At RNC, Michael Steele is man who doesn’t exist

TAMPA — Republicans gathered at the University Club in downtown Tampa Saturday night to honor GOP chairman Reince Priebus. The event was sponsored by the Wisconsin delegation, which of course represents Priebus’ home state, and the Mississippi delegation, home of former governor and former RNC chairman Haley Barbour. There were several major players there: Priebus himself, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Sen. Ron Johnson, Barbour and nephew Henry Barbour, former Virginia governor and former RNC chair Jim Gilmore, former chair Mike Duncan, and others.

With the presence of Priebus, Barbour, Gilmore, and Duncan, the event featured the current and three former chairmen of the party. But there was one very recent chairman who was nowhere to be found, and whose name didn’t come up: Michael Steele.

Steele was chairman when the party selected Tampa as the site of its 2012 convention. Steele was chairman when the GOP came roaring back after defeats in 2006 and 2008 to pick up 63 seats to gain control of the House in 2010, and also to gain six seats to greatly strengthen its position in the Senate. In addition, during Steele’s time in office, Republicans won key governorships in New Jersey and Virginia.

But at the University Club, Steele was not only not there; he wasn’t noted or referenced. In public remarks, no one said anything bad about him, and no one said anything good about him. He just didn’t exist.

“I have not been invited to the convention at all,” Steele says. “Their view is, the less we talk about him, we don’t invite him, we ignore him — it just didn’t happen. But those 63 seats in the House did happen. They may want to ignore me, but they don’t want to ignore what I did. It’s just sad.”

“I would have loved to have been there to salute the work of the party and see former chairmen,” Steele adds. “But I guess I’m not a member of that club.”

As it happens, Steele is in Tampa, but only, he says, in his role as an analyst on MSNBC. He won’t be attending any events in his role as former chairman.

In addition to the party’s electoral victories, Steele also left the RNC with a huge debt, and a number of Republican insiders accuse him of leaving the party in a terrible mess. “That’s a bunch of bulls–t,” says Steele. Other chairmen have also left debt, he says, and other members of the RNC concurred in the expenses that led to the Steele-era debt. “It’s just annoying as hell,” Steele says of the talk. “You get a little sick of the bulls–t after a while.” Priebus was a close Steele deputy at the time, but to say the two men have had a falling out is an understatement.

Asked about Steele’s situation, an RNC source noted that most past party chairmen are also part of their state’s delegations to the Tampa convention, and are thus part of events here. But the source did not specifically explain Steele’s absence.

Whatever bad blood exists privately, it is remarkable that the GOP’s most recent chairman has no role at all in the convention whose planning he initiated. He’s also the man who was in charge when the party won smashing victories in the most recent mid-term elections. And he didn’t gain power in a coup; he was elected chairman by a majority of members of the RNC. Finally, Steele is the party’s only black chairman at a time when Republicans are particularly worried about their continuing difficulties in attracting minority voters. Why not have him play some public role in the convention? And if there are still hard feelings — well, it would hardly be the first time that people who didn’t like each other joined hands and smiled in front of the crowds.

“Can we just say I’m part of the party,” asks Steele, “a leader of the party, and still an asset to the party?”

He left the party millions in debt. Priebus has been able to turn around the funding.

He was as gaffe prone as Biden.

———————Republicans have not given Blacks a reason to vote Republican

The Republican Party has not given African Americans a good reason to vote for the party, Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele said Tuesday night.

“You really don’t have a reason to, to be honest — we haven’t done a very good job of really giving you one. True? True,” Steele said at DePaul University, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100423111622AAUr2rB

-———He praised ACORN!!!

But during a speaking appearance in the days between issuing those two statements, Steele had kind words for ACORN and its CEO, Bertha Lewis, who happened to be guiding that so-called damage control.

Appearing September 21 at Philander Smith College, a historically black college in Arkansas, the RNC chairman spoke diplomatically of the group and its history of organizing in low-income communities.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/10/05/steele-applauded-acorn-leader-in-speech/

—— He said that the people who elected him Chairman were scared of him.

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....

__________________________________________________________
This was two weeks after he came to a dinner I was at and my wife and I had our picture taken with him.

Sure we were scared of him, what about the people who threw Oreo cookies at him?

I set forth below three posts published here early in the administration of Barack Obama:

[31 January 2009]

much there and very little to disagree with. Naturally, I will focus on the little bit with which I quibble.:)

I think the position today is unique in its historical context. The chairman will become the default spokesman of the party. I suspect he is also going to be the leading policymaker-if he has the stuff for it. He must carry his policy with his rhetoric and he must contrive a policy which will justify the rhetoric. I see no one else on the horizon at this time who can step up to that role. By virtue of their offices the minority leader of the Senate and the minority leader in the House might offer themselves. Mitt Romney might evolve to a party spokesman but that will be awkward for an undeclared candidate. By default, Michael Steele will be the face of the party and probably its brain.

