GOP chairwoman hits back at Ramaswamy after debate attack

‘We weren’t involved in those races on Tuesday. I know Vivek is kind of newer to the party ... so he may not know that,’ Ronna McDaniel says after off-year election losses

Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel clapped back at Vivek Ramaswamy after he argued that the GOP has done nothing but lose since she took over the party.

“He’s at four per cent. He needs a headline,” Ms McDaniel said on Fox Business Network. She argued that the biotech entrepreneur is “kind of new to the party. He voted for Obama”.

Mr Ramaswamy has said that he didn’t vote in either election that President Barack Obama was on the ballot, according to Reuters.

He voted for the Libertarian Party in 2004, but didn’t vote in 2008, 2012, or 2016, the news agency noted. In 2020, he voted for then-President Donald Trump.

During the third primary debate on Wednesday, Mr Ramaswamy argued that since Ms McDaniel became the chair of the RNC in 2017, the GOP has become the “party of losers”.

He noted GOP losses in the 2018 and 2022 midterms when the Republicans took back the House by a much narrower margin than expected. Mr Ramaswamy said the GOP was “trounced” in Tuesday’s off-year elections when Democrats took both state legislature chambers in Virginia, won re-election in the Kentucky governor’s race, and Ohio voted to entrench abortion rights in the state Constitution.

“We have to have accountability in our party. For that matter, Ronna, if you want to come on stage tonight and look the GOP voters in the eye and tell them you resign, I will turn over, yield my time to you,” he said.

“He's at he's at four per cent,” she told host Stuart Varney on Thursday. “He needs a headline. I'm going to say what I've been saying to Republicans all along. Our headline should be about Joe Biden, the border, fentanyl, crime, terrible things that are happening in this country that the American people are looking to our party for solutions. But I also will stand by my record as RNC chair – I am the one who delivered Michigan for the first time in 30 years when I was Michigan chair.”

“We just won back the House under my leadership. And I'll add one other thing – In 2022 ... the RNC turned out four million more Republicans, and we would have won the electoral college based on that turnout,” she argued.

“We don't do the messaging. That's a fact. We don't do it. And our candidates have lost their messaging on abortion. In Virginia, the Democrats spent 16 million on abortion ads – Republicans did not respond. In Kentucky, Democrats spent millions and millions on abortion ads, they did not respond,” she argued. “Now the RNC doesn't do state races. We're a federal committee. So we weren't involved in those races on Tuesday. I know Vivek is kind of newer to the party ... so he may not know that.”