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It isn’t just the House Speaker race that has the conservatives in chaos. The RNC is in disarray too. Imagine that:
Struggling to unify after another disappointing election, the Republican National Committee is consumed by an increasingly nasty leadership fight as the GOP navigates its delicate relationship with former President Donald Trump.
With a vote for RNC chair not scheduled until late January, the public feud may get worse before it gets better.
“It’ll be ugly as hell for a while,” says longtime RNC member Ron Kaufman.
The family fight to lead the party has been largely overshadowed for national attention by the equally contentious struggle to become the new Republican House Speaker, with that election set for the first week in January. But both represent critical selections as the GOP works to overcome six years of electoral underperformance heading into another presidential election.
As the Republicans’ national political arm, the RNC will raise and spend hundreds of millions of dollars in building or rebuilding the party’s framework, in campaign messaging and in the year-long presidential nomination process that will begin in earnest before long.
Ronna McDaniel, Trump’s hand-picked choice to lead the committee and the niece of Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, is running for a fourth consecutive term. But the 49-year-old is facing a rising wave of discontent from Trump’s “MAGA” movement, even as the former president stays silent — at least, for now.
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California attorney Harmeet Dhillon has emerged as the MAGA favorite to challenge McDaniel, who secured commitments from more than 100 of the RNC’s 168 voting members earlier this month. Dhillon is working aggressively to peel away some of that support ahead of the formal vote at next month’s annual winter meeting in southern California…
Dhillon, whose law firm earned more than $400,000 representing Trump and his political organizations in the 2022 midterms, said she would leave her law practice if elected chair. The 53-year-old California attorney, who was born in India, also vowed to remain independent in what is expected to be a crowded 2024 presidential primary contest.
Still, Dhillon defends Trump against those Republicans who blame him for the party’s disappointing performance in the November midterm elections. The GOP won a narrow House majority, but a host of Trump’s hand-picked candidates lost key elections for the Senate and governor.
“It’s not any one person’s fault. And I frankly think it’s a little too convenient to say it’s Donald Trump’s fault. Donald Trump hasn’t been the president for the last two years,” Dhillon said.
Instead of criticizing Trump, Dhillon railed against Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, a frequent Trump target, for not investing enough money in important Senate contests. Actually, McConnell and his allies spent tens of millions of dollars more than Trump’s political action committee in the midterms.
“You have Mitch McConnell, because he hates Trump, refusing to support candidates that President Trump endorsed, which I think is really appalling. And I blame him for the Senate losses,” Dhillon said.
Meanwhile, McDaniel is facing criticism from a growing chorus of Republicans largely outside the RNC’s 168 voting members who are eager to change course after three consecutive disappointing election seasons. Her critics include several high-profile Trump loyalists, including Fox News hosts and prominent MAGA figures on social media.
She has some unlikely supporters within the committee as well.
One frequent Trump critic, RNC member Bill Palatucci, said he would support Dhillon because McDaniel has essentially become Trump’s “tool” in recent years. He cited her decisions to stay silent on some of Trump’s more egregious behavior and to spend millions of dollars on his legal fees.
“There’s just gotta be a change,” Palatucci said, describing the committee commitments to McDaniel as “soft.” “RNC members are experienced pols who know how to look you right in the eye and say, ‘I love you,’ and then walk into the voting booth and slit your throat.”
At the same time, those RNC members are being flooded with emails from rank-and-file Republican voters and activists who support Dhillon’s candidacy. The deluge comes after Dhillon and her allies shared the entire committee’s personal emails on social media.
Steve Scheffler, an Iowa-based RNC member who supports McDaniel, said he’s receiving 50 to 70 emails each day from Republicans, many of them angry, weighing in on the leadership fight.
“Most of them are like, ‘Ronna’s gotta go,’” Scheffler said.
The GOP circular firing squad is especially lethal. They’re all armed with AR-15s.
I feel nothing for McDaniel because she deserves it. At one point she called January 6th “normal political discourse.” which is just amazing. She also dumped her professional name of Romney because Dear Leader required it. She’s his creature and if she goes down as a human sacrifice to the Trump cult she has no one to blame but herself.
But, oh dear. Her challenger is the Trumper from hell:
Dhillon, a co-chair of Women for Trump, doesn’t have the same ties to establishment Republicans as McDaniel. But her support for various conspiratorial election lawsuits in 2020 and beyond has earned her praise from extremists in the GOP. She certainly appears to be a more viable challenger to McDaniel than fellow Trump loyalist and My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell.
The most important thing to know about Dhillon? If elected, she’d make a key aspect of Trumpism — voter suppression and election denial using the court system — more common in the GOP.
Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk has become a right-wing kingmaker of sorts, and he’s made Dhillon’s potential control of the RNC a cause célèbre for his organization for this exact reason. (Note: She’s also a frequent guest on his show).
“We are in the era of lawfare and we keep on losing in the courts,” he said after welcoming Dhillon to his web show Tuesday. “Maybe we should have a chairwoman of the RNC that’s a lawyer that has a killer instinct.”
Dhillon clearly agrees. During their conversation, she accused the McDaniel-run RNC of an “appalling” misuse of funds, claiming the leadership buys RNC chair votes “with donor money.” And she suggested the RNC should invest in an army of election lawyers to help challenge electoral processes. She seemed to be referring to the very kinds of failed, conspiratorial lawsuits she supported after Trump lost the 2020 election.
“As a result, we don’t have a cadre of lawyers who’d be specializing in election litigation and willing to do it year-round,” she complained.
Dhillon, who touted her dubious work as an election lawyer for failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and failed Senate candidate Blake Masters, used her interview this week on Fox News to repeatedly call for the RNC to fund rabid, Republican attorneys like her who she envisions spending the bulk of their time trying to restrict voting rights and voter access through the courts.
Oh boy …
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