G.O.P. Squirms as Spotlight Focuses on Its Leader/G.O.P. Squirms as Spotlight Focuses on Its Leader By ADAM NAGOURNEY Copyright by The New York Times

G.O.P. Squirms as Spotlight Focuses on Its Leader
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/us/politics/07memo.html?th&emc=th


WASHINGTON — Michael Steele was hardly the consensus choice to become chairman of the Republican National Committee, scrambling to the top early last year after surviving multiple ballots in a crowded field.

Mr. Steele’s supporters rallied around him as a compelling advocate at ease making the Republican case on television and someone who would be the first African-American to lead the party. His opponents were apprehensive about Mr. Steele’s equally strong reputation as a showboat, an inexperienced manager given to advancing his own ambitions and prone to bursts of indiscretion. Even as the committee settled on him at the end of hours of balloting, Republican leaders were never quite sure which Michael Steele they would get.

Fourteen months later, the answer has become clear. At a time when the Republican National Committee is looking to take advantage of Democratic troubles and make gains in Congressional elections, Mr. Steele is commanding attention mostly for questionable expenditures by the committee, lagging fund-raising, staff defections and dismissals, an aggressive round of paid speeches and speaking appearances and politically inopportune remarks.

On Monday, confronting criticism of the committee for picking up a $2,000 tab for donors and staff at a West Hollywood strip and bondage club, Mr. Steele said in response to a question on “Good Morning America” on ABC that he and President Obama were being held to tougher standards because they were black.

In the best of circumstances, the head of a party out of power is the voice of the loyal opposition; at worse, the chairman is an irrelevance barely known outside party headquarters, hustling for time on the afternoon cable news shows. But Mr. Steele, who did not respond to a request for comment, has become something else: a remarkably public presence that even some Republicans say is distracting his party at a moment of high opportunity.

That concern spiked as Mr. Steele fired his chief of staff, Ken McKay — a popular figure who, Republicans said, learned of his dismissal when his wife saw the report on MSNBC — implicitly blaming him for spending abuses, including the strip club, that Mr. Steele said he had only learned about by reading his committee’s report to the Federal Election Commission.

The concern is evident in the extent to which big donors are writing checks to other Republican committees and how some prominent Republicans are voicing concerns about him.

“Right now it is crucial for the R.N.C. to get off the front pages of the newspapers,” said Katon Dawson, a former South Carolina Republican Committee chairman who ran against Mr. Steele. “Get back to the mission of winning elections.”

Mr. Dawson, who did not rule out challenging Mr. Steele when his term is up, suggested that Mr. Steele did not appreciate the fact that not all publicity is good publicity, even for a chairman whose role includes keeping his party (and himself) in the spotlight.

“Lee Harvey Oswald had 100 percent name ID and none of it was any good,” Mr. Dawson said. “The bad press hurts us on the ground. One donor called me up and said, ‘I’m not going to give those guys any money.’ “

Mr. Dawson’s views of frustration and concern were echoed — often on background — by other top Republicans.

“The chairman of the Republican Party should be able to lead,” Alex Castellanos, an unpaid senior adviser to the committee, said in an interview. "And right now I think he’s lost the confidence and the support of the people he’s leading."

In one sense, there is little that Republicans can do about Mr. Steele. It takes a two-thirds vote of the committee to remove him. That is a fight few Republican leaders want.

And Mr. Steele has made clear he would not leave quietly — he strongly suggested at his party’s winter meeting in Honolulu his intention to seek another term — and the last thing Republican leaders want now is an internal fight that would draw attention away from Democratic problems.

Which is not to say that Republicans have not been acting. In recent weeks, a number of party officials — including Karl Rove, the former adviser to former President George W. Bush, and Ed Gillespie, a former chairman of the party — have set up an independent committee to help Republican candidates this fall. Top Republicans said they have advised donors to send checks not to the Republican National Committee but to the committees financing Senate and House candidates.

Mr. McKay’s dismissal was followed by the departure of Curt Anderson, who had been one of Mr. Steele’s top advisers. Mr. Anderson issued a statement supporting Mr. McKay.

