Last week, there was a change in leadership of the Republican National Committee. Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel announced her resignation last month, and as a result there was a need for new leadership.

New leadership was chosen in the form of Michael Whatley, former chair of the North Carolina Republican Party, and Lara Trump, Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law.

This move has been seen by many as the former President solidifying his control over the Republican Party, which has seen vast amounts of momentum going into the 2024 election.

However, many people in the Republican Party believed that McDaniel’s leadership had not produced good results over the years. Trump himself was blasted by his own base for supporting McDaniel’s reelection as party chair after the midterms.

The main criticism of McDaniel came down to the fact that she was seen as someone who didn’t really mobilize the national party to support Republican candidates. While Republicans won the 2022 midterms, it was not a smashing success like 2010 or 2014.

McDaniel was blamed for this shortcoming, despite still remaining in her position with the backing of the former president. For reasons that nobody may ever know, she decided last month that she would step down.

I could speculate that Trump’s endorsement of McDaniel was a play to get in her good graces so that when she decided to step down, he could easily install Lara as co-chair. I take that as a big gamble, since she gave no sign of stepping down before she ultimately did.

So now we have the revamped RNC, which is starting off strong and giving Republicans a boost going into the election this year.

Since taking control last week, the new regime has wasted no time in getting rid of problematic elements within the national committee. Minority outreach has been cut, and over 60 people have been fired. This is all just the first week.

On another note, Lara Trump announced that the RNC will be hiring Scott Presler to lead ballot harvesting operations. Before this, Presler had been a one-man show, being very effective in driving Republican turnout in local races.

However, the McDaniel RNC didn’t utilize him for national work. It seems the Whatley-Trump RNC have noticed his talents and are ready to give him actual party support.

Ms. Trump also announced that new efforts by the party will also include registering voters at events like the NRA Convention, UFC fights, the Daytona 500, and country music concerts, among other things.

The GOP has been historically weaker than the DNC at ballot harvesting and voter registration drives. The new Trumpist RNC is hoping to rectify this and use the Democratic Party’s tactics to give themselves a boost.

Lara Trump also announced the new “Three Pillars” that the RNC will focus on. These pillars are: turnout the vote, protect the vote, and raise money. She stated that protecting the vote is the most important of these three.

Of course, the Democrats have ridiculed this new direction. Lara Trump as co-chair of the RNC? Is that some sort of joke? However, I should warn them that there is good reason not to do so.

First reason is that this new direction removes an obstacle for Trump. His relationship with the national party had been rocky at best for the past decade. Now, with his daughter-in-law as co-chair, the national party machine has become an arm of the Trump movement.

We can expect the RNC to mobilize in defense of the former president whenever he calls for aid. This mobilization would not have happened under McDaniel.

The second reason is it shows that the party is learning from its shortcomings. As stated earlier, the Republicans have been weaker than the Democrats at ballot harvesting and voter registration.

If they are able to turn this around, or at least become on par with the Democrats in those fields, we could see red waves in the future. Had Republicans used this strategy in 2022, I believe that their victory would have been much greater than a slim house majority.

The third reason is that with people like Presler in the picture, it shows that they will be more involved in getting Republican politicians exposure and elected to office. There will most likely be no more “you’re on your own” attitude that many candidates who lost recently felt was happening.

These are things that Democrats should be aware of before they start dismissing. With the sorry state that the Biden campaign is in right now, they should probably start cleaning house themselves.

However, the question that Republicans should be asking now is whether or not these changes come too late. There is less than eight months until the presidential election. Of course, that is an eternity in politics, but it also goes really fast.

Can Republicans turn their party around in the next eight months in time for the election? Should these changes have come immediately after the 2022 midterms instead of waiting until now? There is a lot of work that the new regime will have to do.

There are two ways this will go: either this will be the best decision the GOP has ever made or it will fail spectacularly. We won’t know until November.