Not completely….
(Work to be neutral?)
Ronna McDaniel, the RNC head , is , like most Republicans singing Donald Trump prises …
But?
She is also coming under pressure to begin to edge away from the view RNC will do EVERYTHING the Trump tells them to do….
Why?
Donald Trump is an ex-President….
He LOST to Joe Biden…
The Republicans lost their US Senate majority on Trump’s watch with the loss of TWO Senate races in the RED state of Georgia….
President Biden’s approval is 10% points above anything Trump had….
There is no doubt that the vast majority of Republicans voters are Trump supporters…
But THAT doesn’t change the fact that Republican took losses standing behind Trump, and that his efforts top stay in office cost the party support from around the edges….
And?
Trump is still picking at members of ‘the/his’ party that did NOT support his illegal efforts to throw a election…
The ‘party’ DOES have a problem….
They are in a wrestling match with closer who won’t quit?
…as the Republican National Committee prepares to meet next week in Dallas for its first gathering since Trump left the White House, McDaniel is under increasing pressure from some of the committee’s members to show more independence from the former president — particularly after his Saturday Mar-a-Lago speech, in which he slashedRepublicans and called Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) a “dumb son of a bitch.”
While Trump maintains broad support throughout the party, some of the RNC’s 168 committee members want to see the party create at least a modicum of distance from Trump — or at least grapple with the fact the GOP lost the White House, Senate and House during his administration and reflect on how to improve its fortunes in 2022 and 2024, according to multiple party officials and committee members. Other members say they have been frustrated the GOP has not commissioned any wide review of what to do next, as the RNC did after Mitt Romney lost the White House in 2012.
“We’ve got to be clear-eyed about the last cycle,” said Henry Barbour, a national committeeman from Mississippi. “We lost.
Barbour said it was a mistake for the RNC to hold part of its spring donor retreat at Mar-a-Lago, adding that some of the former president’s rhetoric is not helping the party.
“The RNC has to be independent. That’s fundamental to hold fair primaries. . . . Holding part of our RNC donor retreat at the home of one of the potential 2024 candidates is inconsistent with being independent,” Barbour said. “Could you imagine if the RNC held a similar event at Ted Cruz’s home or Mitt Romney’s home or any other potential candidate’s home? Trump is a major force in the party, but the party must be bigger than any one candidate, including Donald Trump.”
Bill Palatucci, a national committeeman from New Jersey, said “some of us in purple states sit back and just roll our eyes” at events such a last weekend’s retreat, during which Trump railed about the 2020 election and Republican lawmakers he deemed insufficiently loyal to him….
…
The dynamic between McDaniel and the former president is emblematic of the difficult balancing act that other party leaders are trying to strike as they attempt to carve out a post-Trump future for the GOP.