OPINION

What's the Plan, Ronna?

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Ronna McDaniel is a subordinate to every one of us Republican voters, and she needs to explain to her bosses – that’s us – exactly what the hell she is doing to break her half-dozen botched election losing streak. Now, understand that calling her a subordinate to every one of us Republican voters is not and is not intended to be an insult, but rather a statement of her relationship with us. She works for us. To the extent she does not understand this, or worse, disagrees, that would explain a lot about the party’s recent unbroken track record of failure.

But we are sick of failing, exhausted by defeat, and looking back longingly to the time not so long ago when we were tired of all the winning. We have to win in 2024 – have to. The left is not the moderate (in today’s terms) liberals of yesteryear but a collection of hardcore, commie-curious aspiring tyrants who want us, at best, defeated, disarmed, and disenfranchised. The more aggressive of them want us dead, either having died out through the fine grinding of time or through active measures, as everyone who spends any time at all in the social media cesspool or watches the news reports of the war on self-defense sees. The “disarmed” condition above is an antecedent to that outcome. The bottom line is that the next election is serious business, not merely some notional competition between Beltway teams for whom being in the minority for a while is no big deal. It’s a big deal, and we need a serious effort to fix the administrative and logistical problems that plague our party. 

I was against re-upping Ronna McDaniel last January, and I worked for her opponent. We argued that if you lose five times in a row you should not get a sixth chance to fail. But we lost that argument. Ronna, backed behind the scenes by Donald Trump (which I personally observed at the GOP committee convention), won. And she won fair and square and earned my loyalty. But it has been four months and I am not seeing the change that she promised and that is sorely needed. Where’s the audit? Who got fired for not performing? And the biggest question…what’s the game plan for 2024? Maybe it’s a communications issue. Maybe there is a plan. But have you heard about the plan, because I haven’t. And I’m paying attention. Failing to plan for victory is planning for defeat. 

When I see Ronna McDaniel on TV she’s talking about policy and offering cliches. I agree with them, but policy is not her job. Maybe it’s my Army background, but I want to hear her campaign plan, not that she thinks taxes are too high or that Target shouldn’t cater to perverts. We get that, but the job of GOP Chair is administrative and logistical. Ronna’s job is to make sure we have the infrastructure prepared to wage a successful 2024 campaign both in the country as a whole and in each of the states. She’s not a policy person; she’s an administrator and logistician, or should be. 

So, what’s the plan, Ronna?

We know the problems – hell, I saw them up close in 2020. As far as elections, we face outright fraud – which is the smallest part of the puzzle since it really applies only when elections are very close in select blue venues. A bigger problem is unlawful rule changes and election day shenanigans (like mysteriously broken machines or ballot shortages in red areas). These require a massive legal offensive long before election day – remember that post-election challenges, for all practical purposes, will always fail. And we face a united cultural and regime media anti-Republican onslaught. We know we face those three challenges. Have we done anything like, I dunno, gotten a few hundred lawyers ready to be in place six months out with sufficient logistical support to fight the steal in advance? Maybe, but then I think we would have heard about it. Or will we have a repeat of 2020 when there was nothing done in advance and we got bulldozed?

What’s the ballot harvesting/collection plan? How will that work? Who is running it? How is it being funded. Hello?

And what’s the final plan for the debates? We’ve seen some ideas about requiring 1% in the polls and >40,000 donors to get on stage. Ok, but the debates are in August – what’s the plan? Now, this is a balancing act since Ronna has no business choosing our candidates by granting arbitrary access to the debate stage. On the other hand, there are a lot of flat-out losers jumping into the GOP primary for reasons of ego, greed, and/or apparent mental illness, so those hacks need to be excluded. There’s no reason for viewers to have to endure the corporate simp wheezings of Asa Hutchinson when they need to hear from the two real candidates, DJT and RDS. 

Also, what the hell is going on with cold-shouldering dedicated Republican advocate and trainer Scott @ThePersistence Pressler? This guy is busting his hump doing the hard, tiring work of exactly the kind that Ronna should be organizing and she’s ignoring him. Which means she is ignoring us.

But isn’t that the problem – the ignoring of us, the base? Whenever I deal with these people, I get the idea that we are being just barely tolerated, that the attitude of the pros – pros who, I might add, keep failing to perform adequately – is that we should shut up, put up, and pay up. Our input is not needed or wanted. Great attitude – fine work, people. Want to know why GOP small-donor donations are a fraction of what the Dems rake in? Because we get treated like trash. From refusing to deign to explain to us what our money and time will be used to do to being dunned by endless emails explaining how we suck for failing to pay up, the GOP is just one step behind Bud Light and Target in their understanding, appreciation, and cultivation of their consumers.

The GOP works for us, and it would solve a bunch of the morale problems that its ineptitude has created by understanding the nature of that relationship. 

What’s the plan, Ronna?

Follow Kurt on Twitter @KurtSchlichter. Get Inferno, the seventh book in the Kelly Turnbull People's Republic series of conservative action novels set in America after a notional national divorce, as well as his non-fiction book We’ll Be Back: The Fall and Rise of America.

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