This is a little bit behind the news curve but it illustrates a really important point.
In Ronna McDaniel’s $600,000 interview on Meet the Press, she had this to say about her time as head of the RNC.
When you’re the RNC chair, you – you kind of take one for the whole team, right? Now I get to be a little bit more myself, right?
McDaniel is exactly right. Especially in this age of narcissistic social-media politic where people will do anything and say anything so long as it promotes their personal brand, being a team player is a rare and valuable thing.
But that doesn’t really answer the question. Being a team player is fine as far as it goes. What’s really important, however, is what team are you on?
McDaniel was on Team Trump, or maybe Team RNC. But she was definitely not on Team America and that ought to disqualify her from further participation in public life, even as a talking head on cable TV.
This is yet another example of the LOL, Nothing Matters attitude that treats American democracy – and efforts to destroy it – as nothing more than a game.
During her tenure as RNC head, the RNC behaved despicably. McDaniel was actively involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 election. She wrote a letter demanding that Michigan not certify the 2020 election result and conduct an “audit” instead. She even participated in a call – along with Trump himself – with two members of the Wayne County, Michigan canvassing board to pressure them not to certify the election results. Perhaps even worse, she personally participated in organizing Trump’s fake elector scheme, something for which he is currently facing criminal charges in Georgia. She will almost certainly be a witness in that case and it is only down to prosecutorial discretion that she wasn’t charged herself. She’s changed her tune now, but even as late as last year, she was claiming that Joe Biden had not been fairly elected as president.
She also presided over an RNC meeting that voted – with no opposition – to censure Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for serving on the January 6th committee and thereby persecuting “ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”
That’s not playing for Team America. For an example of that, look to Michigan representative Paul Mitchell who, in a direct rebuke to McDaniel and the RNC resigned from the Republican party over these election fraud claims saying, “If Republican leaders collectively sit back and tolerate unfounded conspiracy theories and ‘stop the steal” rallies without speaking out for our electoral process . . . our nation will be damaged. . . . [W]ith the leadership of the Republican Party and our Republican Conference in the House actively participating in at least some of these efforts, I fear long-term harm to our democracy.”
This stuff matters. Trying to overturn an election is not the typical cut-and-thrust of electoral politics in a two-party system. Treating election denial as just part of being a team player is a long step towards the death of American democracy. We can’t normalize that and those of us who believe in liberal democracy should never let Ronna McDaniel, and those like her, forget it.