It’s interesting to see a political party commit suicide. It’s not something that you see everyday, but you are seeing that very thing in 2024. The RNC is changing leadership this month, which is a normal occurrence. Nothing to see there. But their rationale for the change, the way they are doing the change and the changes that they are making indicate that even after eight years in bed with Donald Trump, and three election losses in a row, that they have learned nothing. Not one damn thing. Incredible but true.
The RNC is in the process of folding into the MNC, which is an acronym I just made up for MAGA National Committee, because in fact that’s the fundamental change that the RNC’s making. They’re turning the reigns and the coffers over to Trump. Here’s the bottom line and then we’ll look at how they got there: the RNC is following all the old rules of campaign leadership. The central element that they can’t seem to grasp is that the old ways don’t work. They know that they lost in 2022, 2020 and 2018. That’s pretty inescapable. But they’re not dealing with the WHY for that loss, which is Donald Trump. They are obliviously tone deaf to the fact that he is their problem. And now they’re going to give him the RNC apparatus, all wrapped up with a bow on it and he’s going to take them to the cleaners and destroy the Republican party — just as Lindsey Graham said he would in 2015.
Let me be crystal clear: You are going to see the current RNC chair, Ronna McDaniel leave. And you are going to see a pair of Trump picked co-chairs come in. And then you are going to see the end of the RNC, followed by the end of the Republican party. Hyperbole? I don’t think so. The Bulwark:
Trump this week finally called for a new RNC chair along with a complete party takeover by his campaign, determined not to have a repeat of 2020, when his campaign and the RNC had such a dysfunctional relationship that his campaign manager and McDaniel weren’t on speaking terms at one point. McDaniel is expected to step down sometime after the February 24 South Carolina primary that Trump is forecast to win handily.
Though cordial, the Trump-McDaniel breakup was months in the making, fueled by the former president’s mounting displeasure with McDaniel for hosting RNC-sponsored presidential primary debates—even though it’s a tradition for the party without a White House incumbent running.
Trump publicly stood by McDaniel until the RNC posted a relatively lackluster fundraising report two weeks ago. He then started to back away from her publicly, a win for the far-right grassroots activists, insiders, and organizations who had campaigned to unseat McDaniel by starving the RNC of money.
“We cut the oxygen off to her, the small-dollar donors, because she advanced the primary debates the way she did that was just anti-Trump,” Steve Bannon, a 2016 Trump campaign adviser and host of the War Room podcast, told The Bulwark.
Yes, Trump has hogged the small-dollar contributions. He’s a master at that. I seriously question whether there’s the connection between the primary debates and the money that Bannon says there is. The debates were strictly political theater and Trump didn’t want them because he wanted to be treated as the incumbent. My best guess is that McDaniel was thinking some miracle might occur and Trump would either actually debate (remember, she set one debate in Miami, specifically for his benefit) or that maybe Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis could actually perform a miracle. In any event, it’s water under the bridge now. Now here’s something you need to look at.
“There are too many people in that RNC building in Washington that think they call the shots. They don’t,” said one former RNC adviser. “This is Trump’s party and Trump is taking this back to the way it used to be: the nominee is in complete control, and his people are running the show.”
This is where it gets nuts, right here. Because this is where they are playing by the old rules. If this was a different day and age, yes of course it would make sense that John McCain be in control or Mitt Romney, whomever the nominee is. Neither of them had massive legal bills and were under indictment in four different jurisdictions and all the rest of Trump’s baggage that we can all recite from heart. Yet, in the ultimate normalization of Trump’s madness, the RNC is ready to give him the cash register, the database, everything that they have they intend to give to him. This spells the doom of the party. Bookmark this piece because you will be reading articles about all this later on in 2024 or for certain in 2025 when these maneuverings now will have come to bear their strange fruit.
Except of course he isn’t the nominee yet. Haley has yet to quit the race and Trump doesn’t yet have the 1,215 delegates needed to clinch the nomination.
But he is pushing ahead as if he already has it. And a national political party, with armies of volunteers and staff in all the states, is a major prize for a presidential campaign.
The RNC, like its Democratic counterpart, can work much more in tandem with a presidential campaign than any other type of political committee, and the RNC can take over or help defray hefty campaign expenses like staging events, fundraising, advertising, polling, transportation, and identifying, reaching, and turning out new and old voters.
Financially outgunned and out-organized so far by Biden in crucial swing states, Trump’s campaign desperately wants to take over the RNC and make it operate as closely as the party did with President George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign. During that race, for instance, the Bush-Cheney campaign was able to offload 50 percent of a pricey Spanish-language ad that ran primarily in Florida simply because it featured other Republicans in the commercial and because it included phrase that it was supported by Bush and “el grupo Republicano” (“the Republican team”).
Truer words were never spoken. Trump’s campaign indeed does desperately want to take over the RNC. I think the main reason, however, is cash flow. Yes, he is thinking about winning the election, because that’s the only way he can have a prayer of dismissing the cases against himself, but for the short term, he needs to pay his lawyers. The costs are staggering.
On Monday, Trump announced he wanted [Chris] LaCivita to act as the RNC’s chief operating officer and said he wanted North Carolina GOP Chair Michael Whatley to replace McDaniel, confirming a report from last week in The Bulwark about campaign staffing as it turns toward the general election. Trump wants his daughter in law, Lara Trump, to serve as co-chair.
