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

[DDK]

"(Y)ou can't blame the past particularly when that past contributed to the success of the party."

That's a remarkable statement, and it speaks volumes about the problem the GOP faces. Until the GOP begins to untie itself from the past it will continue to be a relic.

[GreenTeacher]

That was the line that struck me as well. I mean, opposing civil rights contributed to their success in the past, as did cold war Red Scare tactics. Does that mean they're going to stick with those tired, outdated....

Oh yeah. Never mind.

[mudbones]

When all else fails invoke the name of Reagan, It's often used as a get out a jail free card

[MalloMel]

Regan was an actor, and acted his way through his first term, and then slept through his second term. What's so great about that. If that's all the Republicans have, then they don't have very much, except perhaps in their own minds.

They can use it as a, "get out a jail free card," all they want, but that only works with them. History will show that Regan had Alzheimer disease while in office, and all this admiration for Regan is just fabricated out of nothing but deranged fantasy. When you have nothing, then I guess that can seem like a positive.

[airboy]

Steele is upset because Cantor et al. failed to prostrate themselves sufficiently to the great god Reagan. To suggest that His Divinity had any human failings or inadequacies is a transgression punishable by banishment, if not a public stoning.

[Joseph Upton]

Ronald Reagan was the best president in my lifetime. But he was not perfect. He spent too much.

[greatlardini]

He da woist.

[smiththomas]

your spelling says it all

[Grunty1]

You mean you were only alive between 1980 and 1988? Then how are you posting?

I put him second worst in my life time, second only to Dubya.

[aaronr2000]

I'm moved to nausia at this rewriting of history with Reagan as being this larger than life president, but even I wouldn't put him that low. You got to squeeze in Hoover or Van Buren or Buchanan, and THEN as we are reaping the fruits of his deregulation free market obsession can we put him at his rightful place near the bottom. What's sad is many of us knew this all along but the media and even historians were letting conservative get away with propping him up like that, maybe out of fear of being branded liberal.

[jlab]

Have you spent your entire life celebrating Spongebob's "opposite day"?

[Telemachus]

Of course. He's Patrick the Starfish.

[Biracial1]

So there really is life after death?

[antaeus]

Why? For doing away with the top tax rate and putting us on the 30-year course for disaster that we now see?

For making naive people believe in a fantasy of an ever-shinier America that could all be put on a credit card?

For presiding over the health care crisis of a new disease outbreak that affects everyone, but refusing to even utter the name "HIV" during his presidency?

He was all surface and lousy substance.

[aaronr2000]

Very well said. Go ahead Joseph Upton, pick one.

[greatlardini]

Three things that get me pi__ed off more than anything:
1.) "Reagan won the Cold War with out firing a shot."
2.) "Reagan made Americans proud to be American again."
3.) "Reagan was a great President."
Male bovine ex.crement, with a capital B (which doesn't go to the bovine)

[smiththomas]

answers true on all of the above. score 100% on this exam

[QuietLightTraveler]

In reality, Reagen and all his misconceptions did a tremendous amount of harm to this country. And all these foolish republicans hang on to his failed ideas because they have nothing else. It's pathetic. Don't they get the point. The policies you espouse have brought the country to its knees, put it on the brink of disaster.

[ChiGuy]

Oh, MC Steele......You have SOOO many more problems than that.

[toyboat]

Does Steele ever just shut that trap of his?

[RandVictims]

Only when Limbaugh tells him to.

[Grunty1]

Apparently Steele believes that the RNC Chairmanship is actually a standup comedy gig.

[PresidentRobertBooth]

Reagan was an awful president.

He slashed funding to needed social programs, raised spending on weapons for a war that was never going to happen with the USSR, and then hilariously took credit for ending the so-called "Cold War"


And most amusingly, was completely oblivious to the actual meaning of the song "Born In The USA"

Ironically, the same scientific research that could lead to a cure for Alzheimer is the kind opposed by conservatives who also claim to worship Ronald Reagan.

[greatlardini]

Not just awful--the absolute worst.

[Grunty1]

Not anymore. Dubya made Reagan look like a shining hill in comparison.

[Kiki sm]

and his silence and negligence on the AIDS epidemic was unconscionable and criminal.

[Nyland8]

" ... Because you can't blame the past particularly when that past contributed to the success of the party."

Even if the "success of the party" brought about the downfall of the nation. And that's the disconnect, Mr. Steele. It's been "Republican Uber Alles" for decades now and the American people are tired of sacrificing their future to the already thoroughly discredited notions of right-wing ideologues. If you really believe that "government doesn't work", then stay-the-hell out of government until you change your mind. But getting into government just to destroy it is NOT an acceptable option.

8

[darthmaul]

The republican party is hopeless. Regan is dead and gone so get over it. How about offering up some real leadership instead of living in the past. I'm still waiting for the RNC "off the hook hip-hop makeover."

[bygollymissmolly]

It really puzzles me why the Republicans haven't kicked Steele to the curb. He spends more time dissing Republicans than he does dissing Democrats. He is almost as big an embarrassment as Michele Bachman.

[stratdude]

Keep this guy out front. He is wonderful spokesman for a political party that should have been put on the trash heap after Nixon; a party so desperate for heroes it has tried to deify a stumblebum, second rate actor who was a pathological liar and couldn't speak in complete sentences, sort of like his "son" George W. I am not one to often bash the media, but it inexplicably labeled him "the great communicator," and, furthermore, the hoopleheads started naming stuff after him, like highways and airports. I refuse to drive on Ronald Reagan Blvd., no matter what city it is in.

[ldcbl]

Funny, but I never thought that "THE ONE" knew what was going on around him and always thought that Nancy was running the show. what a surprise that he is now a god to the Rethugs.

[hrholmes]

She did, with most advice coming from her astrologer! true.

[Grunty1]

Nancy ran his personal life, while Daddy Bush ran his White House.

[sticksnstones]

It appears that goppers are not only beginning to eat their own, they're now digging up old white guys and eating them also.

[greatlardini]

Sounds like Ed Gein was a GOPer then.