It is possible that the job facing Michael Steele, the newly elected chair of the Republican Party, is even more difficult, albeit far less important, than the one facing Barack Obama. Moving the Republican Party forward after two successive drubbings in national elections would be challenging under any circumstances, but Steele's task has not been made any easier by the inability of the Republican Party, and its supporters in the media, to adapt to the new political context.
Since the inauguration, a series of comments by Republican supporters demonstrate just how poorly the right wing's message is resonating right now. Rush Limbaugh recently outdid his own august standard for hypocritical bombasity by declaring that he wanted to see the new president fail. This occurred after eight years of right wing media voices, including Limbaugh's, accusing the Democrats of wanting to see Bush fail in Iraq and elsewhere and after a political campaign in which the Republican candidate, on his way to being resoundingly defeated, accused the democrat of preferring losing a war to losing an election. These comments from one of the most powerful voices on the right don't exactly demonstrate a willingness, or ability, of the right to move in new and constructive directions.
Andrew Card, the former Chief of Staff to President Bush, also underscored what seems like an almost principled inability among some in the Republican Party to understand the concerns of ordinary American voters with his comments about the new president. After the first week or so of the administration, Card weighed in with his critique of Obama's decision to occasionally go jacketless in the Oval Office. According to him, as the country is in the middle of extraordinarily difficult economic times, what matters are not the efforts of the new administration to solve these complex problems, but rather what they wear while they are doing it.
The comments by Card and Steele pale compared to Rudy Giuliani's observation that using stimulus money to give large bonuses for people on Wall Street is a fine idea because that money will be spent and will therefore strengthen the economy. Again this comment, from somebody who a year ago was considered too liberal to win the Republican Party nomination for president, demonstrates both the sensitivity to the needs of ordinary Americans and the fine understanding of economics which the party Michael Steele has to lead, lacks.
Steele will take over a party whose public faces have not only spent the last few weeks making comments like those by Giuliani, Card and Limbaugh, but whose relatively small congressional representation is still trying to find its footing in our new political world. Although, I am in favor of President Obama's stimulus package, I can certainly understand why some Republicans would be opposed to it, and believe a consultative process between the two parties might lead to a better stimulus package. However, listening to Republican opposition in congress has been like taking a trip back in time. After years of neglect, our social services and infrastructure are crumbling, the need to transform our economy is drastic and the Republicans are using Cold War era rhetoric about tax and spend Democrats to oppose the bill. One gets the feeling that if you asked the congressional leadership of Michael Steele's party if they thought it was going to rain tomorrow, they would tell you to cut taxes.
While some Republicans, like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have recognized that the party will benefit from not being dragged down by an extremely unpopular president anymore, these comments suggest that Bush was simply a public relations problem. The key to Steele's success in rebuilding the Republican Party will be recognizing that the extraordinary failure of the Bush administration and the drag it had on the Republican brand was not due to a bad image for the party but to eight years of bad decisions and bad policies from the White House with a congress that for six of those years was controlled by the Republican Party which stood by and let these policies be pursued.
In reality, the chair of a major party has very little control of what that party's elected leaders and supporters in the media say so Steele's ability to reshape or modernize his party's message will be limited. However, there is something of a leadership gap in the party with no strong frontrunner for 2012 emerging and evidence of growing division between the leading candidates. The challenge for Steele will not only be to fill this leadership vacuum but to fill it with a message and vision that is appropriate for the 21st century. I am not quite sure what that message should be, but would advise that wishing supporting federally subsidized bonuses for failed Wall Street bankers and criticizing the Oval Office dress code seem to be missing the mark.
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RNC CHAIRMAN RESULTS: Race For New Republican Leader Ends
WASHINGTON — The Republican Party chose the first black national chairman in its history Friday, just shy of three months after the nation elected a...
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Michael Steele, RNC Chairman (VIDEO)
See earlier updates below Michael Steele became the first African-American chairman of the Republican National Committee on Friday after defeating his lone remaining challenger, Katon...
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RNC Elections: A Fun Fact
So, at the Republican National Committee Leadership Elections, Michael Steele has prevailed in his bid to become the new chairman. The RNC is currently voting...
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Chris Matthews: 'I Voted For Michael Steele'
Tonight on Hardball, Chris Matthews admitted to John Heilemann and Michael Scherer that he voted for newly-minted RNC Chairman Michael Steele when Steele ran for...
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The Meaning of Michael Steele
It's hard to remember the last time a party chairman's race has been so closely followed, but the reality is that Steele's win really doesn't mean much.
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5 Facts About the New RNC Chairman
Former Maryland Lt. Governor Michael Steele was just elected chairman of the RNC. Here are five facts about the new leader of the Republican party.
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Steele, the GOP and Confronting the Southern Strategy
That fact that Steele won the RNC chairmanship is a hopeful sign that the GOP has begun to confront its shameful exploitation of race as a national political strategy.
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Steele's Slippery Slope
Republicans needed a public relations break more so than a Michael Steele, a fact that will show itself much sooner rather than later.
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Michael Steele: No Profile in Courage
When Steele was faced with a choice between political expediency and denouncing bigotry, Steele chose expediency.
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The GOP Finally Got Something Right with Michael Steele Pick
The Steele call was really an easy call, indeed the only call to make. This was the only thing the Party could do to avoid being shoved to the outer margins of national politics.
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The New RNC Chairman -- Providing Full "Race Card" Default Insurance
Selecting Steele is designed to help position the Republicans more advantageously in their effort to fight off charges of "using the race card" when their attacks on the president become really tough.
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But the MSM and others don't want to put them up front as the face of the party because the Southern Strategy can only exist as long as they can plausibly deny their racist and corporate fascist core (Dems are having a hard time letting go of the way they've gotten their money as well). And it's the main play in the playbook - look where the majority of the Repubs in Congress hail from - the South.
Michael Steele - that's supposed to be a decoy.
The Republican party is way lost, they used and abused the right wing nuts, starting with Nixon and the racist Southern Strategy, and now the infection has completely taken over their party. Their dilemma is that the Palin-led rabble is enough to get elected locally, in rural districts and states, but they have lost the swing voters, so the rabble can't overcome nationally.
There is a painful solution for the Republicans, but I can't see them taking it. Drop the religious right from the agenda. Drop the entire social program against abortion, homosexuals, evolution, global warming, faith-based politics in general.
The right wing nuts will stop voting or split R/D. The Republicans can become "Rockefellers", socially liberal/fiscally conservative, exactly what a majority of citizens want. That majority will grow with time because the young (thanks to the Internet, TV and entertainment) are increasingly liberal and tolerant of other races, religions, cultures and homosexuals.
As Rockefellers Republicans would have a fighting chance at 51%. But I don't think they can survive the surgery. I laugh every time Sarah Palin is mentioned as a party leader. I hope so; those too blind to see through this transparently opportunist hypocritical dullard are the perfect poison for the Republican Party, an anchor that will drown them.
Ha!
"While Daschle’s failure to pay the appropriate amount of taxes is a serious issue, perhaps Steele is not the best messenger on the issue of personal financial responsibility. In 2002, the Washington Post reported “two banks have filed foreclosure proceedings in the past year against Steele and his wife, Andrea, after they failed to make payments on their mortgage and a home equity loan last year. The loans, totaling about $ 96,000, listed the Steeles’ townhouse in Largo as collateral, a property that is valued for tax purposes at $ 115,110, according to court and tax records.”
I'm becoming more and more convinced that the Republican Party is headed for a "split" between the narrow minded social conservatives and the wealthy, social liberal fiscal conservatives.