Steele: "I Have A Problem" With New GOP Group Slamming Reagan

RNC Chairman Michael Steele's fill-in stint as the host of Bill Bennett's radio talk show has produced a handful of quasi-embarrassing moments -- most notably his claim that Mitt Romney's Mormonism helped doom him in the Republican Primary.

At the very end of the nearly two-hour segment, it turns out, was another whack Steele took at his fellow Republicans. Responding to a caller disparaging the National Council for a New America -- the new Republican re-branding effort -- the RNC Chairman joined the fray, saying he had "a problem" with the notion, as put forth by former Gov. Jeb Bush, that the party needed to move beyond the legacy of Ronald Reagan.

"This tour is not about bringing minorities to the Republican Party," Steele said, correcting his caller. "This listening tour that these individuals have put in place is their way, as they said, to look forward, bring about a grassroots caucus and to bring moderates and like-minded Democrats to a series of public forums around the country where we can have a debate of ideas. Now, on its face I see nothing wrong with that. But if you are going to go and start this and start slamming Ronald Reagan, I have a problem. And it is going to be an issue. Because you can't blame the past particularly when that past contributed to the success of the party."

In offering his objections to the messaging coming from the NCNA, Steele joins a host of other Republican officials. Still, it remains rare to see the head of a national political committee disparage major players in his own party. In addition to Bush, the NCNA includes former Gov. Mitt Romney, Rep. Eric Cantor, and Sen. John McCain.

Later in the program, Steele was told that he should have run against Barack Obama in 2008, to which he responded, "It would have been an interesting race." When another caller lamented the media's treatment of Gov. Sarah Palin, he said the issue was endemic to all true conservatives, before saying he preached a type of political philosophy that has people "looking over their shoulders and wondering whether or not Michael Steele is standing there."

"Look, the fact that Sarah is a conservative," he said. "Michael Steele is a conservative, Bill Bennett is a conservative, a Jack Kemp was a conservative. We were a target, we were a ready target for these guys... but the strength of conservatism is that it is real and in its realism it has a way to go out to talk to people and connect to people. That's the biggest threat that we offer. And that's the threat I want to take to the streets everyday. I want them looking over their shoulders and wondering whether or not Michael Steele is standing there. Because I will be, with you [caller] standing right next to me and a whole lot of other conservatives."

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Comments

[alicetilden]

Steele is showing himself to be just a media hound. Doesn't he realize he only has the position because the GOP wanted their own black guy. They don't really want him. He's just a prop. They actually thought people would be fooled into thinking that the Repub party is a big tent and welcomes diversity. That's a laugh. That tent is white and so is what's under it. Sometimes it does seem to be a clown tent though with people like Rush and the Fox clowns.

[jme-SD]

Republicans remind me of a bunch of people who can't swim drowning in the deep end - grabbing on to anyone and anything but still staying in deep water and continuing to drown.

The media would do us all a favor by letting the debating in the media be between Conservadems and Progressives, and letting the Republicans go off in a corner and decide who and what they want to be. The Republican position is known. It's no. So there's no point in covering them.

It's the secretive dealing and debating that's going on behind the scenes between Democrats in the Senate that is really going to determine the course ahead. That needs to be made much more public. If some democratic Senator from Montana is determined to kill a public option for health care, let him defend his position against progressive Senators, and let's all hear what they have to say front and center.

[Freesia2]

I'll swear, the Reagan worship is too much.

Why they don't just be done with it? Dig him up, encase him in wax, put in a glass box and have him just lay there in the RNC headquarters. Right wingers can stop by whenever they need a miracle cure and pray to St. Ronnie.

I'm being extreme. Or am I?

[jazzycafe]

It was so comical at the GOP convention last summer. They talked about the great Reagan so often and with such reverence. The worship of him is creepy.

[Freesia2]

Isn't it though? They have a lot of gall calling Obama supporters Kool-Aid drinkers.

That convention (what I could stand to watch of it ) was a freak show. Between the hymns to Reagan in some bizarre religious rite and the 9/11 references (which I'm beginning to believe that they actually are glad happened - where we see tragedy they see opportunity) I felt like I was watching a David Lynch movie.

[donna16]

Do they know Regan was just an actor ,( and not a very good one at that) not GOD!!!

[kjstjohn]

Yes, but Reagan's glistenning eyes and soaring rhetoric made them feel good about their heartless policies regarding the poor, the environment, the Southern strategy, education, etc.

The Republicans need another magic man to make a virtue out of our worst instincts.

[Bitsko]

Well put.

[siciliabel]

You're right. Reagan was the ultimate triumph of style over substance. He could speak glowingly about nostalgia for a time that never really existed and make the Republicans believe that if the wished hard enough, America could be the way it (never) was.

