SPRINGFIELD - On the occasion of Abraham Lincoln's 198th birthday, President Bush's top adviser visited Springfield on Monday and sought to lay out the path forward for a Republican Party reeling from losses suffered last November.

About 450 Republican politicians and party supporters gathered as chief White House strategist Karl Rove spoke about previous party successes, the challenges of the Democratic majority in Congress and the future of the GOP.

The visit comes just days after U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, gained worldwide attention when he announced that he would be running for president in 2008.

Before Rove's speech state Rep. Bill Mitchell, R-Forsyth, said the event and the visit by Rove represent an opportunity for the Republican Party in Illinois to begin building some momentum of their own.

"It's time for the Republicans of Illinois to shake off the barnacles of the past and to move on," Mitchell said. "Rove is a great strategist and we in Illinois certainly need any help we can get in terms of the agenda that we want to go through for the next couple years. We have had some bad times. Our message hasn't been getting out."

Rove's 42-minute speech covered a multitude of talking points including education, taxes, the economy and balancing the budget. But he spent more than a third of his time discussing the war in Iraq and the war on terror, which he described as a battle between civilization and barbarianism.

"It's the defining issue of our generation, like it or not," he said. "We had a great year of success in 2005 with these incredibly historical elections to pass a constitution and elect a government. But as democracy emerged in Iraq our enemy hit back hard. They understood the danger that democracy presented to their cause and so 2006 was a pretty bad year"

Rove said he believes withdrawal was not an option in Iraq and that victory can be the only objective in Iraq. But Rove did not say what U.S. victory in Iraq would look like.

"It would not be like America to leave our promises unkept, our friends abandoned, and our own security at risk," he said.

Blackwell Thomas can be reached at blackwell.thomas@lee.net or 789-0865.