Michael Steele

I am throwing my support behind saving embattled RNC chairman Michael Steele, and I hope all my progressive blogosphere buddies join in. Steele is going to be one of our greatest assets in November. The longer he can hold on the more damaging it is for the Republicans, so hang in there Mike!

Yesterday Michael Steele took to the airwaves and told fellow Republicans who criticize him to “shut up”. Now the backlash starts coming out from Steele’s comments:

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele, under fire this week for a string of controversial statements he has made while promoting his new book, has so angered the party's congressional leaders that their aides said they told Steele's handlers to "get him to stop."

Steele, who has been making regular television appearances, said Monday that he did not believe Republicans could win back their congressional majorities in 2010. "Not this year," Steele told Fox News Channel, saying he was just beginning to look at races, even though the party has been recruiting candidates for many months.

Believing that Steele's off-the-cuff remarks threaten to damage the party's brand -- at the very time when Republicans are trying to capitalize on a national political environment that may hurt Democrats -- senior aides to top Republican leaders confronted Steele's staff on a conference call Wednesday.

They don’t like their party leader “going rogue” it appears. But to make the situation even worse for the GOP, this is now costing them money at a time when they are having fundraising problems already:

Some wealthy contributors are shunning the Republican National Committee and donating instead to the other GOP campaign committees or directly to candidates - in many cases because of discontent with the leadership of Michael S. Steele, the party's national chairman.

"I don't plan to give to the Republican National Committee this cycle, and no other major donor I know is planning to either," Christine Toretti, a Pennsylvania RNC member and a longtime major donor to the RNC and other GOP campaign committees and causes, told The Washington Times.

Mrs. Toretti said that she and other major donors have never received a telephone call from Mr. Steele soliciting money for the RNC, the GOP's chief campaign fundraising committee.

Lawrence Bathgate, who served a record three times as RNC finance chairman during and after the Reagan era, told The Times, "No, I haven't given to the RNC this cycle."

The GOP has a huge problem with Steele and that could very well cost them this election cycle. I wouldn’t be shocked to see the GOP get rid of Steele in the next month or so, so they have time to do damage control. If they wait to long then they will be stuck with him through the general election and that could easily spell disaster for a party looking to regain some control of Congress.

Things are getting pretty tense in GOP land:

ABC News’ Aaron Katersky and Rick Klein report: RNC Chairman Michael Steele is lashing out his critics, with a series of blunt messages for prominent Republicans who have blasted him over his leadership for the Republican Party.

“I tell them to get a life. That’s old Washington, that’s old ways, and I don’t represent that, and that kills them,” Steele told ABC News Radio in an interview today.

“I’m telling them and I’m looking them in the eye and say I’ve had enough of it. If you don’t want me in the job, fire me. But until then, shut up. Get with the program or get out of the way.”

What is really funny is how Steele takes on the public nature of these disagreements:

“All I’m saying is cut it out. If we have party differences that are inside the party, let’s deal with them inside the party. You don’t see the Democrats running around trying to beat up their national chairman or embarrass him.”

So you tell them to keep it in the party, while you are publicly blasting back at them? That makes perfect sense.

Very public problems like this could spell trouble for the GOP in a year they are poised to make a come back. A big story this week has been the fundraising trouble the Republicans are facing. If people see a party that can’t work together, especially at this high of a level, then chances are wallets will become harder to open.

With the riff in the blogosphere over health care, it is nice for us to see that our problems really aren’t as serious as the problems facing the GOP. Our disagreements seem to be limited to the online community, while the GOP disagreements appear to be at the highest levels of the GOP’s rank and file.

Michael Steele’s new book is being coined as a big mea culpa for the Republican party, but how can they admit their failures when they won’t even admit that they ever happened?

Let me take a few bullet points from the AP’s article on Steele’s book:

-President George H.W. Bush for raising taxes two years after President Ronald Reagan left office, though Steele ignores the fact that Reagan raised taxes too.

Right there the AP admits part of the problem – Steele ignored Reagan’s record also. As matter of fact, just try to tell a Republican that Reagan raised taxes and they will look at you like you just got caught raping a kitten. They refuse to accept history.

-President George W. Bush for not vetoing any spending bills during his first five years in office. He calls Bush and other Republicans "enablers for big government" and derides the Bush administration's Troubled Asset Relief Program as "a massive government slush fund."

