Reviews | RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel is not to blame for GOP failures

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Many Republicans are seeking to oust Ronna McDaniel from the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee after the parties’ poor performance in this year’s midterm elections.

It’s silly. McDaniel is not the reason for the GOP’s struggles. The real reason can be summed up in two words: Donald Trump.

It’s true that the GOP consistently lost elections during McDaniels’ tenure. The GOP lost the House in 2018 and the Presidency and Senate in 2020. And yes, it fell to one of the most unpopular presidents in history this year.

It might make sense to drop McDaniel if the RNC had led the party campaign efforts. But that is not the case and has not been the case for many decades.

Individual candidates and PACs led by House and Senate leaders fund the lion’s share of campaign spending. The two top Senate Republican super PACs, for example, spent a combined $530 million midterm on top of the hundreds of millions spent by its candidates. House Republicans also spent more than half a billion dollars on top of their candidates’ spending.

The RNC, by contrast, only raised about $325 million for the round, including money to help GOP candidates for governor and other positions. And that money rarely went into direct contact with voters. The primary role of RNCs in modern elections is to help create databases that candidates can use and to assist state parties in their field games and out ballot activities. These projects are important, but they do not determine whether individual contestants win, except in rare cases.

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The party president also does not determine the issues a party addresses or act as the main spokesperson for the party. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (California) released his own agenda, Commitment to America, while Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) offered no agenda. Endorsements and rallies from former presidents have also helped define the Republican brand for midterms. McDaniel was not involved in any of these determinations, nor was she expected to be.

The modern party chairman is not the equivalent of a corporate CEO. At best, she’s the managing partner, the person responsible for making sure the back office is running efficiently, not if it’s succeeding. It is therefore misleading to blame her for the party’s electoral defeats when she does not choose candidates, define the party’s image or lead its campaigns.

By virtually all accounts, the person who served as CEO was Trump. So the battle for the ill-fated post of RNC chairman is a proxy battle over his continued influence within the party.

Seen in this light, it’s no coincidence that McDaniels, two outspoken MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and California RNC member Harmeet Dhillon, are well-known Trump cronies. Victory for either would keep the RNC firmly in the hands of the Trumpists. This would prevent any effort to de-Trumpify the national party before 2024.

Their elevation to the chairmanship of the RNC would also matter in the one area where the committee has decisive influence: preparing for the 2024 nominating season. preliminaries which govern the party congress itself. It also influences issues such as the organization of Republican primary debates and the order in which states will vote to select their delegates. The president will heavily influence those decisions, any of which could tip the balance in favor or against Trump’s favor.

That power, not McDaniels’ alleged losing streak, could be the real motivation for his opponents. She promised that the party would remain neutral between candidates, as party organizations traditionally do. His firmly Trump-aligned challengers would probably say the same thing, but a president can do a lot behind the scenes to favor a candidate in a contest for the nomination. The hubbub over Hillary Clinton’s campaign and her alleged capture of the DNC before her nomination in the 2016 battle against Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) makes this clear.

The identity of the next RNC chairman will not determine whether Republicans win the next election. It could, however, influence whether Trump continues to wield outsized influence over party affairs. It could make all the difference in the world.

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