Washington Wednesday: Shifting in the GOP

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 28th of February, 2024.

Thanks for joining us for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

It’s Washington Wednesday. Today, a leadership shakeup at the Republican National Committee. But first, highlights from this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC. WORLD’s Washington Bureau reporter Leo Briceno went to CPAC, and joins us now.

REICHARD: Good morning, Leo.

LEO BRICENO, REPORTER: Hey, good morning, Mary.

REICHARD: CPAC tends to be a barometer for what issues American conservatives are most concerned about, particularly in an election year. Leo, what were the 2-3 top issues, and what did headline speakers say about them?

BRICENO: I mean, just about everything came up, right. You talk about Ukraine, border policy, energy. I mean, the gamut was just as broad as really you can imagine. But really, kind of three themes that I saw come up time and time again, were that the Republican Party, right, when it gets together in a room, is increasingly America-first, it's continually MAGA or Trump-oriented, and it's deeply reliant on anti-establishment rhetoric. If you take a look at someone like Matt Gaetz, for instance, on kind of anti-establishment, he’s been a figure that’s been very prominent, and in the House of Representatives has been kind of emblematic of the most conservative movement of the GOP there. His talk was literally titled “Burn the House Down,” right? And he got one of the biggest receptions, I think of the entire conference. Here’s a little bit of what he had to say on the establishment.

MATT GAETZ: So if you’re out there campaigning, running as a Paul Ryan or Kevin McCarthy Republican, my message to you is this: they don’t work here anymore.

And then how the party is still very Trump-centric, right. CPAC is not necessarily pro Trump. It’s pro-conservative, pro-Republican. But I think that the theme predominantly, virtually everywhere, was that this is Trump’s event, still very much Trump’s party. Here’s Governor Kristi Noem on that.

KRISTI NOEM: Last year when everyone was asking me if I was going to consider running for president I said, “No. Why would you run for president if you can’t win?” I didn’t say it to be nice. I said it because it was a fact. No one we knew could beat Donald J. Trump. We’ve known that for over a year—he’s the only person who had the support to be the Republican presidential nominee.

REICHARD: Well, what about abortion? Now, it used to be the focus was to put justices on the court who would stick to constitutional analysis and thereby overturn Roe versus Wade, and that did happen with the Dobbs decision. But what was said this year at CPAC about abortion?

BRICENO: Yeah, that’s, that’s a really great question. You know, it wasn’t until after leaving the event, and kind of looking back and reflecting on it that I realized, man, you know, I don’t really think I heard all that much about abortion at all. And I don’t want to pretend that I have an exhaustive view of what went on at CPAC. Maybe I missed the session, in the plenary session or the keynote speech where you know, it was the focal point. But it is surprising looking back on it that, you know, something that has been so critical, so central to the conservative movement for the past 50 years, right, the pro-life issue, for now, I can’t really say that had much of a presence at all.

REICHARD: Before we go, what other stories are you watching in the Capital this week?

BRICENO: Yeah, we’re rounding the corner on the week that ends with a potential, a partial government shutdown. So we’re still playing this government funding game. We still have a two-step funding process where parts of the government will shut down March 1st. Others will shut down March 8th. And we’re really looking at four bills this week to meet the first deadline there. So speaker Johnson has struggled to create unity among the GOP and a very thin majority to do much of anything. But spending has really been the repeating thorn in his side. So this week will be critical for him as he looks to galvanize Republicans to put together for spending bills. They have a top line number, a kind of a bottom line to work with that they negotiated with Democrats, but the specifics of what those bills look like are still up in the air. That’s what’s going to be front and center and Congress this coming week.

REICHARD: Leo Briceno covers politics for WORLD in Washington D.C. Thanks for this report.

BRICENO: Sure thing. Thank you, Mary.

EICHER: Well, in other news, on Monday, RNC chair Ronna McDaniel announced that she would resign after Super Tuesday primaries on March 5th.

McDaniel’s co-chair, Drew McKissick, also announced that he would step down.

