What Happened to Accountability?
What Happened to Accountability?
We must stop rewarding failure
In late January 2023, the 168 delegates to the Republican National Committee will hold a vote to determine the the RNC chair. Incumbent Ronna McDaniel will be running for an almost unprecedented fourth term, but she will be challenged by California National Committeewoman Harmeet Dhillon and pillow salesman Mike Lindell.
Only two people have ever served four terms as RNC Chair - the very first RNC chairman Edwin Morgan of New York from 1856 to 1864, and Marcus Hanna of Ohio from 1896 to 1904.
What has Ronna McDaniel done to earn such a rare honor?
Under McDaniel’s leadership, the Republican Party has endured a series of losses. When she took over in January of 2017, the Republican Party was riding high. Under the leadership of her predecessors, the GOP had taken the House of Representatives in 2010, the Senate in 2014, and the White House in 2016. This historic trifecta was extremely rare - only twice since World War II had both houses of Congress and the presidency been controlled by Republicans.
In McDaniel’s very first election, however, the Republicans lost control of the House. The following cycle, the GOP lost the White House in November and then the Senate in the Georgia runoff election the following December. The GOP barely took back the House this year, but could not take the Senate, despite polls showing it was a definite possibility. This week, the Republicans lost a US Senate runoff in Georgia for the second time in two years.
Last month, more than 100 members of the Republican National Committee - including Idaho’s own National Committeeman Damond Watkins and National Committeewoman Cindy Siddoway - released a letter supporting McDaniel’s candidacy for a fourth term, despite no other declared candidates at the time.
The letter read, in part:
Our cause at the RNC, and our singular goal should be, to achieve victory in 2024 with great Republican candidates up and down the ticket in every state and territory.
Under your leadership, the Republican National Committee has become a stronger and more effective force for our cause by:
Investing in all 56 states and territories to expand our connection to and engagement with grassroots voters
Opening 38 community centers to embrace communities that share our values and love of country but did not support or feel welcomed by the Republican Party
Tirelessly working for the necessary fundraising
Converting the RNC into an aggressive and effective advocate for election integrity including by engaging in over 80 lawsuits and achieving dozens of wins
Cutting ties once and for all with the biased Committee on Presidential Debates to seek a fair platform for our candidates to debate
And ongoing investments in data, digital, and in a permanent ground game in key locations around the country.
As we look to the 2024 election cycle, the RNC must oversee a fair and transparent process to nominate the best man or woman to lead Republicans to victory in 2024. We are confident you have the skills, integrity, and experience to meet the challenges and capitalize on the opportunities of our time.
This sounds like a textbook example of damning with faint praise, doesn’t it? Note that the most important metric of all - victory - is missing from this list of accomplishments. Imagine an NFL coach whose team gets worse every year, no matter how much money the owner spends or how great the players are. Does he deserve to keep his job? Does he deserve a raise?
So why did a hundred members of the committee sign this letter? I suggest it is because the metrics we use to determine success are not the same ones that political insiders use.
Little people like us look at the track record of the Republican Party since 2017 and call it a failure, but party insiders look at the massive amounts of money that has passed through the committee under McDaniel’s leadership and call it a success:
People like us expect the RNC to support candidates who believe in the Republican platform, but insiders are elated that the party is spending their resources reaching out to various interest groups without concern that they are losing their base:
Finally, people like us have some misconceptions about how people gain power in politics. We like to think it is all about meritocracy, the cream rising to the top, when in reality it is about patronage. There is also a bit of nepotism at work, if only in the way growing up in a political family gets your foot in the door. Ronna McDaniel, as a member of the Romney dynasty, has been immersed in the world of politics all her life. Her grandfather was Governor of Michigan in the 1960s, so when she ran for National Committeewoman and Michigan GOP Chairwoman in the 2010s, she had a built-in advantage. Once in power, she is naturally going to cultivate allies and trade favors, and six years at the top have provided ample opportunity to do so.
Thus, despite overwhelming opposition to McDaniel’s continued leadership from outside the RNC, a majority of the national committee delegates nevertheless support her.
Opposition to McDaniel comes from all sides of conservative media.
Lee Zeldin of New York flirted with the idea of challenging her for the chair, but concluded that the deck was already stacked in her favor. He nevertheless called for her ouster:
Scott Pressler, the independent activist who has perhaps done more than any single person to register new Republican voters, thinks she needs to go:
Ben Shapiro, who I regard as a spokesman for the conservative establishment, is tired of her as well:
Ryan Girdusky, whose 1776 Project PAC is working to elect conservatives to school boards across the nation, questions McDaniel’s priorities:
Ronna McDaniel herself is either unaware of this pushback, or she simply doesn’t care. If Zeldin is correct, and her reelection is already secured, then I suppose there is no reason for her to care.
It is time to bring accountability back to America. Republicans can start that process by declining to reelect Ronna McDaniel to lead the RNC. I don’t know if Harmeet Dhillon will do a better job, but she deserves a chance, doesn’t she? We have to stop rewarding failure. We have to raise the standards to which we hold our leaders.
The pandering to the alphabet mafia alone should get Ronna ousted. Results should matter and she needs to be gone. Harmeet Dillon is a stellar attorney and advocate for the US Constitution and wouldn’t pander to the left. It is time to go on offense instead of sitting back and watching the left make gains and destroy our country.
Nice analysis! Thank you, Brian.