Mitt Romney’s niece, Ronna McDaniel, cannot be very happy. The current head of the Republican National Committee failed to lead Republicans to a massive victory in a mid-term election that should have been a sure thing, she’s been exposed for presiding over extravagant spending with donor money, and she’s fighting for her seat against Harmeet Dhillon, a lawyer and highly respected defender of conservative interests. McDaniel is in a hole, but she couldn’t resist trying to take a dig at Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA and a Dhillon supporter. Kirk walked away unscathed. McDaniel ended up buried.

McDaniel’s poorly picked battle began when she appeared on Fox with Brian Kilmeade. Kilmeade asked how she felt about Dhillon’s campaign, which is predicated on the claim that it’s time for new leadership at the RNC. McDaniel returned with the obvious “dis”: “Yeah, you know she is a good attorney, but she’s never run a state party. She’s never run a campaign.”

That was an interesting response from someone whose greatest skill seems to be spending money. It got worse when Kilmeade pointed out that, while the big-money backers (who clearly don’t mind the waste) support McDaniel, a straw poll at a Turning Point event showed young people going for Dhillon.

Image: Charlie Kirk.

McDaniel led with a strongish argument: Dhillon was a speaker at the event, and Turning Point had endorsed her. In other words, it was a biased poll. But then McDaniel decided not just to go after Dhillon or a biased poll, she attacked Turning Point itself:

And I just I’m going to say something about Turning Point. You know they do great conferences. How many young voters did they register? How many youth voters turned out this cycle? How about the college kids in Arizona where they’re headquartered?

You know if you’re going to hold the RNC accountable, start looking at these outside organizations that don’t disclose their finances and ask them what they did.

And this is a group that’s taken over the youth vote, they’ve taken over college campuses and they need to be held accountable, but this is Turning Point and Harmeet trying to take over the RNC.

Before I go further, I need to interject something here. In 2016, I was the speaker’s chair for a conservative group. In that role, I invited Charlie Kirk to address our group. Therefore, I got to talk to him during lunch and hear his speech. I came away thinking, “This is not a young man you challenge without being very, very prepared.”

Despite his youth, Kirk was informed, assertive without being aggressive, genuinely conservative, incredibly verbally competent, and extremely smart. Heck, you must be all those things if you’re going to take on America’s college and university campuses which are totalitarian, one-party bastions of all the worst ideas the left can generate. And yet, that’s exactly what he did, with stunning success.

Indeed, in the face of McDaniel’s snark, Kirk politely but firmly threw Turning Point’s success in her face:

We also...

Recruited over 2,000 new precinct leaders with the project to be at 10,000 by end of 2023

Registered tens of thousands of new voters.

Hosted Ron DeSantis rallies in 6 states supporting more than a dozen Governor/Senate/Congressional candidates. (2/5)

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) December 22, 2022

All by spending only $500,000 via our and a few million via our 501c4

How many hundreds of millions did the RNC spend?

Instead of attacking the only youth org in the country actually doing something, maybe you should be thankful we are doing the work. (4/5)

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) December 22, 2022

Instead of attacking us you should be sending us $700,000 in flowers thanking us.

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) December 22, 2022

Of course, what’s going on here is deeper than McDaniel’s ill-thought-out attack and Kirk’s rapier reply. What we’re also seeing is the schism between the GOP and conservatives. It’s been apparent for a while now that the GOP no longer represents American interests.

Its members represent the global elite, just as surely as the Democrats do. They all believe the same things: Open borders, climate change, a proxy war against Russia, the melding of corporations and government, “transgenderism,” “white racism,” etc., and the GOP is on board, for it’s become substantively indistinguishable from Democrats.

Conservative young people, though, just like the boy who recognized that the Emperor had no clothes, see through all of the talking points and posturing. They understand that, if they are to enjoy the benefits that prior generations received from living in America, they must reject the Uniparty and demand true conservatism from Republican institutions.

I don’t know if Dhillon is a true conservative; I do know, though, that McDaniel is not.