RNC Chair Michael Steele Gets Hit From All Sides
The last couple of days have not been good for Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele. A number of figures have hammered him, and The Corner’s Robert Costa has a pretty good rundown of some of the more prominent ones:
In case you missed it on Sunday, George Will had some tough words for Michael Steele, the embattled RNC chairman: “He has fundamentally misconstrued his job, which is to be the face and the ideological spokesman for the Republican party.”
“There are a lot of people who do that,” Will said, “but the best party chairmen are like major league umpires. If, at the end of the game, they go back into the dressing room and no one has noticed them, they’ve done their job brilliantly. They strive for anonymous perfection, and that should be the role of the party chairman. The best Republican party chairmen — Ray Bliss of Ohio, who rebuilt the party after the Goldwater meltdown, Bill Brock, former senator from Tennessee, who built the party up on the eve of the Reagan triumph — they were perfectly anonymous. And I’m not sure that this man has understood that.”
Steele doesn’t appear to have taken Will’s advice. Earlier today, he appeared on Good Morning America and told George Stephanopoulos that he has less room for error as chairman due to his race. “The honest answer is yes,” Steele said. “It just is. Barack Obama has a slimmer margin. A lot of folks do . . . That’s just the reality of it . . . My view on politics is much more grassroots-oriented. It’s not old-boy network oriented. I tend to come at it a little bit stronger, a little more streetwise if you will. That rubs some feathers the wrong way.”
Robert Gibbs, of course, had a quick comeback at today’s morning meeting with reporters. “I think that is a fairly silly comment to make,” he said. “I think Michael Steele’s problem isn’t the race card; it’s the credit card.”
I think Dan Amira at New York has it right: “Steele probably blew a chance to cool this down.” Besides, as Ben Smith notes, “Jonathan Martin made a pretty convincing case a few months ago that, in some sense, the reverse is true within a Republican party that’s almost entirely without prominent African-American officials.”
You can see the Will comments here, as well as the follow-up comments by another Roundtable contributor who explains what the job of an RNC chair is…and how Steele is not doing that job. Furthering the damage, this morning Politico reported that the top RNC fundraiser is ditching the organization, which is sure to bring more pressure to bear to fire Steele. However, I think the most damaging remark came from Gibbs- when the Democratic White House Press Secretary is getting quoted favorably, and being laughed with and not at, by conservatives against another right-of-center leader, the RNC chair is in trouble.
I saw part of Steele’s comments this morning on ABC, and while I missed his comment about being black, this is not the first time he has brought race into the debate. The fact is that he has made the RNC look ridiculous throughout his tenure, and while it has been proven this strip club fiasco is not his fault, it’s emblematic of the inept leadership he brings to the table. Blaming others just makes it worse.
Personally, I think getting rid of Steele would have zero impact on what few Republican race relations we have, and bringing in a dynamic person like former governor Sarah Palin would not only inspire fundraising, it would bring in far more fundraising than we might (or might not) lose by ridding ourselves of a bad RNC chair, no matter what his skin color is. It would also free Steele to travel around the country, speaking on behalf of candidates, something he did well with in 2008, when he was a McCain surrogate. Additionally, we have other minority candidates we can support for leadership positions, if we must look at race. (Which, given it’s politics, we must.)
Oh, and the other good thing about bringing Palin in? It would likely prevent her from running for president. An added bonus.
