Donald Trump needed to “win big.” So he needed to listen to his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, according to the Wall Street Journal.

She took on the thankless job of outmaneuvering the dirty tricks of her opponents in her new role as co-chairman of the Republican National Committee. “We don’t have one day of voting, we don’t have paper ballots, we don’t have voter ID everywhere,” she said pointing out the reality of winning on a new playing field. “We have to play the hand we’re dealt.”

Her strategy was also personal. She advised her father-in-law -- who spent four years criticizing early and absentee voting -- that his embittered observations weren’t going to pull off a red wave. (This, of course, turned into a national tsunami.)

The new strategy mirrored the tactics of Democrats in getting out the early vote. She also adopted the talent of her father-in-law, delivering colorful sound bites: “We’ve been playing checkers, and the Democrats have been playing chess,” she said.

The game was on: That meant upending the former master plan of the RNC and amassing hundreds of thousands of volunteers to catch-up and launch initiatives for early and absentee voting, while imitating the well-worn strategy (for Democrats) to facilitate “legal ballot harvesting.” This enables third parties to collect and submit ballots for another voter.

President Trump became a convert to the new plan of action, and stopped grumbling about mail-in fraud: All things considered, he put his stamp of approval on the RNC’s massive network corralling thousands of conservative groups in the campaign called “Bank Your Vote,” a national early voting initiative.

He allocated huge sums of the GOP budget adopting the attitude of “if you can’t beat them…”

No one has ever accused Donald Trump of not effectively stretching a dollar in an RNC campaign. He even offered his former opponent, Hillary Clinton, 10 cents on the dollar for her purchase of fireworks, set to go off over the Potomac River to celebrate her victory in 2016.

Donald Trump learned many things from Ms. Clinton, and not denigrating the voter base of an opponent was one of them. “Deplorables” was a term she sorely regretted in describing her opponent’s base. Now, Joe Biden is credited with labeling Trump supporters as “garbage,” helping him across the finish line.

Name calling was something the GOP can count on from their opponents, and they were learning more valuable lessons in how to win an election.

Lara Trump, in another chess move, had to beat the Democrats at the dirtiest voting tactic of all: Draw out voter box deliveries late into the night, keep polls open, or allow counting ballots for weeks post-election (as California is now doing as of the writing of this article). The state allows for an additional two weeks.

Lara Trump was astutely aware that 200,000 poll watchers wasn’t going to be enough: But, instead, she, and her RNC colleagues, relied on an army of GOP attorneys, as many as 5,000 on stand-by.

She scored big time. The list of RNC “election integrity victories” in court have not been officially identified as an essential part of the campaign, but no one wants to think about the results without the legal challenges.

The major wins -- which took place weeks or months before the election -- were comprehensively listed by Breitbart: Every victory served to stop the ongoing attempts by leftist groups to subvert and change election rules (see below):

• A Mississippi court ruled against Democrats, declaring “post-election day ballot counting” was illegal under federal law. The poll hours were extended in numerous states. In 2020, the DNC greatly benefitted from late-night counting, with many Trump supporters going to bed thinking he won the election, and waking up to discover that Joe Biden was the next President.

• The swing state of Georgia denied the DNC’s legal challenge to “extend voter registration deadline.” RNC Chairman Michael Whatley commented on the ruling at the time: “We are committed to protecting our elections, upholding safeguards and making it easy to vote and hard to cheat in Georgia and across the country.”

• A crucial swing state, Pennsylvania, was named in a lawsuit by the RNC. Montgomery County was accused of sending out ballots without conducting Ballot Accuracy Testing. The point of the testing is to uphold rules and safeguards to ensure the integrity of the voting system. The county admitted to the administrative lapse, and assured the RNC of correcting the situation.

Those are just to name a few… The results of Lara Trump’s efforts, and the hundreds of thousands of volunteers, cannot be overstated in securing the results of the 2024 election.

Image: Gage Skidmore