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Ronna Romney McDaniel, who headed the Michigan Republican Party from 2015-16, walks a shaky tightrope this week.
She needs to show loyalty to the president while trying hard to limit damage for their party as he "gives white supremacists an unequivocal boost," in the words of a front-page New York Times headline.
Ronna Romney McDaniel: "I don't think comparing blame works." (Facebook photo)
McDaniel, granddaughter of a 1963-69 Michigan governor (George W. Romney) and niece of a 2012 presidential nominee (Mitt Romney), was a studio guest Wednesday on ABC's "Good Morning America" (half-minute video excerpt below).
"We have no place in our party at all for KKK, anti-Semitism, racism, bigotry," she said, referring to groups that marched with lit torches and Nazi flags last weekend in Charlottesville, Va.
"It has no place in the Republican Party,” she told the network's David Muir on the set in New York. “There is no home here. We don't want your vote. We don't support you. We'll speak out against you. The president has said so.”
In a Politico post, reporter Louis Nelson cites a gap between the president and the party chair, a Trump delegate at last summer's Republican National Convention:
While McDaniel was insistent that the president had been unequivocal in his condemnation of the hate groups that marched on Saturday in Virginia, she diverged from Trump in assessing the blame for the deadly violence.
"When it comes to Charlottesville, the blame lays squarely at the KKK and the white supremacists who organized this rally and put together an entire event around hate and bigotry," she said.
"I don't think comparing blame works in this situation, because we know what initiated the violence and the death of this young woman whose life was taken too soon."