Trump has wanted to exert more control over the RNC ever since his 2016 presidential campaign, which had an uneasy alliance with the party at the time. Trump mistrusted the political establishment, but he chose RNC Chair Reince Priebus to be his White House chief of staff. Priebus in turn recommended McDaniel, a fellow Midwesterner, to replace him. She was in Trump’s good graces because she was chair of the GOP in Michigan, where Trump held a huge rally before he became the first Republican since 1988 to carry the state. […]
IN HIS MONDAY STATEMENT calling for Michael Whatley to replace McDaniel, Trump cited Whatley’s support for “election integrity” as a reason to back him. But RNC officials note that, under McDaniel, the RNC has hired election-monitoring staff in 15 battleground states and has launched 78 lawsuits related to ballot access and voting in 23 states.
Election court cases aside, some RNC members and donors are concerned the party would have to foot Trump’s hefty legal bills, but the Trump campaign and some RNC officials say that they will be financed separately the way it is now.
Okay, this is the point of no return, right here. IF the RNC can stay out of financing Trump’s legal bills and only cater to his campaign needs, it may survive. IF NOT, then the RNC will be sucked dry and Trump will leave the dead husk by the roadside, as he does everything and everybody once he’s gotten the use he wants out of them. Here’s another warning sign.
Last year, Trump endorsed Whatley in his bid for RNC vice chair against South Carolina’s Drew McKissick, but McKissick won. This time, McKissick wants to run for chair, but now the Trump campaign is trying to dissuade him as it begins whipping votes for Whatley.
You may recall that madman Lin Wood had a show down with McKissick, when Wood was running for the RNC South Carolina post. Wood lost, chiefly because Trump endorsed McKissick. Now Trump is endorsing one of his election denying lapdogs and you know how that’s going to end.
Oscar Brock, Republican national committeeman from Tennessee, said he would love McKissick to be chair, but he expects him to withdraw because of Whatley’s support from “the likely nominee.” One of the only vocal Trump critics on the RNC, Brock said he felt Trump was “jumping the gun” on the announcement because he’s not yet the official nominee.
Trump’s got a takeover of the coffers planned. He’s not thinking about the party or its future. He’s thinking of himself. And other Republicans are only too happy to jump on top of the funeral pyre that Trump is building out of the RNC.
In an email to The Bulwark, Ohio Republican National Committeeman Jim Dicke gushed that “Ronna is a wonderful human being who has been the best candidate for the job presented in each of the candidate election cycles. She has built an excellent hard working staff, and has enjoyed the confidence of the 168 majority.”
Still, Dicke said, “as presumptive nominee time arrives, it is always best to have a seamless working relationship between the RNC and candidate. That includes the nominee having the chair of his choice.”
Richard W. Porter, a committeeman from Illinois, held similar views, saying via email that he’s “very pleased with his [Trump’s] suggestions,” including the suggestion to install his daughter-in-law as the party’s co-chair.
“She is a great fundraiser and has star power,” he said.
Trump may have failed in his coup to take over the Capitol and stay in power on January 6, 2021 but he’s taken over the RNC in a bloodless coup. Incredible but true. These people are oblivious. They’re like a ship at sea that somehow ignores the fact that the other ship is flying the Jolly Roger and they welcome its occupants on board with open arms — only to be amazed when the throat cutting and looting starts.
All I can say is Lindsey Graham was right and they should have listened.
Lindsey Graham should have listened to Lindsey Graham
Yes. And not just on that occasion but again when he said, on January 6, that he was departing the Trump train. And then climbed right back on board.
One needs to ask bannon-so, do you trust dingleberry to run any financial show that is connected to YOUR money? I think not…hell, I KNOW you wouldn’t. Allowing dumb-ass to decide the disposition of any funds, and his daughter-in-law and the other guy will do EXACTLY as he tells them to do, is the equivalent of flushing the funds down the toilet.
The RNC might as well be called the the MNC because once dingleberry starts calling any shots, it will be magat-central. This is going to really f*ck up republican candidate funding unless they self-fund or are completely insane (i.e. magat candidates). Why? Because the regular big donors are going to run from this since they do not like flushing money down toilets. The RNC/MNC will look like dingleberry’s bankrupted businesses before the election is here I suspect. If dingleberry starts lining his pockets with election funds there won’t even be money left for magat candidates. Awwwww, that’s a real pity.
This is actually a good thing happening. Dingleberry WILL line his pockets with election funds. He WILL get caught because he is an idiot. Playing fast and loose with election funds IS actually a crime. Two birds with one stone here-‘pubes/magats lose elections because dingleberry steals from the RNC/MNC and dingleberry breaks more laws resulting in more criminal charges. I like how this is playing out.
It is the MNC. I would not be surprised if they even changed their name. Maybe what will happen is a three party system in America, MAGA, the Democrats, and some Neo Conservative party.
I agree, Spike, that Trump will suck the RNC dry of money and its donors will refuse to supply more. Down-ballot Repugnicans will be starved of funding. Rick Wilson nailed it in his 2018 book: Everything Trump Touches, Dies. The RNC and the GOP have one meagre hope for survival: that Trump goes to prison before he finishes them off.
I’m reminded of the aphorism,
‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his pay depends on his not understanding it.’ Upton Sinclair.
Once they are in Trump’s system, it’s hard to get out, once they’ve accepted those pieces of silver, they’re part of all of it.
Interesting how the RNC can destroy itself over one candidate. But the GOP didn’t have the guts to just remove him from office, so here we are.
“…He WILL get caught because he is an idiot. Playing fast and loose with election funds IS actually a crime. …”
Which is what dotard is on trial for in NYC right now, scheduled to start March 25th. Be there, will be wild! /s
The key, as I said in the article, is IF the funds for campaigning are kept separate from paying for his legal bills. That’s the biggy. And I don’t see that happening.