[dave1111]

Yes, he was a better actor than we had realized. There are reports that at times even he thought that he was only playing the role of president, you know, the Alzheimers can do that to you.

[Audioman]

Steele is a gaffe a minute machine. Hillary ran wo the repthugs came up with Sarah. Obama wins so they come up with Steele. The great thing about the repthugs is that they believe their own BS and never miss an opportunity to double down on a losing, mindless strategy.

Steele won't make it to the mid-term elections. And, if he does he will get canned shortly thereafter and take the blame for the shelling these knuckleheads are going to take at the polls. The party of Limbaugh just doesn't get that Palin was panned not because she was a woman, not because she was a repthug, and not because she was a conservative. She was trashed, so to speak, because she was a light-weight hypocrite.

Gotta love these repthugs and how they are acting out as the Titanic sinks even lower................

[indy girl]

"that's the threat I want to take to the streets everyday. I want them looking over their shoulders and wondering whether or not Michael Steele is standing there."

Hilarious!!!!! This guy has the same tendency toward narcissism as Palin. The funny thing is, most of the old guard ***in his own party*** WOULD look over their shoulders at him and be nervous, just because he's BLACK!!!

Mr. Steele, nothing about you scares me except your complete cluelessness. At the moment, you're completely irrelevant, and your bizarre behavior and unhinged comments suggest you are likely to stay that way for some time to come.

[Telemachus]

He's the Michael Jackson of politics ... "I'm bat! I'm bat!"

[Grant Morrison]

..

Ronald Reagan was a TRAITOR who sold anti-aircraft weapons to our sworn enemy, Iran. A weapon called the Hawk anti-aircraft missle, shichm at the time of its sale was capable of shooting down our most advanced aircraft.

TRAITOR.

He sold out his friends in Hollywood to the FBI, funded cross-border death squads in Salvador and sold deadly weapons to our enemies, the Iranians.

TRAITOR.

.

[gintheb]

So very, very true!

[jlab]

Ronald Reagan goes to the doctor. After the exam, the doctor says: "I have some bad news: My tests revealed that you are the worst president ever. And also: You have Alzheimer's."

Reagan goes: "Well, at least I'm not the worst president ever."

[jazzycafe]

Thanks for the chuckle.

[ChiGuy]

Garrison Keillor has some interesting things to say about joining the Republican Party:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-oped0513keillormay13,0,4676396.column

[Lemeritus]

Thanks for the link (though, once at the Trib site, it becomes necessary to do a search on Keillor). I loved this guy's "Home Grown Democrat" and if there are any conservatives out there of good will (which would make the number low) who wonder why we're liberal, give Keillor's book a read; he nailed the mind-set as sharply as that other Democratic philosopher: Will Rogers.

[MalloMel]

Your link doesn't work. What I did was to copy it and then paste it to my browser and it then worked fine.

[WestCoastWoman]

Keep talkin.... you's be da man!

[jlab]

Michael, let it go. You'll still have plenty of problems left.

[ABbabypol]

Ding! Dong! Doorknob speaking again! Can someone PLEASE loosen the bolts!!!!!!!

[WestCoastWoman]

LMAO!

[grf67]

Reagan is dead. The really bad news is that given a choice, the thumb sucking republicans would bring Reagan back rather than Lincoln. Reagan would not like any of the current crowd of bottom feeders in the GOP.

[Stanislaw]

Sad but true. I'm sure that if Lincoln were alove today, he would have nothing to do with the reactionary, out-of-touch modern Republican party.

[powerlift2201]

"But if you are going to go and start this and start slamming Ronald Reagan, I have a problem. And it is going to be an issue. Because you can't blame the past particularly when that past contributed to the success of the party."

There are two rediculous points to this comment:

1) Ronald Reagan's trickle down economics started us on this disparate slide between the poor, middle class and the rich. He helped create the debacle we are in now - after Reagan we had Republican controlled house and senate! He created the "war on drugs" and spent billions of dollars incarcerating people for possession minor amounts of drugs so that prisons could be full of cheap (slave) labor.

2) He states that Reagan helped create the success of the party - not the country. That little statement sums up the GOP, conservatives and Michael Steele in a nutshell. They aren't concerned with how this country is fairing. They are concerned with how their party is fairing.

[greatlardini]

Well said and fanned

[nothingmusic42]

the next time a repug calls obama "the messiah" or the rest of that garbage, challenge them to say something negative about reagan. when they immediately launch into how great reagan was, ask them who's worshipping a messiah.

[MalloMel]

Regan... a messiah with Alzheimer disease. Now ain't that a blip?