Ronna McDaniel is gone and American patriots should rejoice that her reign of failure has ended. There’s a new team in charge at the Republican National Committee, and this is a really good time to remind everybody that Ronna McDaniel was a total disaster, and there is absolutely no evidence apparent to any of us out in the world that the Republicans have learned anything from their lawfare disasters in 2020 and 2022 and that they are doing anything about it. That should be the Number One job of the new leadership team, even before repairing the damaged relationship with donors that Ronna McDaniel’s inept tenure inspired. We have got to fix the legal problems facing Republicans in elections across the country, but especially in the key swing states, and if we don’t, nothing else is going to matter.
So, what’s going on? What is the Republican lawfare plan? Well, Ronna McDaniel insists that the RNC has 70+ lawsuits going on out there. I don’t believe her, but let’s assume that’s true. Who’s in charge of this massive operation? It’s not going to be the RNC’s general counsel. As general counsel of the RNC, Michael Whatley was responsible for the RNC’s own legal work, and now he’s one of the new co-chairs. The other co-chair is Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, and hopefully she’s been burned hard enough in the past to want to get this right.
But are the Republicans getting this right? A bunch of random lawsuits is not a legal operation. It’s a bunch of random lawsuits. Here’s how I know if an operation is going to be unsuccessful. I ask who is in charge, and I don’t get an answer. Well, that’s what I did at CPAC. I asked around and a whole bunch of big wheels in Republican politics did the same thing when I asked who is in charge of fighting the legal battle and coordinating it across the country. They shrugged. They don’t know. They have no idea who’s in charge or what the plan is, or even if there’s a plan at all.
See, that’s bad.
Unity of command is a principle of all successful operations, whether in the military or when you are handling lawsuits across the fruited plain. Litigation has to be coordinated, even as the day-to-day work has to be decentralized. It has to be coordinated because many issues are the same across the states, especially those involving federal law. You don’t want your team in Minneapolis spinning its wheels writing the same motion on a federal election issue that the lawyers in Atlanta just wrote. You don’t want to establish a precedent in Georgia that hurts you in Arizona. You need a command structure led by a leader who can coordinate, synchronize efforts, and organize resources. But if you trust the Republicans to do that without seeing evidence that they are, I’ve got this bridge I want to sell you. Cheap.
The efforts also have to be decentralized. Each state must have an individual local legal team. A lawyer from Pennsylvania can’t file a case in Michigan unless he happens to have a Michigan bar card, which is not likely. But being allowed to practice law is only the start. You need people on the ground who know the courthouse, the judges, the clerks and, of course, the state and local rules and procedures. Because I’m admitted in several states, there are literally hundreds of counties where I can legally practice law. But if I have to go to a county I’ve never been to before, do you think I just walk into the courtroom wearing my Los Angeles lawyer suit? No, I find a local guy and get the lay of the land. That’s what we have to do all across the country. Who’s making sure we do that?
I don’t know. You don’t know. And I’m afraid the answer is because no one is doing that. I’m afraid that the answer is that we don’t have any kind of organized response. And I’m absolutely willing to believe that the RNC has dropped the ball because Ronna McDaniel did nothing but drop the ball for the seven miserable years she was in charge.
Now, picking on Ronna McDaniel is kind of like tripping a guy on crutches. It’s really easy. But she made it easy by being so terrible. It’s not unreasonable to believe that her legacy of terribleness will extend to the coming legal battle.
I tried to help in the wake of the 2020 election, along with a lot of other lawyers dragooned into the effort after the polls closed. But you do not create an effective legal team on the ground after the election by pulling together a bunch of random attorneys from different states and disciplines and telling them go do a legal thingy. Responding to the well-oiled, well-funded, and well-organized Democrat legal blitzkrieg requires thought. It requires strategy. It requires an organized legal team that includes paralegals, assistants, and investigators who can do all the things that practicing law requires. I can sit and pontificate and be a genius and come up with the most cunning and clever arguments you have ever heard, and I’m pretty good at talking to judges, and none of that matters at all if I don’t have a bunch of people supporting me with logistics and administration. It is irrelevant if you write a brilliant brief on your computer if you can’t get it set up and filed.
We don’t need a bunch of lawyers. What we need is effectively a law firm in each of the key states. We need to identify the individual problems that we expect to face, based on problems in the past, and file lawsuits long in advance to solve them. Do you know why a lot of lawsuits got kicked out after the elections? Because they were lawsuits that were brought after the elections. Here’s a really simple rule, and you don’t have to like it but it’s true. Judges don’t like doing hard things. And one of the hardest things a judge can do is throw out an election. However, they’re much more receptive when you go into court in advance and do things like seek an order that requires the people counting the ballots to actually let people observe or to require that the election board conduct rehearsals and dry runs before election day to make sure that on election day they actually have the right ballots and the right printers and the right readers ready. Those things are hugely important and relatively easy to win in advance if you file the lawsuits a few months beforehand. But it is really hard to get an election reversed by pointing those things out in retrospect because the judge will ask why you did nothing when you knew these problems were coming down the pike. And the judge is going to be right to do that. That’s how the law works. If you sit on your hands, you waive your rights. That’s not new. That’s basic.
We’ve got to be proactive. We need to work now to get the key legal issues identified and resolved. But I don’t know if we are. You don’t know if we are. And a lot of the people who would know if we were don’t know. This indicates to me that we’re not. Why the hell not? That should be the top priority for the new leadership team at the RNC – get the lawfare plan on track. Because if we don’t, we’re going to end up screwed out of this election just like we were screwed the last two cycles.
Now, maybe this legal response op has been set up, and there is a great plan underway, and it’s working wonderfully. If true, here’s my question. Why the hell don’t we know this? The first thing Michael Whatley and Lara Trump ought to do, after they have a very public meeting with Scott Pressler to show the base the new leadership gets it about the grassroots, is to brief us on the legal plan and the current status and show us that the RNC has got this. Assuming the RNC has got this, which I will not assume because I am absolutely convinced it does not remotely got this, you have to let people know. But if I am wrong, great. Show me. Show us. If you’re wondering why people don’t want to give you money, maybe it’s because they believe you’re capable of winning an election at the ballot box but that you will lose it at the courthouse. Show them you’ve got this and they’ll be more inclined to open up their wallets.
This is a serious issue, the most serious election mechanics issue that we’re facing. We know that last-minute legal shenanigans, including rule changes and voter suppression tactics, cost us dearly in 2020 and 2022. We know what the Democrats are going to do. They’re going to do it again. We have got to get in there and preempt them. The only way to do that is to have a large effective, coordinated, and commanded legal operation. If you don’t prepare to succeed, you are preparing to fail, and I’m afraid that’s what’s going on now with the Republicans.