Thread by @EddieDu5

Ronna Romney McDaniel heads a party that has lost the House, the Senate and the White House under her leadership and is riven by infighting over whether she should defend Trump more forcefully — or at all.
washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/ronn…

Growing up in Michigan, she wasn’t just a kid; she was the granddaughter of George Romney, the iconic politician who had served as the state’s governor and had made a run at the Republican presidential nomination before she was born.

“It’s hard to have a name that’s well-known. When you have a well-known name, doors can open,” McDaniel’s mother, known to family and friends as “Big Ronna” Romney, said in an interview.

She eventually won a seat as a Republican National Committee member, then in 2015, she became the head of the Michigan Republican Party in a fiercely contested election.

With Trump’s election, McDaniel had arrived. She was at the top of the Republican Party, selected personally as RNC chairwoman by the new president, a perch nearly unfathomable just a few years earlier when she was a homemaker.

Before she took office, Trump asked his new RNC chairwoman to drop Romney and use only her married name.

McDaniel has tried to brush off the request as either exaggerated or merely a lighthearted suggestion, rather than a demand.

Mitt Romney, now a U.S. senator representing Utah, simply said in a statement to The Post that “I love my niece and always will.”

In reality, the past four years have placed a serious strain with lingering corrosive effects on their relationship.

There have been shouting matches among the extended family over her steadfast support for Trump. McDaniel and her uncle speak infrequently. She later made headlines with a prickly statement referring to her uncle not by name, but as the “junior senator from Utah”.

McDaniel brought a new vibe to the Republican National Committee, an organization that has shrunk in importance since the advent of political action committees that can raise unlimited funds.

In private, she once told him that many of his “Stop the Steal” claims were “crazy,” according to a person familiar with the call.

She also challenged Trump to wear masks.

For days before the riot, Trump had tried to bully Pence into refusing to do his ceremonial duty and finalize the certification of electoral votes handing the presidency to Biden.

As much as anyone in the Trump era, McDaniel represents Trump’s triumph over the Republican establishment, a scion of the blue-blood Romney clan serving in the insurgent House of Trump.

While attending Brigham Young University, she became a driver for her mother’s unsuccessful 1994 U.S. Senate campaign.

Her father, Scott Romney, lost a race for state attorney general four years later but became a top advisor on his brother Mitt’s presidential campaign in 2012.

After Trump won the nomination, McDaniel did not waver.

She called Trump’s taped comments about grabbing women’s genitals “disgusting” but still hit the trail for him that October weekend.

When Reince Priebus finished his tenure as national chairman to become Trump’s first chief of staff, he recommended McDaniel as his replacement.

She impressed Trump as a forceful advocate on TV, a trait he values as much as her considerable fundraising skill.