Fitz wasn’t part of the combine. He had to go so they launched a jihad against him to scare him out of the race, they succeeded. Then they didn’t like the candidate that won the primary to replace him (Jack Ryan) so they cut him loose because he got kinky with his own wife according to sealed divorce records and then replaced him with out-of-stater Alan Keyes who was sure to get crushed. Conservatives loved Keyes and so they went along. Brilliant political chess and the most disgusting event to happen in this state.
Ray LaHood led the jihad against Fitzgerald. He was rewarded with a Cabinet seat.
And unlike last time when Brady won the GOP nod they got their man in the GOP primary so they are covered in both parties. Quinn will play to Rahm’s every whim to try and win his support. Rahm made out like a bandit.
The last actual non-combiner conservative to serve as Chairman of the IL GOP (Gary MacDougal) was similarly used as a fall guy. They "allowed" him to be named Chairman in late 2002 so they could blame Jim Ryan's loss for Governor in November on the "divisive extreme conservative views of the chairman", and then be in a position to purge decent conservatives from any type of leadership position in the IL GOP. It worked beautifully for them and we've had only combiner scum as chairman since then. The combiner scum have had track records 10X worse than MacDougal and lost EVERY major office to the Dems, but of course, they're NEVER held accountable for that.
The problem is these guys play chess while our side plays tic-tac-toe. Worse, many idiots on our side simply deny that their side exists, and that Bruce Rauner and Mark Kirk really intend to reform things and shake up the system, blah blah blah...