What up??? The eternal embarrassment gift that is Michael Steele
Message to Michael: grow up…
In the last five years, I have noticed a peculiar phenomenon about the national party committees. Twice in a row the out-party’s committee seems to have been “captured” by an ambitious politician who seems more interested in making a name for himself rather than doing the nitty-gritty, unglamorous work of laundering money.
… I have suspected for a while that Michael Steele might ultimately fall into the same category. Politically, he was sort of in a dead-end. He had served a brief stint as Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, but then lost a 2006 Senate race to Ben Cardin. He did not have a lot of political opportunities by the time 2009 rolled around, and perhaps that is why he ran for the RNC chair.
His brief tenure to date has only enhanced my suspicions. He talks about expanding the party to blacks and Hispanics. That’s a good thing in theory, but it is not the job of the RNC chairman. Worse, the appeal seems to me to be shallow and vain. The party would reach out not by developing new policy proposals to appeal to these voters, but by promoting its new, oh-so-hip chairman, i.e. lots of face time for Michael Steele!
And of course, there are the incredibly foolish things he says. These began to dribble out of his mouth literally as soon as he won the position. Remember this message he delivered to President Obama when he won the chairmanship? “I would say to the new president, congratulations. It is going to be an honor to spar with him…And I would follow that up with: How do you like me now?” The vanity of that line is matched only by its utter stupidity. Actually, the two are intertwined. You’d have to be vain and stupid to think that the President of the United States would ever give a second thought to the chairman of the Republican National Committee. The President probably laughed when he heard that. I sure did.
The gaffes have slowed over the last few months, but they have not stopped. Just recently, he launched a blog called “What Up?” whose inaugural post contained not one, but two grammatical mistakes. Allah over at HotAir blogged about this, and he summed up his assessment with a single guttural noise: groan. That the RNC has since changed Steele’s blog name is a sign that either they came to their senses, or somebody who is somebody told them to dump it. Personally, I thought it was incredibly condescending. Steele’s strategy for appealing to minority voters includes butchering the English language? What does that say about Steele’s opinion of these targeted voters?
… and he’s not so good at raising money, either.
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