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The Republican National Committee is entering the fall election season with dire financial problems and, to an unprecedented degree, will be forced to rely on outside groups to fund activities traditionally paid for by the national party. While embattled RNC Chairman Michael Steele and a top aide sought to use the party’s summer meeting here to publicly put the best face on the cash shortage, senior Republicans expressed grave concern behind the scenes that their fundraising deficiencies may be the difference between a good election year and a great one. With $11 million on hand at the end of June...

Despite numerous calls for his resignation over comments made criticizing the war effort in Afghanistan, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele will not step down, RNC spokesman Doug Heye confirmed Tuesday. Steele will stay on as the head of the committee amid criticism from Senate Republicans who took to the airwaves over the weekend to condemn his comments that the war in Afghanistan could not be won. Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina appeared on the Sunday talk shows to discuss the chairman’s fate as leader of the Republican Party. Appearing on...

The RNC chairman's comments about Afghanistan were pretty clueless, but I think the growing chorus from GOP heavyweights for Michael Steele to step down is a cumulative effect of his verbal gaffes rather than this particular instance of idiocy. Bill Kristol: You are, I know, a patriot. So I ask you to consider, over this July 4 weekend, doing an act of service for the country you love: Resign as chairman of the Republican party. Your tenure has of course been marked by gaffes and embarrassments, but I for one have never paid much attention to them, and have never...

The Republican National Committee finance chief, the guy in charge of the purse strings when staffers charged nearly $2,000 for "meals" at a Los Angeles bondage-themed club, has been fired. Rob Bickhart will be replaced by Mary Heitman, former finance director for the Republican Governors Association, Politico reported Friday. Bickhart's dismissal comes as the RNC tries to lure back donors who were put off by reports earlier this year of the after-hours outing to Voyeur West Hollywood by the Young Eagles, the invitation-only group of young donors to the Republican Party. In March, the RNC fired Allison Meyers, the staffer...

One of Steele's rivals for the RNC chairmanship took Steele to task Monday for attributing his problems to race. Kenneth Blackwell, a former Ohio secretary of state who ran against Michael Steele for RNC chairman, said Steele's argument that he has a "smaller margin of error" beacuse he's black is "ridiculous." "This notion that this disturbing pattern of gaffes and missteps is now being criticized solely because he is black, and that Barack Obama is being criticized for his big-government power grab solely because he is black — that is nonsense," Blackwell told Fox News's Neil Cavuto. "And here's a...

In another serious blow to the Republican National Committee, one of its top fundraisers — and its few remaining connections to the traditional GOP donor base — has resigned a senior, unpaid position. Former Ambassador Sam Fox, a top supporter of George W. Bush who was one of the co-chairmen of the Republican Regents — the RNC's top-level fundraising board — has left the post, two Republican sources said. Fox, a Missouri businessman who was Bush's ambassador to Belgium, was one of the RNC's few remaining connections to the deep-pocketed Republican establishment and was viewed as the heaviest hitter among...

Embattled Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said he won't resign despite calls for him to step down amid reports of the group's excessive spending, adding that he and other African-American leaders such as President Obama have a slimmer margin of error because of their race. "The honest answer is, 'yes,'" he said on "Good Morning America" today. "Barack Obama has a slimmer margin. A lot of folks do. It's a different role for me to play and others to play and that's just the reality of it. But you just take that as a part of the nature of...

GOP watch: Steele courts Tea Party Posted: Tuesday, February 16, 2010 8:53 AM by Domenico Montanaro Politico and the Washington Post report that Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele will meet with 50 Tea Party activists today on Capitol Hill. Politico's Vogel writes that "Tuesday will mark the first large-scale get-together between the national party and grass-roots activists from a wide array of regional tea party groups." But some "tea partiers have pushed back against Republican groups wrapping themselves in the movement’s flag. Jenny Beth Martin, a founder of the umbrella group Tea Party Patriots, remembers asking the Republican Governors Association...