Five years ago, Ronna Romney McDaniel had no involvement in politics, despite her famous family, and was working in the public relations business.
But when her uncle, Mitt Romney, made a run for the presidency Romney McDaniel became a key figure in his Michigan campaign. After Mitt’s 2012 loss, Romney McDaniel, now 43, turned her newfound activism into a seat on the Republican National Committee, quite a leap on the leadership ladder. Then in February 2015, she won her bid for the state party chairmanship in February 2015 with 55 percent of the GOP State Committee vote in a three-person field.
A little more than a year later she emerged as a solidifying force for Donald Trump as he sought to prevent a divided Republican National Convention in July.
In contrast, Mitt Romney’s path over the past five years has taken a very different turn. After his 2012 election loss was blamed by agitated Republican stalwarts on a weak candidacy and an ineffective campaign, the former Massachusetts governor adopted a low profile. When the GOP faced a sharply divided field of 17 White House candidates in 2015, Romney’s name emerged in some party circles as someone who could play the role of a unifying nominee.
But memories of 2012, when many Republican activists appeared certain Barack Obama would become a one-term president, quickly scuttled the speculation of Romney entering the 2016 race.
In March, as Trump maintained his frontrunner role and the Michigan primary approached, Romney delivered a blistering speech, calling the reality TV star a con man who would drag down the entire party.
Fast forward to Wednesday (Dec. 14) and Romney McDaniel was named by Trump as the choice for Republican National Committee chair while Uncle Mitt simultaneously had been brushed aside by the president-elect as the possible secretary of state in the new administration.
With Trump heaping praise on Romney McDaniel, the press release announcing her as the selection for RNC chief notably referred to the Michigan party chair throughout as McDaniel, not Romney McDaniel, as she has been known for years. The name Romney appears nowhere in the release from the Trump team.
The clear implication is that the president-elect never seriously contemplated making Mitt his secretary of state and was instead just trying to torture him through weeks of a phony courting process.
This is an excerpt of a column I wrote for Deadline Detroit recently:
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