeanne Ives came out with a wonderful post today demanding that no Republican or person calling it a true Republican conservative should really attend that. I never attended it during the four years that I was in office. Evidently, it teaches you to be woke.

So there’s no point in this, but it fills Jim Edgar’s pocket with power, prestige, and money. Oh, by the way, Jim Edgar rakes in … His pension every year is now well in excess of $300,000. Well, there’s several pensions. He taught school at the AIU, he taught public school, he was Secretary of State. He went right up the chain of command, and a lot of people believe that he was probably going to run for president, but he got into some kind of a trouble that he didn’t because it would’ve been a problem.

Thank you for taking action on this important call-to-action!