The RNC commissions MAGA autopsy to investigate 2022 election fiasco
If you want to bury the truth, create a committee
The Democrats handed the Republicans a beat-down in 2022. Now the Republican National Committee has rounded up a crew of outside advisors to create a postmortem panel, the ‘Republican Party Advisory Council’. In politics, establishing a committee is what you do when you want to appear you are doing something without actually doing something.
Worse, the RNC is clear about who they are catering to. Ronna McDaniel, RNC Chair, announced a panel full of MAGAs, including Trump-loving Kellyanne Conway; anti-gay, anti-choice zealot Tony Perkins; and Trump-endorsed politicians such as failed Senate candidate Blake Masters, and newly elected Sen. Katie Britt (AL), Rep. Monica De La Cruz (TX), and Rep. John James (MI).
This committee packing has foreordained the conclusion. The RNC will announce the GOP did not embrace Trump closely enough.
But let us imagine if the RNC were serious about understanding why they lost in 2022. For a start, they would not ask politicians a damn thing.
If the RNC wants to learn why it lost the election, it should talk to the voters — especially people who voted for Republicans in 2016 but did not in 2020 and 2022. If you want to know how your customers feel, ask them. And seek out old regulars who now shop elsewhere.
The RNC should go to the bars, dinners, and social clubs — wherever swing voters hang out — and ask the tough but necessary question, “why do you hate the GOP today?”
But that is not how Republicans operate. They decide what they want to run on — today it is Trumpism — and try to prevent people who hate their ideas from voting. And when they lose, they do not soul search and ask. “where did it all go wrong?” They deny they lost.
McDaniel captains a ship of fools. Since the party elected her Chair of the RNC in January 2017, she has underperformed in every election. If you include the GOP 2-seat pickup in the 2018 Senate elections, her scorecard against expectations is 1-6.
Under McDaniel, the RNC has battered the Republican brand in the age of MAGA. In 2020 it went all in, evidence-free, on voter fraud. And it abetted the sham delegates scheme. In 2022, it censured Republicans who supported a bipartisan 9/11-style Commission to investigate the J6 insurrection. And the RNC called the fatal riots — whose rampaging violence Americans witnessed on their TVs — "legitimate political discourse."
The majority of Americans are against draconian anti-abortion laws. They want the LGBTQ community left alone, and they support gay marriage. Many right-leaning voters would embrace a return to ‘Rockefeller republicanism.’ But these voters cannot stomach the GOP's whiny embrace of QAnon’s elitist, baby-blood drinker conspiracies; the vituperative hate of anti-social warriors; and the non-stop evidence-free claims of election rigging.
They fear a party hijacked by conservative evangelicals and its theocratic promotion of the oxymoronically named Christian nationalist movement. And they will not support a party that enables a leader who wines and dines vindictive anti-Semites and throws racist red meat at a base.
The RNC will not recommend any policy changes. And any suggestion they should tone it down would be swamped by Trump’s first post on Truth Social smearing the RNC as RINOs and claiming they are in league with the Democrats.
If the RNC wants the GOP to get back on a winning track, they will have to tighten their corsets and stiffen their spine. And call out the virulent racism and antisemitism of the thuggish, Mar-a-Lago crime boss, affirm elections are valid, and withhold all money from every anti-democracy, tear-it-all-down, bug-eyed MAGA candidate.
If these pants-pissing milquetoasts keep appeasing Trump because they are terrified he will say something nasty and sic his MAGA mongrels on them, they will repeat their failures. Taking a stand is tough. You will get punched in the face. But tough people absorb blows and keep going.
Back to reality, these people will not change. They are all about power, not policy. McDaniel is facing a challenge from the GOP’s failed NY Governor candidate, Lee Zeldin. And she will kiss whatever ass she has to cling to her position and perks.
In the House, Kevin McCarthy will do what it takes to keep his flickering speakership hopes alive. If he wins, he will be in debt to the crazies. If he loses, the lunatics will try and run the asylum. But shit-tossing is not a winning management strategy. The House Republicans have run off any grown-up trying to lead their caucus — arrivederci Boehner, adios Ryan — and their future is anarchy.
Some out-of-the-box thinkers suggest Democrats should ally with centrist Republicans to elect a moderate Republican to be Speaker — there still are some. But I have no doubt these GOP do-not-rock-the-boat types witnessed what happened to the Representatives who voted to impeach Trump, and they will take what the crazies hand them.
It would be different if the RNC backed them up and nurtured sanity in the GOP. They could still be the party of deregulating, tax-cutting, voodoo economists - supporting religious freedom while opposing abortion and gay marriage - if they would stop yelling, whining, hating, lying, and denying.
Fat chance.
Sometime in 2023, the GOP’s CYA Council will publish a report to much fanfare. It will promote what every useless twaddle it promotes. And the next day, it will be ignored by everyone.
Fat chance is absolutely correct Pitt, these fools like it just the way it is, what a bunch of bozos ,thank you