RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel is trying to hold together a party that Donald Trump might want to tear up washingtonpost.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from washingtonpost.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Ronna McDaniel seeks to restore a fractious GOP
Josh Dawsey and Manuel Roig-Franzia, The Washington Post
Jan. 29, 2021
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Air Force One was fueled and ready for the final flight.
This was the end for Donald Trump, the last hours of a progressively more noxious and isolated presidency. But as he was poised to fly south from Joint Base Andrews into the uncertainty of his after-times, Ronna McDaniel was able to get him on the line.
McDaniel, the unfailingly amiable chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, had stood by Trump, even as a trickle of GOP luminaries abandoned him. She had been Trump s handpicked choice to lead the GOP four years earlier, and she had been loyal up to a point: gently critical of his most profane outbursts and divisive rhetoric, but buoyantly supportive of his policies and his often erratic conduct in office.
At party retreat far from D.C. turmoil, Republicans still sing praises of Trump
Josh Dawsey, The Washington Post
Jan. 8, 2021
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Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel speaks on the first day of the Republican National Convention on Aug. 24, 2020.Washington Post photo by Jabin Botsford
AMELIA ISLAND, Fla. - Winds of change did not blow through a luxury seaside resort here as top Republicans huddled Friday to chart their party s future.
After disappointing elections that cost the GOP the White House and control of the U.S. Senate - and after a mob incited by President Donald Trump to protest his election left five dead and his lame-duck administration in shambles - there was little appetite for a course correction, or for taking on the president.
Jan. 8, 2021 6:12 pm ET
The political party President Trump commanded with a firm hand for four years is now torn over whether he has a place in its future.
The violent incursion into the Capitol that Mr. Trump helped instigate this week which left five people dead, including a U.S. Capitol Police officer has made some Republican leaders and strategists so worried about the party’s image they believe the only course is to split with Mr. Trump.
Sen. Ben Sasse (R., Neb.), who has criticized Mr. Trump’s behavior before, said he would consider articles of impeachment if approved by the House. Another Republican lawmaker, Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, on Thursday called for Mr. Trump to be removed from office through the 25th Amendment. “Here’s the truth: The president caused this. The president is unfit,’’ Mr. Kinzinger said in a video message.
Updated Jan. 8, 2021 2:04 pm ET
FERNANDINA BEACH, Fla. Ronna McDaniel, an ally of President Trump, was re-elected the Republican National Committee chairwoman as the party weighs its future after losing control of the White House and both chambers of Congress in the past two years.
Her re-election comes at the end of a week in which the GOP lost control of the Senate in the new Congress and as a Trump-inspired mob attacked the Capitol as lawmakers were gathered to certify his election loss.
Ms. McDaniel condemned the violence in remarks Friday but made no mention of Mr. Trump’s role in encouraging his supporters to go to the Capitol to try to overturn the November election.