There hasn’t been much to like about the Republican Party lately, but a glimmer of hope appeared on the horizon on Sunday after news broke that Harmeet Dhillon is preparing to challenge Ronna McDaniel for the position of RNC chair.
Aside from being a personal friend of RedState, Dhillon is a popular figure on the broader right, having gained immense notoriety on the conservative legal front. A regular analyst on Fox News, she is also a committeewoman for the RNC, and according to Politico, she’s ready to push for much-needed change.
Ronna McDaniel is about to draw a challenge to her post as Republican National Committee chair.
Harmeet Dhillon, a RNC committeewoman whose firm represents Donald Trump, is prepping a bid for party chair, according to two people familiar with her planning. Dhillon has been talking with fellow RNC members about a prospective run, and those close to Dhillon say a formal launch could come within the next few days.
“After three successive terms of underwhelming results at the polls for the GOP, all the while with leaders congratulating ourselves for outstanding performance, I feel that we owe it to our voters to have a serious debate about the leadership of the party and what we must change to actually win in 2024,” Dhillon said in a statement.
Given this is an anonymously sourced article, I’ll leave open the possibility that Dhillon doesn’t ultimately run, but selfishly, I really hope this materializes. Ronna McDaniel has been an unmitigated disaster as RNC chair and it’s astonishing she hasn’t resigned in disgrace. Since she’s taken over, Republicans have gotten mowed down in the blue wave of 2018, lost the White House and the Senate in 2020, and squandered perhaps the best electoral environment in decades in 2022, only barely taking the House of Representatives in what should have been a red wave year.
To add insult to injury, McDaniel then made the media rounds bragging about how great she and the party did when it was obvious to anyone with a pulse how huge of a screwup the election was. Someone who is willing to gaslight their own voters like that has no business being anywhere near power. Whatever qualities she possessed when Donald Trump hand-picked her for RNC chair, they haven’t led to electoral wins. At some point, putting skins on the wall matters, and doing the same thing over and over while continuing to lose is the definition of insanity.
If this Politico report is true, and Dhillon jumps into the mix as the only credible challenger to McDaniel (the pillow guy is not a serious candidate), it will be interesting to see how things shake out. McDaniel is very much in the Trump camp, but Dhillon’s law firm represents Trump on his most serious legal matters. Hopefully, he would choose to stay out of the matter and just let things play out.
Regardless, if I had a vote, it’d be for Dhillon. She’s shown herself to be a capable, strategic thinker, and that’s exactly what the RNC needs right now. McDaniel had her chance, and it just hasn’t worked out.