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Looking into my crystal ball, I see trouble ahead for the Republican National Committee if Donald Trump succeeds in replacing its current leadership with more Trumpian alternatives.
Trump wants North Carolina GOP Chairman Michael Whatley, an election denier and pro-Trump sycophant, to serve as RNC chair in place of embattled Ronna McDaniel. And he wants Lara Trump, his daughter-in-law, to serve as co-chair.
This Trump-branded setup would almost certainly allow the former president unfettered control over the RNC and access to its resources. In other words, a sweet setup for Trump — and a pretty terrible one for Republicans who don’t share his last name.
In fact, everything I’ve heard about the potential arrangement so far points to an eventual crisis for the GOP writ large.
In fact, everything I’ve heard about the potential arrangement so far points to an eventual crisis for the GOP writ large.
Take, for example, Trump’s response to the GOP’s loss in Tuesday’s special election in New York for the House seat formerly held by a Republican, ousted Rep. George Santos.
Trump basically blamed the Republican candidate, Mazi Pilip, for not endorsing him and for not leaning more heavily into MAGA orthodoxy. (For the record, Pilip threw plenty of red meat to the MAGA base during the campaign.) Sure, Pilip was far from the perfect candidate, but the idea that she would have won “easily,” as Trump put it, by leaning more heavily into Trumpism … in a district Biden won in 2020 and in a race her Democratic opponent won by about 8 percentage points ... is absurd on its face. Nonetheless, it’s the kind of twisted logic Trump might be in better position to impose on the GOP, if and when he gets the RNC leadership team he desires.
That may sound great if you’re Trump and want Republican candidates to be your carbon copy, but it’s politically dangerous — and frankly, quite dumb — to think this would be a winning strategy nationwide.
Money could be another problem for this new RNC. Lara Trump said Tuesday that, as the committee’s co-chair, she’d make sure “every single penny will go to the No. 1 and the only job of the RNC,” which she said is electing her father-in-law and “saving this country.” As some observers aptly noted, this sounds a lot like the RNC might prioritize Trump’s campaign at the expense of other important races.
Again, cool if you’re Donald Trump. Not as cool if you’re a Republican wanting the party to spread its resources around.
Similarly, The Washington Post just published a feature on Whatley, reporting that he boasted to a Conservative Political Action Conference gathering in 2021 that he had spent 75% of the North Carolina GOP’s funds on legal expenses and had hired 500 lawyers for election-related legal work.
Once more, that might sound nice if you’re Donald Trump and want the entire GOP consumed by your election denialism. But it’s worth noting that part of the reason that Republicans are in financial trouble now is because state parties depleted their resources thanks to Trump’s efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Whatley’s plan coincides with the right-wing dream of using “lawfare” — that is, waging a legal war on your political enemies — against Democrats. But wars tend to be expensive. And I can think of several things more worthwhile than plunging Republicans’ resources into hapless, baseless legal fights.
Yet these are the hubristic, self-injurious decisions we can expect a Trump-branded RNC to make.