Building on the success of its infamous 'autopsy' of mistakes made in 2012, the Republican National Committee (RNC) is reportedly putting the finishing touches on what might be more aptly termed, the nahtopsy.
After Mitt Romney's loss to President Obama, the RNC identified structural problems the party needed to fix to avoid increasing national irrelevance and then promptly incinerated those recommendations in the next presidential cycle with the emergence of Donald Trump.
This go-round, according to The Washington Post, the in-depth RNC examination of 2022 simply skips over identifying the 800-pound gorilla in the party: Trump.
The draft report attempts to grapple with why Republicans failed to capture Senate control and walked away with a paltry House majority, but conveniently omits any mention of Trump—the de facto Republican leader who personally peppered GOP ballots across the country with totally incompetent MAGA election deniers.
One of the RNC's unofficial explanations for this tiny oversight is that RNC chair Ronna McDaniel is trying to avoid any appearance of bias in the 2024 Republican primary. The other is the fact that many of the GOP candidates who crashed and burned in 2022 are eyeing new bids in 2024.
To recap, the draft report—which is supposed to spur discussion at an RNC meeting in Oklahoma City later this week—declines to name the person who has single-handedly driven the party into the ground over the past three election cycles, and further omits any discussion of the fatally flawed candidates who are currently planning a second bite of the apple in '24.
"The GOP does not want to give opponents fuel for criticism, so authors were loath to mention them by name," writes The Post.
Brillz. Don't go changin', GOP.
The report does admit abortion was a sticking point in the midterms for Republican candidates, but concludes that they simply need to talk more about the issue.
Amen. We recommend extended debates over how many weeks should be the cutoff point for people to make their own medical decisions, and what, if any, exceptions should be extended to people who were raped or might die. We also humbly submit "Bans or Bust!" as a Republican catch phrase next cycle.
Another problem uncovered by the report was the dismal fundraising of the lackluster Republican candidates handpicked by... shhhhh. Don't say it.
The RNC also recommends pushing both early and mail-in voting—two methods that were explicitly demonized by... shhhhh. Don't say it.
Shockingly, the report is being pooh-poohed by some members of the party.
“If it doesn’t mention Donald Trump or the candidates with the Trump endorsement, it’s not worth the paper it’s written on,” Bill Palatucci, an RNC member from New Jersey and anti-Trumper, told the Post.
Oh, come now. There's no bad ideas in a GOP brainstorming session.
The past week seems to have packed in a month’s worth of news. Markos and Kerry tackle it all, from Joe Biden’s big announcement to Tucker Carlson’s early retirement from Fox News.