Thursday, March 28, 2024

Who Shall Lead? The RNC Chooses a Chairman

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Washington, D.C. – After three disappointing elections in a row, members of the Republican National Committee are being asked to once again make Michigan's Ronna Romney McDaniel their chairman.

If reelected, McDaniel could become the longest-serving party chief in GOP history. No one has ever served for eight years. If she goes the distance, it will be cause the 2024 Republican presidential nominee – who will be chosen in July in Milwaukee – opts not to replace her with a campaign ally or insider.

Whether she should stay is a hotly debated issue among party insiders. The insurgent candidate against her, National Committeewoman , says she should not, largely as an expression of dissatisfaction with the entire GOP leadership.

Before delving into the specifics of the McDaniel/Dhillon contest, a little perspective is in order. Some decry the current state of affairs in the GOP, arguing it is a party in decline that has been beaten in three successive national elections. Yet this isn't a “Trump v. Not Trump” contest. Both candidates are backed by committee members who are enthusiastic supporters of the former president. Things are much more nuanced than that.

If you were around in 1984, let's say, you might have a different perspective. In the same year, Ronald Reagan was reelected with the greatest electoral landslide in modern history, carrying 49 out of 50 states and the District of Columbia. Yet, only one Republican running for U.S. beat a Democrat incumbent, and the GOP picked up net one governorship. The party didn't take over the U.S. House of Representatives or make much progress in the battle for control of the state legislatures.

The Republicans who were around then would love to have the map as it is today. The party wouldn't capture control of the U.S. House for ten more years, not until Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey and The Contract with America campaign. The GOP now, even after the disappointing outcome in 2022, has more governors and more state legislators than the Democrats, whose redoubt has been reduced to the control of the inner cities that make so many red and purple states blue.

Things right now are not exactly bleak – as they were in 1974 when the Watergate scandal and President Richard Nixon's resignation almost destroyed the as a national political organization. One could and probably should argue the GOP is on the edge of a breakthrough that could breach the so-called “blue wall” protecting the 's pathway to the White House.

Additionally, , who ended up losing in 2020, did so despite winning 11 million more votes than he had four years earlier. That's quite an accomplishment. Who believes division is more important than either multiplication or addition in the formula for growing the vote?

It's also true the number of votes cast for Republican candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2022 exceeded the number of ballots going to Democrats. The numbers could have been higher – pollster David Winston and others have analyzed the exit polls and determined that for the GOP at least, turnout was not a problem. What didn't work was the way Republicans running for the House and Senate and governor cast the election as a contest between “us” versus “them” in states and districts where the number of people who considered themselves “us” wasn't sufficient to create a majority.

This is not an argument for moving left. The Contract of America, which, even after almost 30 years, remains the template for success, was a thoroughly conservative document. What made it different was the way those leading the charge on its behalf, which included then-GOP Chairman Haley Barbour, approached the political environment by reaching out to all the voters frustrated with Washington saying, “Give us a chance. If we don't do what we promised, throw us out. We mean it!”

The GOP delivered, which is why the Republicans, for the first time in 80 years, achieved back-to-back majorities in both congressional chambers.

The difference between the two should be obvious. One sought to “grow the vote” by broadening the party's appeal, while the other, perhaps without realizing it, had the effect of narrowing it.

What neither McDaniel nor Dhillon has spent much time discussing is the way to broaden the party's appeal so that people who don't usually vote Republican (or who have gotten out of the habit of doing so) feel comfortable casting their vote for the GOP.

It's all well and good to raise, as Dhillon has, the issue of overpaid consultants who continue to receive well-paid assignments from the RNC whether they produce results or not. Every chairman has had to deal with that problem whether they were elected independently by the members of the committee or put in office by the president's political team. The RNC is a resource organization, not a policy shop. It raises and spends money, files legal challenges to protect voting rights and prevent changes to election law that are adverse to the party's interests, runs training programs for candidates and campaign managers and helps underfunded state parties be competitive if they're fortunate enough to have the right candidates running for office.

People who want to influence what the party stands for can do it by becoming active at the grassroots level. Plenty of folks who are prominent officeholders and part of the GOP's elected national leadership got their start working against tax hikes, on behalf of the unborn, or as advocates for reform in states dominated by Democrats who acted as though public employee unions were their most important constituents. That's important but no one expects (or at least should expect) the party chairman to make policy and for party members to follow those dicta in lockstep with the leadership. That's what Democrats do.

Getting back to the McDaniel/Dhillon contest, it's interesting that the committeewoman from California was the best those who desire a change could do when coming up with a candidate to challenge the establishment. Sure, you can only recruit from the poll of people willing to run but is the Golden State model for success at the polls the one that state parties across the from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon, should be following?

McDaniel, for all her faults, both real and imagined, was at least chairman of a state party organization where the Republicans achieved success on the ground. They didn't win everything there was to win in Michigan during her tenure, but her record is a good one. She knows how to win, even if she hasn't exactly proved it beyond a reasonable doubt during her time at the helm of the RNC.

What's puzzling is the unwillingness of any of the sitting or recently departed state chairs who have a proven track record of electoral success back home in 2020 and 2022 to allow their names to be placed in nomination. If McDaniel has served too long and if a change is needed, why not choose an operative who's proven they know how to win?

There are several from which to choose. Like Michael Whatley, the North Carolina GOP chairman who presided over a campaign cycle that saw the Republicans win a highly competitive race for an open U.S. Senate seat and every U.S. House seat that could be won added members to the GOP delegation in the state legislature and flipped control of the state from D to R.

Iowa Republicans led by Chairman Jeff Kaufmann swept every statewide office for the first time in four decades, won all four U.S. House seats, reelected a U.S. Senator and picked up seats in both chambers of a state legislature they already controlled.

GOP leaders in West and also posted major gains as well by helping candidates win. In Florida, the Republicans won just about everything that wasn't nailed down but the chairman, Joe Gruters, is in a competitive race for RNC treasurer. Why aren't the outsiders who want a change talking them up instead of focusing the campaign on candidates from two states where 2022 wasn't exactly a banner year for the GOP?

What does the party need? How about a chairman that's familiar with the mechanics of campaigns, knows how to schmooze donors, can get through an interview without being reduced to a stammering mess and can build an infrastructure and hold it together when everything else seems to be falling apart? That's a tall order in a job that's essentially thankless. Whoever has the reins over the next two years needs to be someone who wants to win and knows how to do it. That's what the members of the committee and the grassroots should care about, not the smears being peddled by insiders and wannabes who believe it that's the way to power. We're better than that.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

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Peter Roff
Peter Roff
Peter Roff is a longtime political columnist currently affiliated with several Washington, D.C.-based public policy organizations. You can reach him by email at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @TheRoffDraft.

2 COMMENTS

    • A Romney she IS, and there used to be an old adage: ‘Blood is thicker than water.’ Despite the risk of painting her family with too broad a brush, it does make one stop and think.

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