Ronna Rolls On

Ronna Romney McDaniel is rewarded again for her terrible RNC performance, because the party of losers rewards losing races abut getting money.

The Republican National Committee on Friday voted to reelect Ronna McDaniel to a fourth two-year term as party chair, opting not to punish her for the GOP’s recent string of electoral defeats.

McDaniel fended off a challenge from Harmeet Dhillon, a California lawyer who has represented former president Donald Trump and the unsuccessful Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, seizing on grass-roots furor demanding new leadership. McDaniel positioned herself as a steady hand and honest broker who can hold together the party’s factions and continue building out the RNC’s financial and field resources. She prevailed on the first ballot, 111-51.

McDaniel argued that the RNC did its job in the midterms by providing the infrastructure for turning out voters. She acknowledged that the party struggled with its nominees — a problem that many Republicans have attributed to influence of Trump, though McDaniel didn’t address the former president in her remarks on Friday morning.

“The RNC, we don’t get to pick the candidates, the voters do,” McDaniel said. “We don’t get to call the plays, we don’t get to say what the campaigns run on. But we do provide resoureces and we build a critical infrastructure to help candidates win.” McDaniel said Republicans won the popular vote by 4 million, equivalent to 297 Electoral College votes, and made inroads with minority voters.

Interviews with RNC members gathered at a luxury resort here suggested that Dhillon’s appearances on conservative media and her alliance with right-wing influencers failed to sway, and in some cases even backfired with, many of the 168 committee members whose votes will decide the outcome. Still, a nod of support Thursday morning from potential presidential candidate Ron DeSantis underscored the competitiveness of the challenge, with a person close to Dhillon’s campaign saying she picked up 11 votes after the Florida governor’s endorsement.

“Only 168 people can vote,” said Benjamin Proto, a committee member from Connecticut who is supporting McDaniel. “I don’t care what Tucker Carlson thinks the next chairman should do, or what Charlie Kirk does,” he said, referring to the Fox News host and Turning Point USA founder respectively. “So I think that was a mistake on Harmeet’s part, it was just a strategic error.”

 

Ronna McDaniel knows how to schmooze and how to stay in power, much like Democrats had with Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Neither knew how to have their party win elections very well, and McDaniel in particular only was appointed *after* Trump won in 2016. In 2018, 2020, and 2022 Republicans won minimal gains in the House and lost the Senate, and oh yeah, lost the White House.

Why anyone thinks she'll make a difference in 2024? It's all about the fundraising.

The Great Debate Debate Debate

The Republican party is packing up from any future presidential debates and is going home.

The Republican National Committee voted unanimously on Thursday to withdraw from the Commission on Presidential Debates, saying the group that has run the debates for decades was biased and refused to enact reforms.

"We are going to find newer, better debate platforms to ensure that future nominees are not forced to go through the biased CPD in order to make their case to the American people," the committee's chairperson, Ronna McDaniel, said in a statement.

The RNC's action requires Republican candidates to agree in writing to appear only in primary and general election debates sanctioned by the committee.

The nonprofit commission, founded in 1987 to codify the debates as a permanent part of presidential elections, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It was unclear what format future RNC-backed debates would take or whether they would take place as often as in recent decades.

The move, which followed months of wrangling between the RNC and the commission, will potentially deprive voters of seeing Republican and Democratic candidates on the same stage.

Millions of Americans usually watch the presidential debates, and many viewers say they help them make up their minds about whom to vote for, according to research by the Pew Research Center.

The Democratic National Committee, the RNC's counterpart for President Joe Biden's party, accused Republicans of trying to hide from voters.

"Voters can count on hearing from President Biden and Vice President (Kamala) Harris, who are proud of their records," DNC chairperson Jaime Harrison said in a statement.

 

It's true, and Democrats need to be blasting Republicans for the next two years over this.  As Steve M. says, if Democrats don't strike now on this, Republicans will set up their own actually biased FOX News, Newsmax, and OANN debate "moderators" and force Democrats into playing their game.

And I think they should say now that they intend to continue working with the Commission on Presidential Debates, because the CPD has been the gold standard since 1987. As I said in January, the Democratic nominee should agree to debate the Republican and also encourage participation by the better-known minor candidates, and should go ahead with the debate, along with just the Green and Libertarian candidates if necessary, if (when) the Republican doesn't show up. Make Trump or DeSantis look like the one who's afraid to debate.

But as I also said in January, Democrats won't do this. Out of fear that they'll look like debate dodgers, they'll allow themselves to be dragged into the GOP's process and ultimately agree to it.

I hope I'm wrong about that.

 

 I think DNC chair Jaime Harrison is smart enough not to fall for this.  We'll see.

The Great Debate Debate, Con't

GOP chair Ronna Romney McDaniel is already laying down the rules of any 2024 presidential debates, instead of just working the refs like Republicans do, McDaniel is all but demanding they be replaced by Trump campaign officials.

Writing to the CPD “on behalf of the Republican Party and 74 million Americans who voted for” Trump, McDaniel warned the nonpartisan organization that the “RNC will have no choice but to advise its future nominees against participating in CPD-hosted debates” unless the commission enact certain changes “to restore the faith and legitimacy it has lost” through “repeated missteps” during last year’s race. Such missteps, according to McDaniel, include a “surprising and awkward” reflection problem that the CPD almost caused by erecting acrylic glass shields, an “amateur” and “unforced error” that “nearly derailed the debate itself” but that Trump, “thanks to his background in television,” was able to prevent.

McDaniel’s gripes, which Axios notes are largely an extension of perceived slights Trump voiced last year, included the CPD’s selected moderators, adoption of a virtual format for the would-be second debate in light of Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis (an event eventually scrapped due to Trump’s refusal to attend), and decision to mute candidates’ microphones during the final debate following an interruption-filled premiere. She specifically took issue with the selection of C-SPAN’s Steve Scully as a 2020 moderator because the veteran Washington journalist interned in Joe Biden's Senate office for about six weeks in 1978.

Before the first face-off last September, Tom Kludt reported for Vanity Fair on concerns about Trump’s willingness to cooperate with the CPD, how the commission was contending with the pandemic, and what one could expect from an incumbent who in 2016 baselessly accused his opponent of “trying to rig the debates.” The Trump campaign proposed mainstream news anchors as moderators, such as ABC News’s David Muir and CBS News’s Norah O’Donnell, as well as pro-Trump voices like Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo and conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt.

Now McDaniel appears to be working the refs ahead of 2024, putting pressure on the CPD to make concessions in the interest of her party—and perhaps Trump, himself, if he’s again the nominee. Her request for changes, which she has asked the CPD to respond to by July 31, include holding at least one debate before early voting begins, barring members from publicly commenting on candidates and punishing them if they do, and restricting who is eligible to be a moderator. McDaniel also suggested the CPD impose term limits on its ten-member Board of Directors, six of which “have gone on record making disparaging comments about President Trump while serving,” she wrote, claiming the forum’s “tolerance of this behavior undermines any legitimacy it claims as a nonpartisan organization,” despite the fact that half the Trump-critical members she listed are also Republicans. Yet the GOP represented on the CPD’s board—establishment types Trump would likely dub “RINOs”—no longer represents today’s GOP, as evidenced by McDaniel’s complaints and demands.

 

Of course there's a 100% chance the commission folds and gives in to the GOP's demands here, which will make it all the more fun when the GOP makes more demands in another few months or so. By the time the actually 2024 debates are supposed to begin, they'll either be moderated by Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon or Sebastian Gorka.