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The wounds from\u00a0Kevin McCarthy<\/strong>\u2019s House Speaker\u00a0fight<\/a> have barely had time to scab over, and already the GOP is bracing for its next intra-party row. Republican National Committee Chair\u00a0Ronna McDaniel<\/strong>, one of\u00a0Donald Trump<\/strong>\u2019s most shameless enablers, is hoping to keep her job as the party leader, despite three consecutive disappointing contests. But a challenge from within Trumpworld is threatening her political future, as\u00a0Harmeet Dhillon<\/strong> \u2014 a former legal adviser to Trump\u2019s 2020 campaign, who had openly called on the Supreme Court to\u00a0\u201cstep in and do something\u201d<\/a> to save the former president\u2019s doomed bid \u2014\u00a0appears to gather momentum. All of it comes to a head with a Friday vote, which will have major implications for the next presidential race. \u201c[Republicans] are really, really eager for change,\u201d Dhillon\u00a0told<\/a> Fox News on Sunday. \u201cAnd I provide that change, and a vision for how we\u2019re going to win in 2024.\u201d<\/p>\n The RNC chair election has already been contentious \u2014\u00a0and, because this is the GOP we\u2019re talking about here, a little bit absurd, as well. Dhillon has accused McDaniel of attacking her Sikh faith. McDaniel, who denies the allegation, has accused Dhillon of issuing political threats. MyPillow CEO\u00a0Mike Lindell<\/strong>, the rabidly pro-Trump conspiracy theorist who is also on the ballot Friday, has hung around the race doing\u2026well,\u00a0Mike Lindell stuff<\/a>, mostly related to conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. And looming over this shitshow has been Trump himself, who is\u00a0said<\/a> to favor McDaniel, but has declined to endorse her \u2014\u00a0perhaps believing he can leverage the skirmish to his own political ends as he seeks to reassert his grip on the party after being blamed for its\u00a0underwhelming midterm performance<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI like both of them,\u201d Trump\u00a0said<\/a> of McDaniel and Dhillon on a conservative podcast last week. \u201cLet them fight it out.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n That fight contains echoes of the one that nearly tanked McCarthy\u2019s speaker bid at the start of this month: McDaniel \u2014\u00a0whose past concessions to Trump\u00a0apparently<\/a> included dropping \u201cRomney\u201d from her public name, because of his ill feeling toward her uncle Mitt \u2014\u00a0is positioning herself as a figure who could hold together the party\u2019s warring factions. \u201cThere\u2019s nobody who\u2019s enjoyed this more than Democrats,\u201d she\u00a0told<\/a> the\u00a0Associated Press<\/em> of the feuding. \u201cI know, because I love it when they\u2019re fighting each other.\u201d But despite McDaniel\u2019s \u201cunity\u201d campaign line, her struggles to actually bring the party together are likely her biggest weakness, as illustrated by the rise of Dhillon, who cast herself as a populist grassroots figure aiming to upend the GOP establishment. The Trump attorney over the weekend picked up\u00a0endorsements<\/a> from the Nebraska and Washington state Republican parties. The\u00a0Texas<\/a> and\u00a0Florida<\/a> parties in December pushed the RNC to move on from McDaniel.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe biggest thing is that we want a really strong leader who\u2019s in touch with MAGA, and Ronna just doesn\u2019t have that,\u201d\u00a0Anthony Sabatini<\/strong>, chair of the Lake County, Florida GOP, told\u00a0AP<\/em> by phone from a shooting range. \u201cShe\u2019s lost the confidence of voters.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n That could incentivize McDaniel to make even greater overtures to the MAGA right, just as McCarthy did to take the gavel for the GOP\u2019s new House majority. Then again, the battle lines aren\u2019t as clearly drawn here as they were in the speaker fight. While Dhillon, as a Trump campaign lawyer and Fox News regular, enjoys the\u00a0support<\/a> of some key MAGA figures \u2014 including\u00a0Tucker Carlson<\/strong> and lead McCarthy holdout\u00a0Matt Gaetz<\/strong> \u2014 the factions seem rather messy, with Dhillon\u2019s campaign also reportedly picking up some support among anti-Trump Republicans, who regard McDaniel as too closely allied with the former president. \u201cYou\u2019ve got anti-Trump people that are for Ronna, and you\u2019ve got anti-Trump people for Harmeet,\u201d as\u00a0Jonathan Barnett<\/strong>, a pro-Dhillon committee member from Arkansas,\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0Politico<\/em>. \u201cIt\u2019s just the weirdest thing I\u2019ve ever seen.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Weird, but only fitting for a party with no real principles and no real identity right now beyond Trump, whose own loyalty to the GOP could prove a factor in the RNC race. As the\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>\u00a0reported<\/a> last week, part of McDaniel\u2019s sales pitch has been that she could keep the former president from mounting a third party presidential run if he fails in the Republican primary. Her argument, in short, is that she can keep this unhappy family together, despite all the bickering and backstabbing. The trouble for her is, it\u2019s not clear her members want the kind of GOP harmony she\u2019s running on. \u201cIf you think the last six years were tough and choppy,\u201d\u00a0John Hammond<\/strong>, a pro-McDaniel committee member from Indiana, told\u00a0Politico<\/em>, \u201cwait \u2018till you see what lies ahead.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n