One of the worst-kept secrets over the past few weeks is that House Republican Leader Tom Cross has been considering a run for Illinois attorney general.

Cross has reportedly been asked by Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka and U.S. Representative Aaron Schock to think about a bid in case Attorney General Lisa Madigan decides to run for governor or simply not run for anything.

A former county prosecutor, Cross has long considered a bid for the office. But as recently as a few weeks ago, Cross' people were denying that he would do it. Now, however, they are saying it's a possibility. The calls from top Republicans and some major GOP fundraisers have apparently helped focus his mind. "Any time you have so many people requesting that you consider something, you owe it to them to do some due diligence," explained one Cross backer last week.

In yet another blow to the Illinois Republican Party, state Senator Matt Murphy (R-Palatine) has withdrawn his name from contention for the state-GOP-chair job.

And, no, it didn't have anything to do with Murphy being injured during the annual House-versus-Senate softball game last week.

Murphy was approached a month or so ago about taking the party job when the current chair, Pat Brady, eventually resigns.

Brady has been under fire all year for publicly supporting a gay-marriage bill, among other things. The Illinois Republican Party's platform specifically opposes gay marriage, so Brady was accused of being in flagrant conflict with the party's beliefs. Brady has said that he merely supported gay marriage as a private citizen, but the hard right in the GOP didn't buy that argument.

Murphy was initially open to the chair idea and seemed to be leaning toward taking it. He wanted assurances, though, that Brady would be allowed to resign on his own timetable.

During the House floor debate over the National Rifle Association-backed concealed-carry bill last week, I was told by an intimate of Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan that the speaker wanted to make sure the bill received no more than 64 votes. Because the bill preempts local-government home-rule powers, the bill required a three-fifths majority of 71 votes to pass.

The anti-gun forces had been demoralized the day before when their highly restrictive concealed-carry proposal received just 31 votes, so Madigan wanted to do the same to the NRA, I was told. The idea, the source said, was to show both sides that they couldn't pass their bills on their own and that they needed to get themselves to the bargaining table and work something out.

You can always tell when somebody is losing an argument because they are constantly backtracking and recalibrating. And it's no different with gay marriage.

Back in January, for instance, newly elected state Senator Jim Oberweis (R-Sugar Grove) freely admitted that gay marriage was at the heart of his desire to oust state GOP Chair Pat Brady, who'd recently announced his support for a Senate bill to legalize same-sex marriage.

"I believe we have to have a meeting to ask Pat for an explanation, to modify his actions or get a new CEO," Oberweis told the Kane County Chronicle back then. "Our CEO has taken very open, public action contrary to the organization, and that's unacceptable."

Immediately, however, more-moderate GOP leaders pushed back hard against Oberweis, saying that ousting the party's chair over gay marriage would send absolutely the wrong message to the voting public, which was coming around fast to supporting the issue. Young people, in particular, counted themselves as strong supporters of the concept, so the old ways of staunchly advocating outdated policies would continue to stunt the party's potential growth.