As you point out, his responsibilities include the nuts and bolts of running the party and that means herding cats but also a host of other duties: although he inherits $20 million, he must raise tens of millions more; the entire IT footprint of the party must be adapted to the Blitzkrieg introduced by the Democrats in the last two elections; candidates must be found who can wage credible campaigns at least in a few areas where we might regain some ground; a strategy must be developed to penetrate the red states and that implies selling something that the voters want to buy; legislative strategy must be coordinated with our minorities in the House and Senate so that the party speaks with one voice; discipline must be established and ruthlessly maintained; and finally, a sense of urgency and destiny must be imparted so that the whole country knows what is at stake and what must be done, they must believe it can be done, they must believe that it will be done. They must believe that only the Republicans can do it.

In sum, he must define conservatism and throw down the gauntlet to the creeping statism represented by Obama and his ilk. He must define the limits; this far and no further!

These responsibilities call for a Winston Churchill or a Newt Gingrich. They beg for charisma. The Republican Party might have only one more chance for survival. We need a wartime leader not a conciliator. The best analogy I can think of is that of England in 1930s reluctantly shaking off Neville Chamberlain, its exponent of appeasement, for Winston Churchill whose warnings had been so terribly vindicated that no one now could gainsay him. He told him what his policy was: to wage war. to wage war on land, sea and air. He told them what his aim was: victory. Victory at all costs, victory whenever the price, victory no matter how long or hard the road.

Since the Republican Party is that it position analogous to Great Britain after the fall of France, anything short of this level of commitment dooms the party which in turn shelters and nurtures conservatism and that ultimately dooms the Republic.

This is no time for business as usual. Can Michael Steele grasp the nettle?

[02 March, 2009]

A review of my posts going back many, many months will reveal that I have never been in favor of Michael Steele to be the chairman of the Republican National Committee.

My lack of enthusiasm for the man comes not because of personal deficiencies on his part but for the absence of charisma and drive needed for the man who will be a greatly responsible for saving the Republican Party. By default, the chairman of the Republican national committee becomes the spokesman of Republicanism when we have no other national voice. Anyone who is the spokesman sets policy. I think Rush is wrong when he says that Steele's job is not to set policy. That role under these circumstances is virtually unavoidable for anyone who holds the office and is able to sit up and take nourishment. Any man with charisma, and I say a lesser man will not do, cannot help himself, he must set policy.

Therefore it is critical that we have the right man in the post. As I said in many previous posts on Free Republic we need a man with charisma, a bomb thrower, a man of Churchillian drive. I have long advocated Newt Gingrich for the post but the party selected Michael Steele as a counterpoint to a black president. Steele ran on a platform that he could broaden the outreach to the black and Hispanic voters.

The irony is that that is exactly what he was doing when he made his gaffe. He saw his audience as the black community and was trying to shape the Republican image in a way that was more acceptable to that audience. We as mostly white Republicans and staunch conservatives predictably reacted negatively to what Steele was trying to do. We reacted negatively because he was apologizing for what we stand for. I must say that if that is Michael Steele's notion of appealing to the black community we have certainly chosen the wrong man for this job.

The problem is that Steele has no great vision for the party. He wants to be a mechanic, a ward healer in the black community. Even a conservative Barak Obama working the precincts.

Are we going to continue to sleepwalk? Michael Steele does not understand what happened at the CPAC convention. He does not get it. His firing of Sarah Palin's finance chairman raises questions which to my knowledge have not yet been answered. Does that represents a victory for the Rockefeller wing? If so, Steele must go.

Our backs are to the wall. The conservative movement has been created under heaven to fulfill this role at this time in history which is to save the Republic from a damned Manchurian Marxist. The chairman of the Republican National Committee cannot lead us in that cause if he does not see it.

[12 March 2009]

The job description Of a Republican National Committee Chairman does not include leaving conservatives confused, defensive, and bickering in the wake of every television interview. The job calls for a chairman who can render the opposition defensive and bickering.

Ask yourself how Haley Barbour or Newt Gingrich would have answered last question.

No one in America is more vulnerable on the abortion issue than President Barak Obama who condoned abandoning babies simply to die who miraculously survived botched abortions. Steel is not even smart enough to recognize a question about abortion as an invitation to tee off on Obama's murderous depravity. Once the liberal media begins to understand that such questions hurt their party because effective spokesman for the party exploit the opening, they will stop laying snares for the unwary on the abortion issue. Instead Michael Steele was so obtuse that he actually attempted to answer the question on the interrogator's terms. He is a fool.

He may be identical error with respect to the homosexuality question. Conservatives have the numbers on their side on this issue, Michael Steele managed to piss off both sides.

In answering these questions, he made the same mistake that he is made twice before, he tries to ingratiate himself with critics by conceding the premise and then weasel around his concession with mindless blather. So he accepts the premise of the Republican convention was like a Nazi gathering, for example. The man acts as though he is ashamed of conservative principles. He does not understand that it is impossible to apologize your way into becoming a majority party.

For the record, I have been opposed to this man since before his selection. I have opposed him because he does not have the candlepower or the charisma required to save a party that is on the verge of political oblivion. He does not understand the role of a national chairman and he does not have the forensic skills required to fulfill that role.

Michael Steele simply must go!

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