What has Ronna McDaniel done for the GOP other than lose?
Zachary Faria
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Ronna McDaniel is about to win another term as the head of the Republican National Committee. It is an incredible feat, given her track record of failure.
McDaniel will face no real challenge for her position as RNC chairwoman. Her only potential challenger, Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY), saw the writing on the wall. It didn’t matter how good a campaign Zeldin ran in New York, nearly flipping the state and helping save the House GOP from an absolutely embarrassing election cycle. McDaniel’s reelection is “pre-baked by design,” as Zeldin noted, and so she is going to get to lead the party for another election cycle.
LEE ZELDIN SAYS HE WILL NOT RUN FOR RNC CHAIRMAN AND REBUKES RONNA MCDANIEL
That is fantastic news for Democrats, who watched McDaniel take control of the RNC in 2017. Since then, Republicans have lost the House in 2018 and the White House in 2020. With President Joe Biden wildly unpopular, Republicans should have dominated the midterm elections in November. Instead, the party went out with a whimper, just barely taking the House and losing one seat in the Senate. McDaniel has overseen three election cycles now, and the best she can say is that one of them (2020) was just a failure, rather than a miserable failure.
If the RNC under McDaniel is no good at helping Republicans win elections, what exactly has McDaniel been good at? What does she bring to the table? The GOP’s candidates have become worse over the last three cycles, not better. The party lost the House in a “blue wave” in 2018, lost the presidency to the political dinosaur Joe Biden in 2020, and then failed to win sweeping control of Congress in a 2022 cycle that should have been a “red wave.”
McDaniel has spent the weeks after the election calling for unity while former President Donald Trump keeps attacking every Republican that isn’t a mindless supporter of his. That includes Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, two of the only electoral bright spots for the GOP since McDaniel took over. Trump has openly undermined efforts by the RNC itself to get GOP voters to mail in their ballots. But he helped get McDaniel her job in the first place, so she continues to tolerate the self-sabotage.
The result of the midterms was clear. It was not GOP politicians ignoring abortion that killed the red wave, as McDaniel claims. Republicans won statewide in Arizona and Georgia with candidates who were not tied to Trump, and lost with candidates who were handpicked by him or who ran in his shadow. He is a loser who has spent the last five years helping Republicans lose elections.
McDaniel is in the same boat after overseeing loss after high-profile loss. There is no reason to expect that she can turn the ship around, especially while her ally Trump has set out to target the few quality candidates the GOP has fielded under her tenure. If Republicans want to actually start winning again, they should toss Trump and McDaniel overboard, not put them in charge of the party’s fortunes once again.
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