Lewandowski, Fiorina up for Republican Party chair

The incoming Trump team is considering two key GOP power players to head the Republican National Committee, former campaign chief Corey R. Lewandowski and former presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, according to insiders.

In fact, one suggested that both could be at the Republican National Committee as co-chairs. Another suggested format would have Fiorina as chair and chief talking head and Lewandowski, now a CNN political commentator, as the day to day operator or executive director. The chairmanship election takes place next January.

Current Chairman Reince Priebus is in the mix for several Trump administration jobs, including White House chief of staff, a position where he could bring to Trump his close relationships with Capitol Hill and national Republican figures.

I guess we are stuck with preibus in the wh

Most of what the RNC does is nuts and bolts party building. Republicans have made enormous strides in governorships, state legislatures, and county governments running back to the Haley Barbour and Jim Nicholson era. Preibus inherited a highly successful operation and led it to new heights.

We lost the 2008 and 2012 races because of: (1) Obama and the race factor; (2) our failure to nominate the right candidate; OR (3) our candidates' failures in those years to run the right kind of campaign. Take your pick. But the RNC did its job across the board.

We won the WH this year (1) because of the innate personal leadership qualities of DT OR (2) despite the manifold personal inadequacies of DT. Or both. Take your pick. But the RNC did its job across the board.

Indeed, since Trump never bothered to develop a national organization, it was the RNC and the state parties that carried Trump across the finish line in terms of GOTV. I doubt that Trump has any idea of the machinery on the ground that delivered the vote. This includes a lot of the blue haired ladies who were working endless hours to elect Republicans back when DT was a member in good standing of the Democrat celebrity glitterati. And it includes a lot of the religious conservative grassroots types who were working to elect Republicans while young Donald was chasing loose women around the Manhattan social circuit. Trump owes the Party every bit as much as the Party owes Trump.

Re: #45. I should have added the election of a Republican Congress. From 1932 to 1994, the Democrat lock in Congress was interrupted only a couple of times, and very briefly. Since 1994, there has been rough parity, with power changing hands with some regularity. Which is the way it should be.

Add to that the strength of the GOP at the gubernatorial, state legislative, and county levels. The Democrats' last unchallenged stronghold is their big city bastions. If places like NYC, Philly, Chicago, Atlanta, etc. ever rise up against the corrupt machines that misgovern them, the Democrats will be broken beyond repair.

The worst thing Trump -- and hardcore Trump loyalists -- could do now is to view this election as a singular plebiscitary triumph for a man on a white horse. Trump can do a few things single-handedly, but real and lasting structural reform will take a majority of both houses of Congress. Devolution of power from Washington will require corresponding action by the governors and state legislatures. We can't do this simply by blowing things up. We need an affirmative agenda at all levels.

Trump has to lead the legions to victory before he gets the bronze equestrian statue. And the legions will have to do most of the fighting. Trump can make all the speeches he likes, but the leadership on the Hill will have to assemble 218 votes in the House and 60 votes in the Senate on every substantial reform we hope to make. That's a lot harder than making speeches.

This is only the Republicans' second crack since 1932 with control of the WH and both the House and Senate. The other was during the middle period of the Bush 43 administration from 2002 through 2006. (And a brief period in 2001 before Jim Jeffords defected and gave the Democrats control of the Senate.)

Bush 43 was by that time preoccupied with Middle East and the need to garner bipartisan support for that. Nonetheless, on the domestic side, he proposed an excellent reform agenda: private investment accounts in Social Security; sensible market oriented health care reform; full school choice. Bush went after the biggies, and his proposals were far more detailed and potentially transformative than anything Trump has even dared to whisper. The Trump echo chamber choir is fond of condemning GWB for myriad failings, but they should stop to remember that had Bush actually been able to implement his agenda, we would be over the hump by now on game-changing conservative reform.

In the final analysis, Bush was stopped by Democratic filibustering in the Senate. The Republican Senate caucus was not prepared to nuke the filibuster.

Will a Schumer-led Democratic minority cooperate on real reform? Will Trump prove to have some magical powers of persuasion that eluded Bush, that will bring the Democrats along? Will the current Republican Senate caucus abolish the filibuster?

Or will Trump be confounded by the same structural impasse that stopped us before? It really is that simple.

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