Since he was elected chairman of the Republican National Committee, Michael Steele has been, to put it mildly, somewhat gaffe-prone. In his defense, though, at least you can say that many of his more embarrassing moments came as aprt of his attempts to make his party more welcoming -- and more appealing -- to minorities. His latest misstep, though, seems likely to set that effort back.
On Sunday, Steele was on NewsOne, a network aimed at African Americans, for a political talk show hosted by Roland Martin. During the program, Martin and Steele had this exchange:
MARTIN: But your candidates got to talk to them. One of the criticisms I've always had is Republicans -- white Republicans -- have been scared of black folks.
STEELE: You're absolutely right. I mean I've been in the room and they've been scared of me. I'm like, "I'm on your side" and so I can imagine going out there and talking to someone like you, you know, [say] "I'll listen." And they're like "Well." Let me tell you. You saw in Christie and you saw in McDonnell a door open because they went in and engaged. McDonnell was very deliberate about spending...
MARTIN: Right.
STEELE: I mean, Sheila Johnson was on his team. I mean, that was a big deal. That's because he engaged her and she helped navigate him through that relationship.
White Republicans, plenty of whom were already less than thrilled with Steele's tenure, arent' happy about what their party's chairman had to say. And you can rest assured, too, that Democrats will want to use this against the GOP, both now and down the road.
Almost immediately after Michael Steele got his job as chairman of the Republican National Committee, speculation started up about how long he’d last. So the guy’s got to be feeling pretty good today, after running the RNC through its first significant elections and, to say the least, not falling on his face.
In his press conference today, Steele was happy to talk about how yesterday’s elections ratified 10 months of GOP opposition to the president.
As recently as a couple of months ago, Republicans were written off. Many of you were writing our epitaph and reminiscing of the good old days, whatever they happen to have been. But the real heroes last night, the real heroes who brought home the victory are the Republicans and independents and, yes, even Democrats who spoke up against an incredibly arrogant government in Washington that has put our country, our freedoms and our economy at risk with unprecedented spending.
So, we know what Steele thinks: New Jersey and Virginia went for Chris Christie and Bob McDonnell, respectively, because the Obama administration is spending too much money. This is pretty much the standard GOP establishment line on the Tea Parties and Glenn Beck, rewritten to apply to yesterday’s elections. The basic idea is that the outrage of the right-wing fringe represents a broad popular reaction against the president’s policies -- if not, as Steele specifies, the president himself.
As Mike Madden wrote last night, off-year elections sometimes tell us a lot more about whose base is amped up and angry than about what the country as a whole actually thinks. But it seems pretty clear that, despite Steele, not a lot of folks voted for Christie, or even Doug Hoffman -- the third-party candidate in the race for a congressional seat in upstate New York -- as a way of endorsing House Minority Leader John Boehner and Senate counterpart Mitch McConnell over President Obama. Steele may think there's just one Republican Party and he's in charge, but voters are perfectly capable of voting for their local GOP candidate without signing on for the whole hog.
Of course, it’s part of a party leader’s job to pretend that everyone’s getting along just fine. But it’s worth remembering that Steele is pretending. That’s why he brushed off the debate over what the big Democratic bright spot of the night -- the win in New York's 23rd Congressional district -- means for the GOP.
In doing so, though, he did say one thing that's contrary to the message emerging from his erstwhile allies to the right: "I don't see a victory in losing seats." That's not the way they see it, and that may cause Steele some headaches as he and his party gear up for next year's midterm elections.
There are a lot of people out there who are more than a little skeptical about the Nobel Committee's decision to award the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama. Perhaps foremost among them so far has been Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, who pulled no punches in a statement the RNC released about the award:
The real question Americans are asking is, "What has President Obama actually accomplished?" It is unfortunate that the president’s star power has outshined tireless advocates who have made real achievements working towards peace and human rights. One thing is certain -- President Obama won’t be receiving any awards from Americans for job creation, fiscal responsibility, or backing up rhetoric with concrete action.
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele may believe that he grew up on the "streets," and that such an upbringing gives him the experience to fight for his party, but his colleagues in the GOP's congressional leadership are reportedly less than thrilled with the way he's going about it.
Politico reports Monday on a meeting between Steele and several other Republican leaders, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader John Boehner. The meeting reportedly turned into a showdown over Steele's decision to have the RNC pushing policy ideas of its own -- perhaps even without consulting people like McConnell and Boehner.
The catalyst for the debate was apparently Steele's decision to develop and push a Republican "Seniors' Health Care Bill of Rights." Politico notes, "The statement of healthcare principles, outlined in a Washington Post op-ed, began with a robust defense of Medicare that puzzled some in a party not known for its attachment to entitlements."
True enough, and it's also true that the Medicare issue eventually started tripping Steele up, as it required no small amount of cognitive dissonance for him to slam the idea of government-run healthcare even as he defended Medicare. But some credit's due to Steele for his political skills this time around. Seniors vote, and the fear that healthcare reform will lead to cuts in Medicare has been very successful in creating and mobilizing opposition to the Democrats' proposals.
Still, congressional Republicans had good reason to be upset. The RNC is, after all, not a policy shop -- it's a political outlet. And people like McConnell and Boehner are the ones who have to lead the Republicans' strategy in Congress; that task only becomes more difficult when they suddenly have to deal with policy proposals coming from the RNC. According to Politico, as of the meeting, Steele had plans to unveil more of those.
Republican National Committee Chairman isn't happy. More specifically, he isn't happy about what former President Carter said about animosity to President Obama being mainly racial. So Steele, who is himself African American, put out a pretty firey statement attacking Carter:
President Carter is flat out wrong. This isn’t about race. It is about policy.
This is a pathetic distraction by Democrats to shift attention away from the president's wildly unpopular government-run health care plan that the American people simply oppose. Injecting race into the debate over critical issues facing American families doesn’t create jobs, reform our health care system or reduce the growing deficit. It only divides Americans rather than uniting us to find solutions to challenges facing our nation.
Characterizing Americans’ disapproval of President Obama’s policies as being based on race is an outrage and a troubling sign about the lengths Democrats will go to disparage all who disagree with them. Playing the race card shows that Democrats are willing to deal from the bottom of the deck. Our political system has no place for this type of rhetoric.
As the leader of the Democratic Party President Obama should flatly reject efforts by those in his Party, including Jimmy Carter and Tim Kaine, to inject race into our civil discourse in ways that divide, not unite, Americans.
As I said Wednesday night, it was almost a foregone conclusion that Republicans would hit President Obama for bringing up the late Sen. Ted Kennedy during his address to Congress. But as I also said, South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson's outburst made it harder for the GOP to get that line of attack to stick -- Republicans are already on the defense about being crass, and so they don't have a lot of room to maneuver.
If the GOP's congressional leadership could have picked anyone to criticize Obama for his citation of Kennedy, though, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele would probably the last person on the list.
Steele came out with that criticism in an interview with the Washington Times on Thursday. He managed not to stick his foot in his mouth too badly (something of an accomplishment for him), but still, the attack floundered -- it felt forced, like even Steele wasn't convinced.
"I'm sorry, but I just felt a bit unnerved by it, in the sense he just passed," the RNC chair said of Obama's mention of Kennedy and the letter the late senator had sent the president earlier this year. "His wife was still clearly emotional. I just thought that was bad form. We all understand and appreciate the role Sen. Kennedy has played in this debate and the passion he brought to health care. I just thought that was a little bit much for me, so soon after his death, using that as a political tool."
(Hat-tip to Steve Benen.)
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