The Republican Party has problems, and quite a few of them start at the top with the leadership.

As readers will recall, Victory Girls was, say, less than impressed with Ronna McDaniel and her performance as Republican National Committee chair over the last few elections. In my opinion, Lee Zeldin would have been a better choice this last go-round, but the establishment (and Donald Trump) was firmly in the Ronna McDaniel camp, even after all her “happy spin” post-2022 midterms, where the red wave showed up in Florida and failed to show anywhere else.

With Ron DeSantis now officially in the primary race, the field has all but narrowed to two, plus those auditioning for vice president. (Sorry, but Mike Pence, as much as I like him personally, cannot win the nomination, and there is a negative number chance that Donald Trump would ask him to be vice president again. And I don’t know what kind of edibles Chris Christie got a hold of, but he officially ate too many if he thinks he could win the nomination.) Everyone in the Republican party is in agreement that Joe Biden is a corrupt and compromised politician in cognitive decline, and is beatable. The question then becomes, as Kurt Schlichter put it in a Townhall column, “what’s the plan, Ronna?”

I was against re-upping Ronna McDaniel last January, and I worked for her opponent. We argued that if you lose five times in a row you should not get a sixth chance to fail. But we lost that argument. Ronna, backed behind the scenes by Donald Trump (which I personally observed at the GOP committee convention), won. And she won fair and square and earned my loyalty. But it has been four months and I am not seeing the change that she promised and that is sorely needed. Where’s the audit? Who got fired for not performing? And the biggest question…what’s the game plan for 2024? Maybe it’s a communications issue. Maybe there is a plan. But have you heard about the plan, because I haven’t. And I’m paying attention. Failing to plan for victory is planning for defeat.”

Schlichter highlights three major things he wants accounted for from Ronna McDaniel: elections, debates, and “ignoring the base.”

As far as elections, we face outright fraud – which is the smallest part of the puzzle since it really applies only when elections are very close in select blue venues. A bigger problem is unlawful rule changes and election day shenanigans (like mysteriously broken machines or ballot shortages in red areas). These require a massive legal offensive long before election day – remember that post-election challenges, for all practical purposes, will always fail. And we face a united cultural and regime media anti-Republican onslaught. We know we face those three challenges. Have we done anything like, I dunno, gotten a few hundred lawyers ready to be in place six months out with sufficient logistical support to fight the steal in advance? Maybe, but then I think we would have heard about it. Or will we have a repeat of 2020 when there was nothing done in advance and we got bulldozed?”

What’s the ballot harvesting/collection plan? How will that work? Who is running it? How is it being funded. Hello?”

And what’s the final plan for the debates? We’ve seen some ideas about requiring 1% in the polls and >40,000 donors to get on stage. Ok, but the debates are in August – what’s the plan? Now, this is a balancing act since Ronna has no business choosing our candidates by granting arbitrary access to the debate stage. On the other hand, there are a lot of flat-out losers jumping into the GOP primary for reasons of ego, greed, and/or apparent mental illness, so those hacks need to be excluded. There’s no reason for viewers to have to endure the corporate simp wheezings of Asa Hutchinson when they need to hear from the two real candidates, DJT and RDS.”

Also, what the hell is going on with cold-shouldering dedicated Republican advocate and trainer Scott @ThePersistence Pressler? This guy is busting his hump doing the hard, tiring work of exactly the kind that Ronna should be organizing and she’s ignoring him. Which means she is ignoring us.”

But isn’t that the problem – the ignoring of us, the base? Whenever I deal with these people, I get the idea that we are being just barely tolerated, that the attitude of the pros – pros who, I might add, keep failing to perform adequately – is that we should shut up, put up, and pay up. Our input is not needed or wanted. Great attitude – fine work, people. Want to know why GOP small-donor donations are a fraction of what the Dems rake in? Because we get treated like trash. From refusing to deign to explain to us what our money and time will be used to do to being dunned by endless emails explaining how we suck for failing to pay up, the GOP is just one step behind Bud Light and Target in their understanding, appreciation, and cultivation of their consumers.”

All of these are exactly the questions that Ronna McDaniel should be answering. As Schlichter points out, she is accountable to the voters, and needs to explain what the Republican National Committee’s strategy is going forward into 2024.

That is, unless Ronna McDaniel has no plan, and is just waiting for the primary to finish up before asking the nominee what kind of plan they want. In which case, we have already lost. The Republican National Committee needs to have local leadership and staffing already in place well before the convention. Presidential elections are not sprints, they are marathons. The RNC seems to have forgotten that, and is instead counting on the personality of the nominee to pull them through. That’s not how this works – that’s not how ANY of this works. Democrats figured out a long time ago that boots on the ground, doing the work of voter outreach and yes, ballot harvesting, is the way to win. For his part, Ron DeSantis has looked at those rules, and if they exist and the Democrats use them, then he is going to use them as well.

DeSantis tells an Iowa voter: “We’re going to do ballot harvesting. I’m doing it, yes.”

He says he won’t “fight with one hand tied behind my back.” pic.twitter.com/tKkr7YFDjX

— Dylan Wells (@dylanewells) June 1, 2023

But why isn’t Ronna McDaniel saying that? We can all agree that mail-in balloting and ballot harvesting is bad and invites fraud. The solution is NOT to go all Marquess of Queensbury rules and posture as principled losers – or as DeSantis put it, “fight with one hand tied behind my back.” The solution is to play the game better than the Democrats, so they realize that they don’t own the playing field any more!

And what exactly is the plan for the debates? No one has the patience for a repeat of 2016’s podiumpalooza.

I think most voters simply want a head-to-head debate between Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis. Schlichter is correct that debate stage access is a “balancing act” for Ronna McDaniel, but THAT’S HER JOB. She gets paid to figure this stuff out! With no incumbent in the race, there ought to be a robust debate season. It is the RNC’s responsibility to figure out how debates will be conducted, who will be moderating them, what the qualification criteria will be, and then to TELL THE CANDIDATES AND THE PUBLIC. This is not rocket science, and neither is it a coronation. Ronna McDaniel’s job is to prepare the party strategy on the local and national level, and raise the funds for whomever the nominee is, not to clear the field for Donald Trump. And if she can’t do that, then she really is guilty of Schlichter’s third complaint – ignoring the rank-and-file voters.

Ronna McDaniel needs to pull her act together, and honestly, she needs to take away Donald Trump’s phone as well. He and his campaign are making so many attacks and missteps right now that if this keeps up, Trump will not be able to run a serious campaign against Joe Biden should he be the nominee.

This is Trump's senior advisor. This is what he thinks a viable campaign looks like. One that will take down Joe Biden in a possible general election.

This is how you get beat by basements and circles around chairs again. https://t.co/KxxoBtQJ4x

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) June 1, 2023

The entire point is to beat Joe Biden. Ronna McDaniel’s job is to create the framework to choose the person who can do that, and then hand that person the money and manpower to go after Biden in the general election. That means actually stepping up and leading from the front of the RNC, not sitting back and letting chaos reign because it makes for better TV. Ronna McDaniel needs to lead, or the Republican Party is going to end up losing to Joe Biden… again.

Featured image: Ronna McDaniel via Gage Skidmore on Flickr, cropped, Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)