Hindsight is good and all, but Steele was one of those people out there constantly supporting Bush policies. The Bush tax cuts alone were enough to put this country in financial ruins, yet Steele and other Republicans still champion them as the epitome of conservatism. Or how about the highly expensive and totally unnecessary Iraq War? Steele and Republicans never once say that we should have taken a pass on it.

As for the TARP fund, well I seem to remember the Republican candidate for President doing an unprecedented move of suspending his campaign to fight for TARP. Steele wasn’t out blasting that move then, and we are talking about something that happened only a little over a year ago. Redemption doesn’t happen that fast buddy.

-Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the party's 2008 presidential nominee, for backing censorship of political speech through the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. Steele says the GOP erred in allowing itself to be associated with "a national political speech code."

It’s amazing how you can equate finance reform with censorship. The costs to become a national political figure have become grotesque. It is the number one enabler of creating the new American caste system, where only those with obscene amounts of money can become contenders. Simply put, without McCain-Feingold we would see our system become more corrupt by the big money of special interests. It is a government BY the people FOR the people for a reason.

-Republican lawmakers in general, who allowed spending to rise from 2001 to 2004, went along with TARP and McCain-Feingold, and supported the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit.

Again – not facing reality.The prescription drug benefit wasn’t “supported” by Republicans – it was created by them. That is just a technicality and let’s look past that. It was only a few months ago that Steele was out pushing his platform to “protect” Medicare. Every Republican sold this program as the silver bullet for saving Medicare. Back in 2006, when the program kicked in, Republicans even acted like nothing was wrong as seniors went without life saving medications.

Michael Steele’s points are all good, but I really hope that no one takes them as some sudden awakening. He misses out on many key points and is trying to sell that Pinto with racing stripes as the next Formula One racing car to the American people. It’s a lot easier for Steele to point fingers than to take responsibility, and that is exactly what he is doing.

When you have the Washington Times going after Michael Steele things aren’t good for the RNC chair:

Michael S. Steele, Republican National Committee chairman, is using his title to market himself for paid appearances nationwide, personally profiting from speeches with fees of up to $20,000 at colleges, trade associations and other groups - an unusual practice criticized by a string of past party chairmen.

Mr. Steele, elected in January to the $223,500-a-year RNC post, is working with at least four outside agencies in Washington, New York, Boston and Nashville that book the speaking engagements. He charges between $8,000 and $20,000 for an address, plus first-class travel and lodging expenses.

For someone trying to bill himself as the same as you or me, he sure is one high maintenance cat.

An ally of RNC chairman Michael Steele is claiming the new RNC purity test is an attempt to “stick it” to Steele:

An ally of Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele claimed Tuesday that the so-called "purity test" being circulated by some RNC members is a publicity stunt designed to "stick it" to Steele after he defeated other candidates for the chairmanship in last January's election.

"You've got a few backbenchers who are unhappy," said Shawn Steel, an RNC member from California and one of the chairman's top supporters on the committee. "They don't have the power they once had under the previous chairman, and that's what motivating this. This is an attempt to stick it to Chairman Steele by the losers."

If this is the case then we are seeing a much bigger problem inside the RNC than we first imagined. Essentially the party is willing to shrink the size of their tent and lock out more moderate members simply because they don’t like the chairman. It’s kind of like cutting of your nose to spite your face.

From the lips of Michael Steele:

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.

I think Steele might be a little confused here. What they are most likely scared of is Steele’s mouth and what might come out of it when it opens. You know an  “oh fuck – what will he say now?” type deal. As a matter of fact they were probably asking that very question after this interview.

Now we have Michael Steele taking on Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh – the true GOP leadership:

RNC Chairman Michael Steele endorsed moderate Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava (R-NY) in the NY-23 special election before national conservative leaders — like Dick Armey, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sarah Palin — forced Scozzafava out in favor of right-wing candidate Doug Hoffman. Following Hoffman’s defeat, Steele struck back at firebrands within his party, telling reporters earlier today that the opinion of conservative outsiders “really doesn’t matter much”:

STEELE: If you don’t live in the district, don’t vote there, your opinion really doesn’t matter much.

Blitzer later asked about Limbaugh and Palin directly and Steele didn’t really back down much:

So should we start the countdown until Steele goes on Limbaugh’s show to apologize?

This morning Michael Steele was quick to seize on any chance of slamming President Obama’s winning of the Nobel Peace Prize and even used it to drudge up a very old meme – the celebrity mantra:

“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.”

