Wednesday night's Republican Presidential debate went as well as one would have thought, except for one small detail. GOP Presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy went on a hard-hitting attack against the Republican establishment in general and Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel in particular. Ramaswamy pulled no punches when it came to McDaniel and her less-than-optimal track record as the chairwoman of the RNC. And after key election losses this week in Kentucky, Ohio, and Virginia, all the frustration and anger of those losses are landing at the feet of McDaniel.
Watch as Ramaswamy goes nuclear on McDaniel, inviting her on the stage to address his criticisms.
Best debate opening we've ever seen.
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) November 9, 2023
Vivek comes out swinging at Ronna McDaniel.
Vivek invites RNC Ronna to resign on stage.
Vivek demands Kristin Welker and Lester Holt answer the damn question.pic.twitter.com/tPUIIxasmp
McDaniel was first elected to her position as RNC Chair in January 2017 and again in 2019 and 2021, all by unanimous vote. However, in 2023, she had to fight off two challengers: Harmeet Dhillon and Mike Lindell. McDaniel was able to win that election despite very strong opposition from Dhillon. Dhillon faced some disgusting attacks on her Sikh faith during the race, which spotlighted a major concern and problem that the GOP still needs to address under McDaniel. Thankfully, Dhillon continues to be a powerful force within the RNC and shows no signs of backing down.
Since her rise to the top seat in the Republican Party, McDaniel has had a rough time, to say the least. Her tenure as Chair of the RNC has been an overall and abject failure, as she oversaw repeated Republican election losses in 2018, 2020, 2022, and now 2023. Republicans across the country are being outspent, undersupported, and, in several cases, left to fend for themselves amid a Democratic fundraising and support machine that outperformed and crushed the RNC's efforts to do the same.
Wednesday night's debates seemed to bring all of these criticisms to the surface in a dramatic fashion. Vivek Ramaswamy was not letting McDaniel off the hook for them either; after trouncing her while he was on stage and live during the debates, he then confronted her during the break and had what some people are saying was a heated discussion, though McDaniel has since denied that characterization.
Vivek appears to have a heated discussion with RNC chair Ronna McDaniel from the debate stage as the candidates file out pic.twitter.com/efYfbltva0
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) November 9, 2023
For her part, McDaniel reportedly was attacking Ramaswamy vocally before and during the debates, which may have been a driver for Ramaswamy's attacks on McDaniel. According to several people in attendance last night, she did not hold back her thoughts on Ramaswamy.
“He’s an asshole. Total asshole,” McDaniel said. “He’s desperate because he’s doing bad in the polls. He won’t be getting a cent from us.”
She also loudly booed him during his exchange with Nikki Haley, according to the person sitting nearby.
“She was in complete MELTDOWN mode over Vivek,” the source said. “This was in the middle of the audience, within ear shot of at least 50 people.”
McDaniel has some explaining to do, and she needs to take a big bite of some humble pie before she does. The Republican Party, as we know it today, is fractured and wallowing in the open. One does not need to look far back in time to see this. The last midterm election cycle in 2022 had every media outlet and most political pundits across the country all predicting the Democrats were going to get trounced amid a "red tsunami." But what we saw was a Republican ripple that lost seats in the Senate and barely got Republican control of the House, and that was by the skin of their teeth. Even with a national voter turnout that was one of the best we have seen in a long time, I can't say the same for my home state of California. Republican candidates underperformed and underspent their Democratic opponents by a huge margin. In my congressional and State Assembly district, in my city alone, over 33,000 registered Republicans did not vote, and that cost us the Assembly seat, which was Republican and now has a far-left liberal in it.
Like him or not, when former President Donald Trump was elected to the Presidency in 2016, he essentially pulled off what some describe as a "hostile takeover" of the RNC. Trump was now the head of the Republican Party, and he attempted to enact a coup against the establishment class of the party, in which he was partially successful. What he was able to do was publicly identify who the establishment Republicans were and weren't. This caused the party to break along hyper-partisan lines. One side was made up of the Trump conservatives, while the other was made up of the "uniparty," or those who were either too afraid or unable to fight the Democrats and their agenda publicly. You can remember when the late Senator John McCain (R-AR) famously voted no with a thumbs-down gesture to kill a bill that would repeal Obamacare.
McDaniel, for her effort, has overseen a further fracture of the party in the years since. 2022's mid-term elections brought us candidates for Senate and House races who were questionable at best or, at worst, completely out of their league. There was a mix of Trump-supported candidates who were either solid people or not the best at all, with Dr. Mehmet Oz and Hershel Walker being prime examples of that. Then there were either establishment candidates who were running an uphill race because they were either distancing themselves from Trump due to their "RINO" status or they were staunch conservatives who just didn't support Trump anymore. We see this clearly today as an increasing portion of the pro-Trump crowd views non-Trump-supporting conservatives the same way they see Democrats.
Furthermore, as was mentioned earlier, the fundraising campaign for the RNC compared to the DNC is abysmal, to say the least. As you can see here, the DNC blew us out of the water when it came to fundraising. And the trend shows this continuing for the immediate future. The California Republican Party, CAGOP, has been unable to financially assist in several statewide races due to fundraising problems and voters not being motivated to do anything to help. We are struggling in California. With more people leaving the state, along with their donor dollars, the CAGOP and its county party siblings are suffering.
Per @AdImpact_Pol: Breakdown of spending in today's off-year races pic.twitter.com/k4k0nVT1e6
— Kirk A. Bado (@kirk_bado) November 7, 2023
Before the GOP and RNC can effect much-needed change in this country, we need to fix ourselves first. If we don't, we will continue to be looked at as the laughing stock of national politics and continue to lose elections in races that we cannot afford to lose. And that change needs to start at the top. 2024 is critical to this nation, and what we see now with the RNC and certain presidential candidates doesn't bode well for us. I am afraid that 2024 will bring a massive critical defeat for the GOP when it comes to the White House, Senate, and the House unless a critical change of direction and strategy is made.