In their place, Trump endorsed a North Carolina-based campaign operative, Michael Whatley, to take over with his daughter-in-law Lara Trump as co-chair.

REICHARD: Before announcing his resignation, McKissick told WORLD reporter Carolina Lumetta what he thinks party leadership should focus on:

MCKISSICK: Our job as campaign committees, which is what the party is, is a campaign committee, is to win. You know if we get too far afield from the things that only we can do, which is the organizing, the messaging, and the fundraising, then those things don’t get done and we lose. And then everybody’s got something to be mad about.

Joining us now to talk about the shake-up is Hunter Baker. He’s provost of North Greenville University and a regular contributor to WORLD Opinions.

Hunter, good morning.

HUNTER BAKER: Good morning to you.

REICHARD: Well, McKissick was elected to RNC leadership just last year, and he told WORLD that Trump is essentially the presumptive nominee. But when Trump on Saturday thanked McKissick for his conservative work, the crowd booed the RNC co-chair. Hunter, why do you think Trump’s base is dissatisfied with the RNC even though they’re largely pro-Trump?

BAKER: Well, there’s a couple of things. I think that first, the RNC has been blamed for the lack of the red wave in 2022 that a lot of people expected. I personally think that it’s incorrect to blame them for that. I think that really Joe Biden was able to fend off the wave through a couple of things. One is he released a massive amount of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which reduced the price of oil in the run up to the midterms. I think the other thing is he was trying to perform a massive student loan debt cancellation, which would also bring a lot of voters to the polls. And I think that that kind of held down the red wave. I don’t think that was the RNC’s fault, but Trump, I think, kind of played it that way. And the other thing is in all of the post 2020 election claims of fraud and things like that, the RNC really did not get involved in it. And so I think that a lot of Trump folks feel betrayed that the RNC did not enter into that, that fight. To the RNC’s credit they avoided legal trouble, unlike some of the other folks.

REICHARD: What do you think about the two people Trump wants to replace Ronna McDaniel and Drew McKissick?

BAKER: Well, so Michael Whatley would be sort of a typical internal party operator, not known to a lot of people and of course, that often happens with with these folks who operate these posts. But his desire for Laura Trump to be the co-chair, that’s interesting, right. That’s, it’s intriguing to see sort of building something like a family empire within the party, not something that you’ve really seen that much within the Republican Party. And I don’t know if it would turn off voters generally. I guess it all depends on where the Trump brand is. These days, the Trump brand is stronger than I thought it would be back in 2020, so we’ll see.

REICHARD: Let’s talk about running mates. Last week, Trump confirmed some of the names on his short list of potential running mates during a FOX News town hall event. It includes SC senator Tim Scott, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, and South Dakota Governor, Kristi Noem. No surprise, Trump did not include Nikki Haley. Hunter, who stands out to you as a potential VP who could shore up the ticket where Trump is weak?

BAKER: Well, so the interesting thing is, is that if you if you look at the list, there’s a lot of diversity on this list. So if you’re going to ask me who is my choice as somebody who has the best chance, I’m tempted to say Tim Scott. Tim Scott has tremendous credibility with evangelicals. Many of them would like to see him be president someday. They love the fact of his diversity. They’re tired of being thought of as racists, and so Tim Scott brings that. He also had some effective public policy work on criminal justice when Donald Trump was president. And he’s been a stalwart supporter of Trump. And when he dropped out, he quickly endorsed Trump.

REICHARD: Any other stories you’re keeping an eye on?

BAKER: Yeah, one of the interesting questions about Trump is how he’s going to do in the general, because he has to some extent underperformed his polls in these primaries. Is he beating Nikki Haley and everybody else? Yes. Is he beating them by as much as the polls suggest? And the answer is, not always. And so then the question you have is, well, does that mean that these Nikki Haley voters are going to desert him in the general election? The analyses that I have seen probably indicate that they will rally to him in the end, but that’s a little bit of a concern.

REICHARD: Hunter Baker is provost of North Greenville University and a regular contributor to WORLD Opinions. Hunter, Thanks for joining us!

BAKER: Thank you.

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