McCain has GOP upbeat in Illinois

To put it mildly, Illinois Republicans have endured rough sledding in recent years.

Loss of the governor's office -- and all other statewide posts. Loss of the state Senate. Loss of a U.S. Senate seat. Erosion of suburban dominance. The list goes on.

And while they work hard to rebuild, state Republicans still face problems that simply go with the territory for a party that is internally divided and out of power.

But many Illinois Republicans are heartened by John McCain's emergence as the party's presumed presidential nominee.

Some prominent national Republicans -- Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter among them -- have branded McCain a traitor to conservative principles. Coulter hinted she might support Hillary Clinton before she'd back McCain.

Will conservative Illinois Republicans turn their backs on McCain, who easily won the state's primary Tuesday with a 47.4-percent plurality?

State Sen. Kirk Dillard -- a Hinsdale Republican and self-described moderate -- doesn't think so.

"McCain may not be their absolute favorite, but they will vote for John McCain rather than allow either Sen. Obama or Sen. Clinton to appoint a number of new Supreme Court justices," said Dillard, a McCain convention delegate.

Former Gov. Jim Edgar attributes heavy GOP losses in 2006 mid-term elections to dissatisfaction with the Bush administration.

"McCain's the best candidate to stop that slippage," Edgar said. "He does well with Republicans who don't like Bush; the maverick image helps him."

If nothing else, the resurgence of a McCain campaign left for dead two months ago has shown his knack for attracting independent voters.

And, that, Dillard said, is vital.

"There's no sugarcoating the fact that Illinois is a Democratic state," Dillard said, "and you must pick up independents and Reagan Democrats, or you're toast."

Not that McCain will find it easy to broaden his appeal to party conservatives while still appearing sufficiently moderate to keep drawing independents. Illinois Republican Party Chairman Andy McKenna acknowledged that McCain faces a balancing act and the responsibility for making it succeed.

"That's what leadership is," McKenna said.

State Sen. Christine Radogno, a Republican moderate from Lemont who fended off a conservative challenge in the primary, said conservatives who do opt for a Democrat over McCain are using a self-defeating strategy.

"There is an element that would rather see Democrats elected (than moderate Republicans) under the theory that Democrats will be easier to knock off and replace with conservatives," Radogno said. "That's been proven not to be true over and over again."

Jack Roeser, conservative founder of Family Taxpayers Network, said he will back McCain because of his "character and guts" and that the national news media over-hype conservatives' dissatisfaction with the Arizona senator.

"Something like 90 percent of the major media votes Democratic and thinks socialist," said Roeser, of Barrington. "They're wild to make this a major division. They would like to see conservatives stay home and not vote for a Republican."

Illinois Republicans do acknowledge that Democrats are highly energized, particularly here because of Obama and Clinton's state connections.

"Having Barack or Hillary be Illinoisans is just a bummer of a bad flip of the coin," Dillard said. "Just one more stroke of bad luck that we can't control."

But Republicans downplay the fact that more than twice as many Illinois primary voters took Democratic ballots than Republican -- 1.95 million to about 884,000.

"Democrats always outvote Republicans in the primaries," Edgar said. "They've outvoted us in areas where we then turn around and win the general election."

Edgar chalks up the wide gap this year not only to Obama and Clinton, but also to heavy media coverage of the Democratic race.

"If you blink, you're going to miss what happened on the Republican side," Edgar said of television news coverage.

Still, state Republicans admit they have work to do: to close moderate-conservative divisions as best they can and to attract more women voters -- issues that showed up in Tuesday exit polls.

Key to keeping the ideological divide from tearing the party apart is simply listening to each other and attending each other's events, Dillard and Radogno said. In the end, they said, both wings find far more areas of agreement than disagreement.

As for gender balance, a CNN exit poll in Illinois estimated 57 percent of Republican voters to be men.

"We need to figure out why that is and address it," Radogno said. "Sometimes you talk with women who reflexively say 'I'm Democrat.' But then you start to talk through the complexity of issues, the pros and cons, and they could just as easily be voting for Republicans."