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Ronna McDaniel is pretending to care about what happens to the Republican Party. This faux face of concern comes after millions in spending on luxury vacations, donor items, and travel, while attacking the messengers demanding she be held accountable by maligning their allegiance and contribution to the party (projection, much?).
As my colleague Bonchie encapsulated perfectly, “McDaniel is a woman fiddling while the Republican Party burns[.]” However, she is still currently the RNC Chair, so she was asked by Fox News to comment on the vote for House Speaker and how Kevin McCarthy can gain the numbers to pull out the needed 218.
As RedState has reported, McCarthy has gone down in flames not once, not twice, but three times this Tuesday, on the first session of the 118th Congress. McCarthy managed to grow his opposition from five representatives to 20 in that timeframe.
Perhaps someone needs to read the room, but, I digress…
In her media hit, McDaniel claimed that the representatives who refuse to coalesce behind McCarthy as Speaker of the House make the Republican Party look bad.
You don’t say? Someone else needs to read the room. As RNC Chair, McDaniel oversaw (along with McCarthy) five years of losses. The House. The Presidency. Now the Senate.
Yet, she imagines that it is McCarthy (and by proximity, her) that is responsible for the razor-thin House majority, and therefore he should be experiencing a coronation and not this obstruction from 20 renegade Republicans.
“I am in Michigan right now, and I was talking to somebody who said this makes the party look bad,” McDaniel said.
“[They said], ‘We just elected Republicans to take over the House, and why can’t you guys unify.’ It’s division for division’s sake.”
WATCH:
McDaniel is not looking good at all. Perhaps she is losing sleep over the fact that McCarthy’s troubles could be hers in a mere few weeks when 168 Republican delegates vote on who should be the next RNC Chair. Her tone-deaf response here reflects a massive lack of self-awareness in her own role in tanking the party, and also shows why she does not need to be re-elected RNC Chair.
The shilling for McCarthy, a man who has served himself and jockeyed to be second string for decades, is particularly nauseating.
“I will say this: we have a big task ahead of us in 2024, to take back the White House, the Senate map gets infinitely better, and we have to keep the House. And every day that we are delaying the agenda that the American people elected Republicans to govern with is a day that we are not getting the work done of the American people. It’s five, it’s 10, the vast majority of the members support Kevin. These 10 who don’t, I hope they come around because we have to unify. We have to unify.”
Like McCarthy and McDaniel “unified” with Trump’s attorneys, and fundraised around election integrity, and nobody knows where that money went? Or the two massive losses in Arizona, where Republican SuperPACs actually worked against Senate candidate Blake Masters and Governor candidate Kari Lake? What exactly is McDaniel’s definition of “unity”?
This was probably the biggest shark jump of her commentary: blaming GOP infighting for the midterm election losses.
“I think this is the biggest message coming out of this midterm. If you look at all the split tickets. If you look at states where Republicans refused to vote for other Republicans. In a large part, that’s why we didn’t get the wins that we wanted in this election, because of Republican on Republican infighting.
“And it is carrying into this Speaker election, and I think it is something that is disheartening, and is not bringing people to our party. We need to show a vision of positivity, and an agenda of getting things done for the American people if we are going to continue to get reelected in these elections. And we need to elect a Speaker.”
January 27 in Dana Point, California is going to be interesting. If McDaniel implodes as it appears McCarthy is doing, who does she plan to blame that loss on? Should she win, how committed will she be to getting things done for the American people? Or will she simply go back to spending donor and member money on expensive workout clothes?