There’s fewer people I have less respect for than Ronna Romney McDaniel. She is the epitome of what has become of the GOP: hypocritical, bigoted, financially reckless, and of course, completely submissive to Trump.
How submissive?
He literally instructed her to drop the “Romney” from her name—and she actually complied. Really. She now goes by Ronna McDaniel. But that was nothing compared to her unprecedented move to dissolve the RNC into the Trump 2020 campaign at Trump’s behest late last year. The national party committee has always worked in tandem with a reelection campaign, but she took it to a whole new extreme by merging the RNC’s field and fundraising apparatus into one single entity for Donald Trump.
Even before that, the RNC passed a resolution swearing “undivided support for President Donald J. Trump” and would tolerate no challengers to his rule. Several state GOP parties have even cancelled their primaries this week.
I have to give it to the GOP: at least they are consistent in their contempt for democracy. It’s not just Democrats they hate voting, it’s their own people as well.
Although the dissolution of the RNC into the Trump 2020 campaign has “streamlined” resources and created a huge infrastructure devoted to Trump’s reelection, it also means that Trump is the one controlling it. And Trump is only concerned about ONE election in 2020.
Unfortunately for him, he’s dropped like a lead balloon in the polls to where now, he is being beaten by every major Democratic candidate by at least nine points. Individual 1 is planning on consuming most of the resources of his new party primarily for himself.
Even before the merger, Trump already regarded the RNC as his personal piggy bank. He took massive amounts of RNC donated funds for his own legal fees:
U.S. President Donald Trump is using money donated to his re-election campaign and the Republican National Committee to pay for his lawyers in the probe of alleged Russian interference in the U.S. election, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
While most of the money from the RNC/Trump Frankenstein venture will be used to attempt to bail Trump out for his 2020 reelection bid, the leftovers will mainly go to Congressional and Senate races that Trump considers important— only because they will directly impact him if he wins again. He and Mitch McConnell have done everything but roll out the red carpet for Russia and North Korea to attack our elections again in the hopes of pulling him over the finish line.
However, the real issue that worries Republicans are the state legislature races. These races don’t concern Donald Trump in the slightest, since they don’t affect him. Unfortunately for the GOP, 2020 is a critical redistricting year.
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Several in the GOP are admitting that they are in real danger of losing at least dozens of seats that will determine which party will control several state legislatures, and are already complaining that the state races are being “overlooked” for Donald Trump:
“This is as serious as a heart attack and we’ve got to do everything we can to win it because this isn’t about one cycle. It’s about the next decade. And our success nationally as a party is going to depend on our success in these states this cycle,” said Republican State Leadership Committee President Austin Chambers.
He acknowledged that his party is less focused on statehouse contests than Democrats are.
Oh…. he’s not wrong about that.
Democrats are pouring tens of millions of dollars into statehouse races for next year. Barack Obama has been busy fundraising for several Democratic groups dedicated to breaking the GOP stranglehold in the state houses.
You remember Eric Holder? He teamed up with Obama for his own group, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. His group is showering money in several key races in Virginia to win the trifecta there. Virginia holds elections this year. The Democrats are one short in the state Senate and one short in the House of Delegates from holding the trifecta.
Not surprisingly, there has been a ton of GOP retirements this year. Facing an invigorated, funded Democratic party while the top of the ticket sucks up everything else is just one major problem. The other is that GOP incumbents now have to actively support Trumpian policies that are harmful to their districts. Trump’s hijacking of appropriated military funds to pay for his vanity wall has gotten a ton of press coverage lately. Unfortunately for the GOP, it’s by happenstance that a lot of these projects directly affect districts where the incumbent is in a tough election. That’s what happens when you’re in the party of Trump. He demands fealty from his politicians, and he does not tolerate anyone distancing themselves from him—even if it hurts their election chances.
2020 is shaping up to be an unmitigated disaster for the GOP. Hitching their wagon to the Trump train was a mistake and they know it, which is why they fight so hard for lax election security and voter suppression. What’s even worse is what’s coming after 2020. Once Trump is gone, then what? He has turned the GOP into his own personal brand of white supremacy, misogyny, hatred, incompetence and collusion. It’s going to be a rough couple of years for the GOP, and this is only the beginning.
Or, quite possibly, the ending.
