Here are a couple of interesting items...

Eric Zorn takes aim at the Democrats and Republicans with regards to the budget battle going on currently in Springfield. Gridlock has reared its head in the state budget. So many things wanted such as health care, school funding, gambling, a gross receipts tax, property tax relief, electric rate relief, and on & on. With all those things going on there appears to be no compromise.

Eric Zorn talks of the Republicans in the state legislature stepping up to the plate since the Democrats couldn't come to an agreement last night a budget has to pass by a 3/5ths super majority (hmm three-fifths is never a good number but that's another blog post). Well anyway here's is a taste of his rant...

Lots has been written about the sorry state of the Illinois Republican Party -- it's all the GOP can do to find credible candidates to run for major offices, and even scandal-plagued Democratic incumbents thump the Republicans' best and brightest.

But how lame are the Democrats? They hold a majority of seats in the Illinois House, a veto-proof majority in the Senate and all six state constitutional offices. For good measure, they're firmly in charge n the largest county and city in the state.

Yet, together, they have no unifying vision, no strategy, no coherent leadership and, so, no significant accomplishments to show for their power. I tend to pick on Gov. Rod Blagojevich because his political skills don't seem to extend beyond gladhanding and raising obscene amounts of campaign cash. He preens, he insults, he threatens, he ignores and then he wonders why his big visions don't get any legislative traction.

But at least he has a vision. House Speaker Michael Madigan operates in the shadows and exhibits no determination to reform education funding, extend health care, boost public transportation and improve our infrastructure. Senate President Emil Jones can't seem to make a move without raising conflict-of-interest issues.
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Now they've blown the deadlne. Since they didn't pass a budget by midnight last night, a three-fifths supermajority will now be needed to pass a budget. This means the formerly disenfranchised (and still pathetic!) Republicans can throw their wrenches into the gears of progress too.

Little will get done. Lawmakers will kick the can of serious issue and concerns down the road, maybe with a few new gaudy casinos by the wayside.

Perhaps students in crumbling schools can think about that during their newly mandated morning moment of silence.

I wanted to write a little more about the state budget situation, but I haven't followed it as closely as I should have. So now I can look forward to how the presidential race could look in relation to Illinois.

Ramsin Canon of Gaper's Block talks about the early primaries held in New Hampshire and Iowa and then discusses the state of the Illinois GOP. Let it start it off this way before I pull a quote. Iowa and New Hampshire are making money off the rush caused by their position as the early states in the presidential primaries. So now other states want to move up their primaries to get some of the revenue of the candidates and their teams, workers, as well as the journalists who are covering the primaries. So here goes from there...

In other words, they wanted to be part of the cool clique. If some rube in Georgia was going to become buddies with the next President, why shouldn't I?

Illinois wasn't about to miss out on the party, and we rushed to move our traditional March primary up to early February. The news was covered with stories about how this was done to help "local" boy Barack Obama by giving him a state early in the process; although no doubt partially true, the concern about Illinos' potential electoral irrelevance — not to mention potentially missing out on the chance to capitalize on an energized Democratic Party electorate — played a significant role, too.

Only in this case, the all-seeing, all-knowing Democratic Party boss, and Speaker of the state House Michael Madigan may have miscalculated.

Because Illinois' status as a Barack lock in 2008 means the other campaigns will more or less skip Illinois altogether (though Hillary Clinton will likely put up some kind of token resistance as a hat tip to her considerable donor base in Chicago and its suburbs). The Republican candidates, however, will have reason to compete here; Illinois has a curious blend of Republican voters, with a solid moderate base in Chicago's collar counties, along with a powerful bloc of religious and social conservatives in central and southern Illinois and Lincoln Chaffee/Olympia Snow style Republicans in Chicago. Every Republican candidate can reasonably expect to perform well in Illinois, and so statewide operations will be necessary.

This means political money coming into the state to hire local organizers, put together Republican Party events, and intensive volunteer and delegate recruitment in every population center in the state. This could mean the revitalization of a nearly kaput state party.

Just as the Howard Dean campaign helped to reinvigorate local Democratic Parties across the country with its Internet-based activist and leadership development, so could the competitive nature of the Republican Party build the core network of activists, volunteer, and donors that the right style of Republican politician could capitalize on in the successive elections following 2008; of particular concern, I think, would be if a viable senate candidate could link up with a presidential aspirant and from there go on to mount a serious challenge to Dick Durbin.

The problem with the Illinois Republican Party the last six years or so was that their statewide success had created a party organization that operated top-down, with big money funders and powerful statewide office holders. When scandal rocked those at the top — namely then Governor George Ryan — the organization broke apart, and the separate factions began to fight amongst each other, which only intensified the collapse; Alan Keyes was the result of infighting, and Judy Baar Topinka's compromise candidacy failing to perform even reasonably well against an unpopular incumbent showed that things weren't getting better.

However, a well-managed and activist or volunteer powered campaign for a presidential candidate is just the kind of bottom-up organizing that could push leaders who are more accountable to voters — and therefore likely more appealing to the population generally — to the top of the party, and finally liquidate the party of the relics, like Bob Kjellander, who still call the shots.

Of course, Michael Madigan does have a history of being able to predict the future from the reliquary of his dank Southwest Side castle as he plays the harpsichord, so I'm not going to bet against him.

Also, if anybody can bungle an opportunity like this, it is Illinois Republicans.

Zorn and Canon makes some good points but neither are very positive with regards to the state of politics on either side of the aisle in Illinois.