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STEELE!!! SHUT. THE. FUCK. UP!

Why should an African-American vote Republican?

\”You really don\’t have a reason to, to be honest — we haven\’t done a very good job of really giving you one. True? True,\” Republican National Chairman Michael Steele told 200 DePaul University students Tuesday night.

Seriously, why do we still let him talk? He\’s worse than Biden.

Shut up and stick to fundraising.  If all you can do as the RNC Chair is to trash Republicans, you are hereby forbidden to come within 500 feet of a microphone.

Seems like it was just last week that RNC Chair Michael Steele was turning the RNC into giant hypocrites for criticizing massive government spending, while the RNC is also hemorrhaging cash.  Sure enough now he\’s doing it again.

The Republican National Committee at the end of last year struck a deal with the Michigan Republican Party that if the state party could raise what turned out to be a half a million dollars for the RNC from its donors, the committee would immediately give the money back, in a scheme apparently devised to increase the RNC’s 2009 fundraising numbers.

As Captain Ed wisely points out there is nothing illegal going on here.  It\’s a sign of desperation sure, but it\’s not illegal.

What is a problem, is we just just got done with a debate on health care reform, rightly pointing out that this boondoggle was full of all sorts of accounting gimmicks to try to glossy up the bill into something other than a financial failure.  It\’s a valid point to be made, and one which can, and will, resonate well with a public already concerned about deficit and out of control spending.

For that same reason, it\’s especially problematic if the people making the accusations are doing the very same thing.  The RNC is pulling accounting gimmicks to try to glossy themselves into something other than a financial failure.  That\’s not exactly going to play well with a public already concerned with deficits and out of control spending.
Steele is not just an embarrassment to fiscal and social conservatives, he\’s also self-defeating and he\’s taking the Republican Party with him.

Democrats just blew all their political capital on a healthcare bill the public hates.  The public is absolutely in anti-incumbent mode.  Deficits are skyrocketing.  The economy is not improving.  Our foreign policy has been a mess.  Global warming has been discredited.  Republicans are leading in polls.  Conservatives are energized.  This should be a time for the RNC to be flying high, drifting on the winds of political fortune.

Instead we have two competing storylines making the news.  The first that the RNC reimbursed a staffer for a party at a lesbian bondage club called the Voyeur West Hollywood.  The other is that Steele is very fond of spending massive amounts of cash on limos, private planes and luxury hotel rooms.  It\’s a sad reflection on the state of the party when the bondage club is probably the better of the two storylines.

The Republican party did poorly in past elections because they strayed from what they supposedly believed.  The party that promised to rein in spending and reduce deficit spending, instead spent like crazy.  They betrayed their principals and gorged on taxpayer money.  Conservatives punished them for it by staying home in 2006 and 2008.  Now Republicans claim to have learned their lesson, and just in time, because the deficit is perhaps the key issue in this next election and the voters are keen to see the problem addressed.  So news reports that the RNC is spending frivolously is politically more damaging than if Michael Steele was found with a goat next to a dead hooker on a pile of blow (heh, supposedly he is a \”cool boss\”).

Really the problem here is that these scandals are just the latest in a long line of bone-headed moves by Michael Steele.  Steele was picked as Chair of the RNC supposedly because of his media saavy ways.  But then he goes on talk shows and says things like the GOP \”might not be able to lead the country\” and that Republicans are \”afraid of black people\”, and that\’s just two examples.  The list is literally endless.

And now he doubles down by combining two of his worst traits and makes it even worse.

There is little that the RNC can do to excuse the $2,000 reimbursement at a bondage club, but party officials are clearly tired of the line of attack that Chairman Michael Steele is living high on the hog as he travels across the country.

RNC spokesman Doug Heye just blasted out raw oppo detailing the fact that the other guys also drop some cash for fancy purposes (mostly to stroke donors).

If your defense that the party of fiscal conservatism is spending frivolously is that the other guys do it too, you may as well pack it up and start planning for 2016.  Excuses like this just confirm independent voters suspicions that there is no difference between the two parties.  And it demonstrates to conservatives that Republicans still haven\’t learned their lessons from 2006 and 2008.  Either way this is a stupid move by the RNC compounding on other bone-headed moves and Steele has been at the center of every one of those bone-headed moves.

It\’s time for new leadership as the RNC has become an obstacle.  Already big donors are avoiding the RNC like the plague and instead directing their funds to the Congressional committees.  Small and mid-sized donors are pissed at the party and untold numbers have probably sworn off the party already.  It\’s a enough that we have to fight the Democrats in November, do we really need to be fighting Steele as well?

[Crossposted at True North]