According to a former chair of the Republican National Committee, the new leadership's allegiance to Donald Trump has led to nothing less than a series of "baffling" decisions which are crippling the party's chances in the crucial 2024 election.
In his column for MSNBC. former RNC head Michael Steele claimed the party has become "blinded" by its allegiance to the former president and has forgotten, or is no longer aware, how elections are won.
Steele who now co-hosts 'The Weekend" on MSNBC, claimed the committee he once headed needs to "call a timeout" and reassess how they are conducting business because "it doesn't look good right now."
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According to the MSNBC host, the problem starts at the top with Trump installing his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as co-chair, but it also extends downward at the state level where MAGA enthusiasts have wrestled control of local parties away from longtime activists who understand getting out the vote.
"Trump has overhauled the Republican National Committee's leadership, naming his inexperienced daughter-in-law co-chair and forcing key staffers to reapply for their jobs when they should be focused on work," he wrote before adding, "... the state parties in charge of building a Republican ground operation in crucial swing states are mired in dysfunction. The state party chair in Arizona resigned after a conversation was leaked of him trying to lure Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake out of the race. In Michigan, ousted party chair Kristina Karamo refused to leave her post and allow her successor, Pete Hoekstra, to access the party's bank email and social media accounts. It took a court injunction barring Karamo from conducting party business before the party could move on."
Steele also drew attention to a report from Axios that "about a third of the RNC officials ousted during the recent pro-Trump purge of the committee were state directors and regional political directors."
According to Steele, the GOP leadership remains blind to what happened in 2020, when Trump lost, and 2022 when the so-called "Red Wave" failed to materialize.
Steele said that the election results "have consistently shown that the rhetoric Republican primary voters find appealing isn’t well received by large swaths of persuadable general election voters," he added, "Of course, this once-great party has ceded all its common sense and self-preservation to Trump and the MAGA movement. My half-time talk here is sure to fall on deaf ears. So perhaps the RNC should take a page from the NFL’s book and start checking its players for head injuries."
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