Political re-alignments happen all the time. I assert that the Democrats and Republicans of 1965 are closer to the Republicans and Democrats of 2024, respectively. That process was well underway before MAGA reared its ugly head. It was evolutionary, not revolutionary. Similar processes have occurred many times throughout the history of both parties.
What's happening today isn't quite a revolution, but it's getting awfully close. As someone with grandchildren whom I'd like to see grow up in a peaceful society, I don't want a revolution. At the same time, it's clear that the US two-party democracy can't continue when one of the two parties has lost its freakin' mind. So finding a way to soft-land Republican insanity and nudge its adherents back onto a track where they can actually participate in governing is essential.
Now: It's abundantly clear that Trump's MAGA ideology has seized all of the levers of power in the GOP. As a result, it should be unsurprising that Ronna McDaniel, as the RNC chairwoman, spouted a lot of MAGA nonsense during her tenure, up to and including asserting that the 2020 election was illegitimate. There's a good case to be made that hiring an election-denier in any sort of journalistic capacity, even one providing commentary only, can't be tolerated.
But when you hire former political operatives as commentators, there's an unspoken assumption that you won't hold everything the operative did against the credibility of the commentator. Without a little bit of forgiveness, or at least a wink and a nod to the unsavory business of politics as it's fought in the trenches, there's simply no path to bring people who actually understand the business of politics into the business of journalism. That's likely a mistake, since insights into how politics is actually conducted are pretty useful.
So hiring or firing McDaniel is kind of a toss-up so far.
But we also have to consider the desirability of GOP rehabilitation. Maybe that's a little premature, given that there's a life-or-death struggle going on to ensure that Trump is defeated, discredited, and removed from public life, either via shunning or incarceration. But what comes immediately after that (hoped for) defeat is important, and requires planning now, so that the consequent implosion of the GOP doesn't trigger systemic threats in the opposite direction.
Ronna McDaniel is Mitt Romney's niece. I'd be pretty surprised if, behind the scenes, she's anything other than a vanilla-flavored, ca. 2012 Republican. As a commentator who knows the bowels of the MAGA GOP intimately but who's presumably sane, she'd be a real asset to any news organization that aspires to be anything other than a single-party mouthpiece.
Firing her from NBC does two things:
1) It reinforces the (correct) perception that MSNBC is nothing more than a Democratic Party propaganda outlet.
2) It signals to all Republicans that the other side has no intention of forgiving them for what they allowed to happen to their party.
The first of these is regrettable. The second is outright dangerous.
The most tragic thing to come from Trumpism is the banishment of any sort of intelligent conservative argument from public discourse. Until those ideas are allowed re-emerge and act as a counterweight to a liberalism that isn't quite as batshit crazy as MAGA, but is seriously off-track and out of step with the American public, governance is going to be impossible.
Republican rehabilitation is going to be a rancorous affair on both sides, but failure to do it is going to be a national security problem. I'm pretty sure that some kind of truth and reconciliation process includes letting Ronna McDaniel say what she really thinks, get slapped around for it, and slowly get moved to a position where she can articulate something that's actually useful.
I hope somebody else takes a chance on her. I also hope that they give her a really hard time.
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