Ronna McDaniel is gone and American patriots should rejoice that her reign of failure has ended. There’s a new team in charge at the Republican National Committee, and this is a really good time to remind everybody that Ronna McDaniel was a total disaster, and there is absolutely no evidence apparent to any of us out in the world that the Republicans have learned anything from their lawfare disasters in 2020 and 2022 and that they are doing anything about it. That should be the Number One job of the new leadership team, even before repairing the damaged relationship with donors that Ronna McDaniel’s inept tenure inspired. We have got to fix the legal problems facing Republicans in elections across the country, but especially in the key swing states, and if we don’t, nothing else is going to matter.
So, what’s going on? What is the Republican lawfare plan? Well, Ronna McDaniel insists that the RNC has 70+ lawsuits going on out there. I don’t believe her, but let’s assume that’s true. Who’s in charge of this massive operation? It’s not going to be the RNC’s general counsel. As general counsel of the RNC, Michael Whatley was responsible for the RNC’s own legal work, and now he’s one of the new co-chairs. The other co-chair is Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, and hopefully she’s been burned hard enough in the past to want to get this right.
But are the Republicans getting this right? A bunch of random lawsuits is not a legal operation. It’s a bunch of random lawsuits. Here’s how I know if an operation is going to be unsuccessful. I ask who is in charge, and I don’t get an answer. Well, that’s what I did at CPAC. I asked around and a whole bunch of big wheels in Republican politics did the same thing when I asked who is in charge of fighting the legal battle and coordinating it across the country. They shrugged. They don’t know. They have no idea who’s in charge or what the plan is, or even if there’s a plan at all.
See, that’s bad.
Unity of command is a principle of all successful operations, whether in the military or when you are handling lawsuits across the fruited plain. Litigation has to be coordinated, even as the day-to-day work has to be decentralized. It has to be coordinated because many issues are the same across the states, especially those involving federal law. You don’t want your team in Minneapolis spinning its wheels writing the same motion on a federal election issue that the lawyers in Atlanta just wrote. You don’t want to establish a precedent in Georgia that hurts you in Arizona. You need a command structure led by a leader who can coordinate, synchronize efforts, and organize resources. But if you trust the Republicans to do that without seeing evidence that they are, I’ve got this bridge I want to sell you. Cheap.
Don’t get your hopes up for the RNC to manage any effective litigation, if necessary. Now that Trump has installed his team and they have fired 60+ former staffers, the RNC will be used for one thing and one thing only: to raise funds for Trump to use for his own personal legal defense. That will also have severe detrimental effects on all the down-ballot Republican candidates because there will be no money left to support them. Too bad so sad. You want an autocrat? You’ll get one.