Thursday, March 12, 2009

I Get the Feeling Michael Steele Is Just NOT Going to Last Very Much Longer as the Chairman of the RNC

Steele choice gaffe sparks GOP revolt - POLITICO.com

It seems every time we turn around, Steele is making another mistake that is throwing the Republican Party into even MORE turmoil. Not a bad thing, mind you. I'm starting to wonder if this guy is actually a mole hired by the Democrats to completely demoralize the RNC.

Again, that wouldn't necessarily be a BAD thing... :)

3 comments:

Kylopod said...

Hate to say, "Hate to say I told you so but I told you so." But, hate to say I told you so but I told you so.

I told you as soon as he was elected that he's an imbecile, remember?

If there has been a more comically inept politician in my lifetime, I'd like to know who. (No, Dan Quayle wasn't half this bad.)

Why on earth was he chosen for this job? All the embarrassing qualities he has shown in the past few weeks could be seen in his 2006 Senate campaign. His inappropriately kitschy antics. His habit of making recklessly bold statements then doing a complete 180 as soon as he gets criticized. His going to absurd lengths to please whichever audience he's addressing. His utter lack of a spine, not to mention vision and core beliefs.

I know, I know. The Republicans wanted an African American for the post. Especially after their second choice was Katon Dawson, who belonged to a whites-only country club for over a decade until just a few months ago.

But one of the other candidates, Ken Blackwell, is also African American. I admit I know nothing about Blackwell, and people have told me he's even worse than Steele. I find that very hard to believe.

Of course, the Republicans should just choose the best person for the job--regardless of race (though not regardless of racism!). They really don't get it.

Am Kshe Oref - A Stiff-Necked People said...

I DO remember! And I never disagreed. I didn't really know anything about him until you said something and until he actually opened his mouth... :)

And no. They just don't get it...

Kylopod said...

Probably his most notorious moment during the 2006 campaign came when he compared embryonic stem-cell research to the medical experiments performed by Nazis on Jews during World War II.

Steele is not the first politician to have made such a comparison. He is, however, the first to have done it in front of a Jewish audience, while campaigning in a state where the Jewish vote matters.

To his credit, he later apologized profusely for the remarks, and he stated that he actually supports embryonic stem-cell research--as long as it doesn't destroy the embryo.

Nate Silver has acquired a reputation for good prognostications, but his analysis of Michael Steele when Steele was elected to RNC chair will not go down as one of his more prescient posts. He described Steele as a "fairly talented guy," because Steele managed to get a whopping 44% of the vote in a liberal state like Maryland.

As one commenter pointed out, according to the Cook Partisan Voting Index, Steele did exactly as well as any Republican in Maryland would have been expected to do: defeat by a 10-point margin.

Add in the fact that Steele was running to become the fifth black senator since Reconstruction, in a state with a large black population. Quite possibly more than a few black Democrats defected to the Republican side to support this fresh-faced newcomer over the old, boring, Jewish incumbent.

Steele is said to have coined the slogan "Drill baby drill," suggesting he may have a talent for slick packaging. But, as the article you link to points out, even his organizational skills have been called into question, making it less likely he's some kind of Republican Howard Dean, someone with good management skills who has a tendency to run off at the mouth.