The DNC is quick on their toes today firing back with this stern reaction:

The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists — the Taliban and Hamas this morning — in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize. Republicans cheered when America failed to land the Olympics and now they are criticizing the President of the United States for receiving the Nobel Peace prize — an award he did not seek but that is nonetheless an honor in which every American can take great pride — unless of course you are the Republican Party. The 2009 version of the Republican Party has no boundaries, has no shame and has proved that they will put politics above patriotism at every turn. It’s no wonder only 20 percent of Americans admit to being Republicans anymore – it’s an embarrassing label to claim.

Associating the Republican reactions with those of terrorists organizations! This is the kind of hard hitting response the RNC used to hold sole proprietorship on. Not anymore.

It looks like there is some bigger troubles brewing inside the Republican ranks:

GOP leaders, in a private meeting last month, delivered a blunt and at times heated message to RNC Chairman Michael Steele: quit meddling in policy.

The plea was made during what was supposed to be a routine discussion about polling matters and other priorities in House Minority Leader John Boehner’s office. But the session devolved into a heated discussion about the roles of congressional leadership and Steele, according to multiple people familiar with the meeting.

The congressional leaders were particularly miffed that Steele had in late August unveiled a seniors’ “health care bill of rights” without consulting with them. The statement of health care 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.

This just highlights the problem the RNC has had – no clear leadership. On one hand some want to jump up and act like the savior, while on the other hand - who would want to be seen piloting the sinking ship? Sure the media wants you to think that the Democratic party is the sinking ship right now, and while their numbers are going down, so are the Republican numbers. When was the last time that the opposition party had approval ratings so low?

Whatever happened to the phrase “compassionate conservative”? I guess the right has dropped that whole mantra, as evident of this video of Michael Steele:

The girl Steele is poking fun at was just explaining how her mother died last year from cancer and couldn’t afford the medicines to fight the disease. You want a death panel? Well there you have it. Our current health care system is the worst kind of death panel there is – people denied life saving measures because they don’t have money. And then you got Michael Steele, who thinks its all fun and games! What a sick bastard he truly is.

Last week Michael Steele wanted to “protect Medicare”. Well this week that has all changed:

Transcript (via Think Progress)

STEELE: Well yeah. I mean you’ve got to look at the Medicare system as a whole and see that it’s in financial trouble. So how do you correct that? [...]

CHALIAN: Part of correcting it is to keep the idea of cuts on the table, correct?

STEELE: Part of correcting …

CHALIAN: Part of correcting the financial stability of Medicare.

STEELE: Oh yeah. You’ve got to deal with those inefficiencies, absolutely.

Medicare is good. Medicare is bad. Make up your mind Mike!

Sadly though what they are recycling is old talking points:

RNC chair Michael Steele has unleashed a new attack on Obama, sending out a mass mailing attacking the President as part of the “blame America first” crowd, an apparent effort to prove to critics that he’s getting tougher with the opposition.

But this might be the most interesting part: The mailing links Obama’s claim that America has shown global “arrogance” with those infamous comments in Pennsylvania, charging that Obama “indicated disdain for small town and working Americans who ‘cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.’”

As it happens, Obama made those comments almost exactly a year ago.

When you have nothing then you must resort to trying the old tactics. Unfortunately for the GOP these tactics didn’t work for them on the first go around. Obama ended up winning Pennsylvania by an 11 point margin over McCain. Even with this so-called “mass insult”, the people of Pennsylvania still thought Obama was a better choice than their man.

So what does this say about Michael Steele and his Rush Limbaugh’s party? That they have absolutely nothing to go on. They have no new idea, no new ways of thinking, and now they have no new attacks. Watching the slow death of the GOP is so painful, yet so entertaining.

When we were talking about the stimulus bill the GOP’s biggest talking point was that “the government doesn’t create jobs”. As a little refresher, here’s Michael Steele saying just that in February:

My how time changes things, even if its only two months. Now that there is a new military budget out there, one that’s cutting costly boat anchors like the F-22 Raptor program, now the right is out there going crazy asking about all the jobs that will be lost.

Yesterday Paul Krugman called out the GOP on these failed talking points.

(h/t Think Progress)

Who ever thought the head of the RNC would be such a rogue?

(audio only)

Think Progress points this out:

It’s ironic that Steele insisted he was “not backing down,” because directly following Steele’s original statement regarding primary challenges, the RNC walked back his statement in a message to Politico’s Ben Smith, insisting it “has no interest in getting involved in primaries.”

So the head of the RNC is saying one thing and the actual RNC is saying another? Wow do they have a problem.