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Monday, January 19, 2004

By Ralf Seiffe

A business is bankrupt when it cannot meet its obligations when they come due. Anyone who has experience in business will eventually lose a customer to bankruptcy and dreads the notice from the United States Bankruptcy Court that one of their customers has failed. The court’s letter usually invites creditors to meet and decide the fate of the unfortunate company.

Now, after a near shut-out in the last election and years of indictments and convictions in those same federal courts, some Republicans have concluded the party is unable to meet it civic obligations and is politically bankrupt. Yesterday, they met at Triton College and functioned as the first meeting of creditors.

Bankruptcy provides people and organizations a method to fix their financial affairs by stopping their creditors from executing judgments and it is an important Constitutional function of the federal government authorized in the third clause of Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. Bankruptcy’s purpose is to ensure that the company and creditors are fairly treated by either permitting the company to survive or by liquidating the company’s assets and distributing the proceeds to the creditors.

While there is no bankruptcy protection system for political parties suffering from character or intellectual deficiencies (rather than liquidity problems), the reasons that organizations fail are similar. At one extreme, companies can suffer unfortunate catastrophes such as fires, floods and disease or massive miscalculations that are essentially one-time events.

Usually, a person or company can recover with time and goodwill. In the middle are companies that fail because their markets have changed and they haven’t developed products that stay in demand. In these circumstances, management can offer a recovery plan and if they are honest and their plan is credible, the creditors’ committee will often give the company a second chance. The companies sometimes survive and sometimes they do not.

At the other extreme, companies fail because their management is corrupt, has looted the company or lied about their affairs. Organizations with these sorts of problems rarely survive in their initial form because the creditors simply won’t trust the management.

While creditors in commercial bankruptcies worry over the money they’re owed and whether their customer will survive, a hundred or so Republicans met to hear Steve Meyer, a Republican Central Committeeman, plead for his grassroots members to seize the party and take it away from its corrupt management.

Translated to the terms a creditors’ committee might hear, Meyer and the speakers told the assembly that the current management of the party was corrupt and that they are guilty of falsely advertising their fiscal conservatism at home while voting liberally in Springfield. Others showed that the established party leaders---“the combine”---had failed to thoughtfully and honestly lead the party and are, accordingly, unable to attract voters.

Generally, creditors liquidate bankrupt companies with dishonest management and shrinking market share. Disappointed members of political parties don’t have that option and third parties simply dilute.

It’s important, then, that concerned Republicans consider the messages the party’s insurgents presented yesterday.

That message was clear and spotlighted why the party’s the establishment tried to torpedo the meeting. Names were named and complaints registered against state committeemen who have put themselves into positions to profit from their influence on the state’s business. Several officeholders attended including State Senator Chris Lauzen and former State Senator Pat O’Malley who presented their views and, to continue with the analogy, a glimmer of a reorganization plan for Illinois Republicans.

Also appearing was a dynamic newcomer, Antonio Davis-Fairman who was presented as the future of the Republican Party. He’s after Danny Davis’ seat in the 7th Congressional District and is apparently one of the emerging black conservatives and he thinks he can win.

Meyer’s plan to empower the grassroots, make the party relevant to conservatives and boost turnout has appeal and can be successful. He is convinced Republicans are more conservative than our leaders act and that voters are generally more conservative than our representatives vote.

Yesterday’s message was don’t appease liberals and for the party’s leaders to climb out of bed with the Democrats. That stance has real appeal; it was Ronald Reagan’s message and recently it served Georgia Republicans who bounced Max Cleland and elected Sonny Perdue the first Republican governor in the state’s history.

This meeting was like most first meetings of creditors; it was inconclusive. No reorganization plan emerged and the organizers set no follow-up date. This is not a disappointment however because it did accomplish two important goals. First, responsible Republican Party officials and office holders personally appeared. They confirmed Meyer’s premise that there is a malignancy in the party’s leadership and survival requires radical surgery because the party’s hierarchy isn’t tenable and must be replaced. Second, it shows there is a kernel on which to re-brand the Republican Party by using its attractive, historical principles and by opening our doors to ethnic conservatives who have been treated like property by the Democrats.

For someone who actively supported the party until George Ryan became its leader, this was an important first step; follow-through will bring me, and many other lapsed Republicans back into state politics -- along with their money, energy and influence.

Set the second meeting, Mr. Meyer, I’ll bring my friends. . .

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Ralf Seiffe advises business start-ups and product launches from Chicago, Illinois and is a political analyst and columnist for the Illinois Leader.