The Growing Republican Unhappiness With Michael Steele
By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
March 4, 2009
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| Former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele smiles after being elected the first black Republican National Committee chairman, Friday, Jan. 30, 2009, in Washington. (AP File Photo) |
It's not just the TV appearances that have some Republicans worried.
Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele's dust-up with Rush Limbaugh has brought to the fore so-far unspoken concerns about Steele's performance in his early days as head of the GOP. A number of Republican politicos around Washington, many of whom supported Steele's bid to become party chairman, are worried that key jobs at the RNC are unfilled and the party's mission is unfocused, while Steele makes appearance after appearance on television, with sometimes controversial results. The result, they say, is a party that is losing its already scant momentum at a critical time.
Shortly after his January 30 victory in the chairman's race, Steele fired virtually everyone at the RNC -- a move many outsiders applauded after the party's back-to-back losses in 2006 and 2008. But Steele has yet to replace many of the people he sacked. Now, as Steele enters his second month in the chairman's office, there is no chief of staff for the RNC. There is no political director. There is no finance director. There is no communications director. Many lesser positions remain empty as well.
"I think it's been a disaster of a first month," says one Republican who has served on Capitol Hill and the RNC. "He needs to disappear for 60 days, go and staff the building, put his personal energy into making sure he has the people he wants, and go from there. That's what people are hoping he will do."
"It's not good," says another GOP politico. "People feel that it's been very erratic at a time when we really need some sort of stabilizing force."
Adding to the problem, these insiders say, has been Steele's high profile on television. Steele made headlines for his appearance on CNN last weekend in which he characterized Limbaugh's program as "incendiary" and "ugly." Limbaugh hit back hard, and Steele later apologized, saying his words did not reflect his true feelings. But some Republicans who were not particularly upset by Steele's references to Limbaugh were appalled when Steele, during the same program, sat quietly while CNN host D.L. Hughley said that last year's Republican National Convention "literally looked like Nazi Germany. It literally did." GOP insiders who saw the performance unanimously agreed that Steele was seriously, perhaps unforgivably, remiss in not challenging a television host who compared Republicans to Nazis.
Steele's missteps on CNN came after a series of other poorly received public statements. He suggested the party might take revenge on the three GOP moderate senators who supported the stimulus bill. He said he planned a hip-hop overhaul of the GOP. He publicly threatened Republicans who might oppose his plans within the party. "He was elected because of his communications skills," a third Republican insider told me, "and it is exactly those skills that are hurting the party right now. It's very difficult to get your footing when you are infighting."
Steele did not respond to a request for comment late Tuesday. But I did speak to Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Wisconsin state Republican party who is heading Steele's transition at the RNC. Priebus explained that Steele has created a team of ten volunteers to scrutinize every operation of the RNC and put together a 100-day plan for change. "It's been a tremendous amount of work," Priebus told me. "That took a few weeks, and this month is the month for reviewing those plans and implementing them and moving forward." Steele will begin filling key positions in the party within the next few weeks, Priebus said.
"He's being extremely ambitious in this endeavor," Priebus said. "I think the criticism is stemming from those who like the way things have always been done. Well, that's not going to happen. Michael Steele promised wholesale change, and he's delivering it. We're not just going to fill positions to fill positions."
I asked Priebus what sort of change Steele is contemplating. "You've already seen that Michael is going to be placing a new department on its own called the Coalitions Department, which goes to Michael's promise that he is going to try to build better bridges among various groups," Priebus said. "It could be veterans, Catholics, African-Americans, Hispanics -- all types of groups that we need to build bridges with."
Priebus said Steele is also likely to shift some of the RNC's resources from its Washington headquarters to regional and state centers. "Perhaps you will have less resources being eaten up in the building, less people in the building," Priebus said, "and more out in the country."
Priebus praised Steele's performances on television -- "It's important for the base to see him on TV" -- and said Steele's critics will, in the end, realize that he is doing the right thing. "I just think it's silly for people in three and a half weeks to be criticizing a person who has taken it upon his shoulders to absolutely rebuild what we've been doing after getting clobbered for two election cycles in a row," Priebus concluded. "I think Michael Steele ought to be applauded. You can't rebuild and reorganize an entire party by continuing to do the same thing."
This Friday, members of the RNC around the country will have a chance to hear Steele's plans during a members-only conference call. State officials are working to recruit candidates for the 2010 elections and are apprehensive about a not-yet-ready RNC and controversies like the Limbaugh matter distracting from the organizing work that has to be done. "There is a lot of anticipation out here," one state chairman told me. "The political clock is ticking. Time is of the essence."
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