Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, won Friday’s election to continue leading the GOP for another two years. The election exposed the party’s bitter internal conflicts, which threaten to continue into the 2016 presidential campaign.
Donald Trump chose McDaniel to lead the RNC in 2016, and he prevailed 111 to 51 in the secret ballot. As the RNC’s 168 voting members, activists, and elected leaders from all 50 states, assembled for the committee’s annual winter conference, the high-profile election took place within a luxurious resort on the Southern California coast.
Ronna McDaniel Elected Once Again
Immediately following the announcement of the results, a relieved Ronna McDaniel called her competitors to the stage. The Democrats will hear us in 2024 if we are all unified and working together, she vowed. With the win, McDaniel extends the RNC’s chair tenure record set during the Civil War. However, both allies and adversaries concur that she won’t be running the RNC from a position of power.
With the support of MAGA luminaries in the conservative media, Dhillon launched a forceful assault against Ronna McDaniel that included claims of persistent mismanagement, misfeasance, and even racism towards Dhillon’s Sikh faith. McDaniel refuted all of the claims. The main argument against McDaniel focused on the party’s direction after years of defeats in elections since Trump appointed her to head the committee after his unexpected victory in 2016.
Conservative activist Charlie Kirk claimed that McDaniel’s supporters will be held “accountable” after Dhillon’s defeat, citing the Republican base’s overwhelming yearning for change.
Kirk, who was seated at the rear of the hotel ballroom where the voting was placed with a number of Dhillon supporters, declared that “the RNC has disdain for their voters.” They only handed them the middle finger, essentially.
