As RedState reported, Ronna McDaniel has been re-elected as the chair of the Republican National Committee. That followed a contentious, months-long battle with notable GOP lawyer Harmeet Dhillon, who ultimately ended up well short of the number to overtake McDaniel.
McDaniel is now the longest-serving party chair in modern American history. What did she do to deserve that honor? She and her party lost the 2018 election, lost the 2020 election, and severely underperformed in the 2022 election. Apparently, being a consistent loser is all it takes to win the blessing of the GOP’s party elite.
Why? Because the Republican Party hates you.
As a GOP voter, you only serve two purposes for the GOP’s guiding lights. You provide the party’s leadership with lots of money to shower upon themselves in various schemes, and two, you give them political power via elections. Other than that, you are an afterthought and are a despised means to an end.
And before you assume I’m just talking about the popular definition of the “establishment,” understand those lines became blurred long ago. While Donald Trump pretended to not endorse anyone in this race, he had his top advisors (including Susie Wiles) whipping for McDaniel behind the scenes. Guess who is suddenly happy about the result at the RNC?
The RNC is one giant grift at this point. It’s an organization that exists to keep a certain group of people loaded down with cash and power while the desires of the voters are completely ignored. For Trump, he gets preferential treatment going into 2024. For McDaniel, she gets to use Trump to help fundraise, ensuring she is paid exorbitant bonuses for hitting certain goals. As for the RNC members, they continue to get money shoveled into their states in exchange for their loyalty.
All the while, there’s no ideological core to the Republican Party anymore. It stands for absolutely nothing, and certainly, it accomplishes nothing in the process. Winning elections doesn’t even factor in as long the money keeps rolling in. Again, this isn’t just a fight between the “establishment” and the conservative base. It’s a fight between the conservative base and the entirety of the GOP leadership class, and that leadership class includes many, many wings of the party now.
That’s an unfortunate reality that needs to set in with a lot of people who still think it’s 2015. The old, clearly defined battle lines no longer apply. You can’t just slam Mitch McConnell (who deserves it) and call it a day anymore. The national Republican Party leadership has become an incestuous cabal of varied ideologues all chasing the almightly dollar, and they all deserve ridicule.
You can’t “drain the swamp” by promoting the swamp, no matter how many soundbites you put out. That’s a critique of every Republican, including the RNC members, who talk the talk but refuse to walk the walk. When faced with a perfect opportunity to change course, they chose to spit on their own GOP voters and keep the gravy train rolling.
There’s a solution to that, though. Stop giving them money, and stop listening to them. They only hold power as long as you give it to them.