On Friday, the 168 members of the Republican National Committee (RNC) re-elected Ronna Romney McDaniel as the party’s chair. This will be her fourth term as RNC Chair, the longest tenure since Edwin Morgan finished eight years at the party’s helm in 1864.
In serving as the first RNC Chairman, Morgan undoubtedly deserved such longevity. Did McDaniel deserve another term? If Republicans had been winning elections in the last six years, there would be overwhelming support for McDaniel to continue her leadership of the party.
Instead, the GOP has performed miserably in the 2018, 2020, 2022 and Georgia U.S. Senate runoff elections. The Republican Party lost the U.S. House in the 2018 midterm election and lost the White House and the U.S. Senate in the 2020 election.
In the 2022 midterm election, despite the worst presidency in our nation’s history, with an open border, a horrific economy, historic gasoline prices and inflation rates, foreign policy debacles and plunging consumer confidence ratings, the Republican Party was unable to gain control of the U.S. Senate. Amazingly, it lost its third straight U.S. Senate runoff election in Georgia in the last two years.
The Democrats also did well in Governor’s races, with a net gain of two, bringing their total to 24 across the country.
While the GOP did gain control of the U.S. House in the 2022 election, it has a very weak hold on power. With only 222 Republican members, it cannot lose more than four votes to pass legislation.
With the disastrous Biden administration, expectations were high that the Republican Party would make massive gains in the congressional elections. The anemic results were quite disappointing to the grassroots of the GOP, who are the true believers in the party platform and the real workers at the precinct level. The grassroots of the party are also the people who volunteer for candidates, mobilize support for Republican Party legislation, and make small donations to the RNC and to GOP candidates.
Tragically, the grassroots have historically been taken for granted and ignored by the party’s elite governing class. With the re-election of McDaniel as RNC chair, party leaders have once again displayed their indifference and disgust for those who invest their hard-earned dollars and their time on behalf of the Republican Party.
On the issue of RNC leadership, the views of the rank and file of the Republican Party were crystal clear. They were demanding change. According to a recent Trafalgar poll, 73.5% of the Republicans surveyed wanted new leadership for the party. Only 5.6% of the respondents preferred McDaniel to remain as party leader.
When the RNC members gathered to vote on Friday, they knew Republicans from across the country wanted a new Chair. Instead of listening to these demands, RNC leaders voted overwhelmingly for McDaniel to serve another two years as the party’s Chair. The vote was not even close, as McDaniel won 111 of the 167 votes cast.
In her message to RNC members, McDaniel claimed that the Republican Party will “continue building our historic election integrity program. We are going to continue our unprecedented legal battles against the left. We are going to double down on bringing new voters into our party.”
Despite her claims about “election integrity,” plenty of Democrat governed states utilize ballot harvesting, drop boxes and mail-in ballots. The “left” seems to be winning both in elections and in the courthouses.
Due to McDaniel’s poor track record, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis called for “new blood” at the RNC. He said the “environment” in the country at the time of the 2022 mid-term election was “tailor-made” for a large GOP victory. Since it did not happen, “and we even lost ground in the U.S. Senate,” DeSantis said it was “time for a change.”
The pleas from Republican activists and leaders such as Florida Governor DeSantis were ignored by RNC members. McDaniel also won due to the support from 150 of the biggest donors to the Republican Party.
These party elites and donors need a major wake-up call from the Republican grassroots, who need to stop donating to the RNC and only support individual candidates who favor change and the “Make America Great Again” agenda.
The RNC and most of the GOP leadership live in Washington D.C., the home of the Deep State and an area firmly controlled by Democrats. Republicans from the Beltway re-elected U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) as Minority Leader and elected Congressman Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) as House Speaker. With McDaniel’s election, there will be no change in party leadership as the crucial 2024 race looms.
In this next election, the stakes for the country will be extremely high. The survival of our economy, our sovereignty, our educational system, and our national security will be at stake. It is disheartening that the GOP will be challenging the Democrats and their allies in the Deep State, Big Tech, and the media with the same unimpressive leadership team who delivered previous defeats for the Republican Party.
One hopeful sign may be the work of the House Freedom Caucus. Due to courageous holdouts from twenty brave Republicans, Speaker McCarthy agreed to a list of concessions that are promising. If McCarthy fulfills his promises, real progress may be achieved in the House of Representatives.
No such hope exists in the U.S. Senate. Among Republicans, McConnell was re-elected by a 4-1 margin. Only ten courageous Republicans voted against the “Turtle,” who delivered much more for President Joe Biden than he ever delivered for President Donald Trump.
Going into the next presidential election, the GOP is split between change agents and those who prefer business as usual.
The party elitists enjoy losing to Democrats, as they retain their perks without the real accountability of power. In contrast, the grassroots understand that losing to Democrats actually means losing our country.
If only Republican elitists understood what is happening in “flyover country.”
They desperately need to get out of Washington D.C. to see for themselves.
Jeff Crouere is a native New Orleanian and his award-winning program, “Ringside Politics,” airs Saturdays from Noon until 1 p.m. CT nationally on Real America's Voice TV Network & AmericasVoice.News and weekdays from 7-11 a.m. CT on WGSO 990-AM & Wgso.com. He is a political columnist, the author of America's Last Chance and provides regular commentaries on the Jeff Crouere YouTube channel and on Crouere.net. For more information, email him at jcrouere@gmail.com
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