On Tuesday, Sean Mahoney, one of three Republican National Committee members from New Hampshire, resigned, giving The Union Leader of New Hampshire a copy of a letter that excoriated Mr. Steele for the spending abuses. “The recent scandal involving R.N.C. funds being used to entertain a small crowd at a Los Angeles strip club is the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Mr. Mahoney wrote.

Faced with so many races in play, the Republicans cannot afford to have a drop-off in contributions. The strip club episode could turn off conservative voters. And the questions about lavish Republican spending undercut the Republican Party as it seeks to present itself as the party of financial constraint and good governance.

John Weaver, a Republican consultant, said Mr. Steele had been given a needed second chance with the shake-up.

“We’re not going into a presidential cycle without him facing a challenge,” Mr. Weaver said. “What he does in the next few months will decide whether he can survive that.”




Michael Steele's problem isn't race -- it's pride
By Kathleen Parker
Copyright by The Washington Post
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/06/AR2010040602661.html


When you're Michael Steele, there's no waking up and thinking: Ahhhh, at least the worst is over.

Whatever the week, Monday is the start of another very bad one. No exception to the trend, this week began dramatically.

First, Steele's chief of staff, Ken McKay, resigned in another Republican National Committee stab (cue soundtrack from "Psycho") at damage control in the wake of profligate spending and that whole bondage-stripper thing.

Next, Steele's longtime political consulting firm, On Message, severed ties with the RNC head. His relentless off-messaging apparently was hurting the company's brand. Nothing personal, of course. High regard and all that. "We wish him well," said consultant Curt Anderson, as he lowered himself into the Titanic's last lifeboat.

And that was the good part of the week. Still to come was reaction to the latest on the list of "Things Michael Steele Shouldn't Have Said": It's about race.

Appearing recently on ABC's "Good Morning America," Steele told George Stephanopoulos that being African American has magnified his travails. Stephanopoulos had asked Steele whether his race gave him a "slimmer margin for error."

"The honest answer is yes," said Steele. "It just is. Barack Obama has a slimmer margin. We all -- a lot of folks do. It's a different role for me to play and others to play, and that's just the reality of it."

Except that African American Republicans aren't buying it. For starters, Steele was elected by the predominantly white party. After months of unforced errors, he can't now turn around and charge his party with racism. Actually, racism would mean expecting less from an African American than from a white counterpart.

If you can't play the race card with your own race, you might be in a heap of denial. As Juliette Ochieng wrote in a blog item that was picked up by BookerRising.net, the black, moderate-conservative news site:

"Mr. Steele's margin for error is smaller than it was when he first became RNC chair due entirely to the fact that he has made so many errors and due to the fact that he seems incapable of learning from them."

It's not clear who Steele thinks his audience is when he deals the race card. Meanwhile, black Republicans have their own complaints about Steele, principally that the RNC leader has failed to support African American candidates.

One of the more outspoken among these is Jean Howard-Hill, a political science professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga who is also a lawyer and Republican activist. And, some might say . . . a troublemaker?

"I wear the label very proudly," she says.

Howard-Hill is a familiar name in party politics, especially in Tennessee, where she is running for Congress after decades of recruiting blacks to the GOP. A Georgia-born scholar whose childhood memories include a cross burning in her front yard, she seems an unlikely Republican.

"You have to be a little crazy to be an African American Republican. I admit that."

But Howard-Hill sees the Republican Party as her natural home and, importantly, the best route for economic empowerment.

"Some of us are tired of being poor."

When she goes into black churches to preach the GOP Gospel, Howard-Hill reminds congregants that blacks were first elected to Congress as Republicans during Reconstruction and that their birthright was stolen by the Dixiecrats.

In South Carolina, rising Republican star Marvin Rogers, a candidate for the South Carolina Legislature, is telegraphing the same message with his book "Silence Makes the Loudest Sound." Basically, conservative blacks want their party back.

But many political candidates are being hampered in part by a lack of access to the RNC coffers, says Howard-Hill. She blames Steele and amends his different-standards defense accordingly.

"I would say [blacks are] treated differently within the party. But in terms of integrity, the standard is the same. Michael needs to own up because it's not race. From day one, he has messed up. . . . If he wants to play the race card, play it with us."

To be fair to Steele, he didn't introduce the race issue and was responding to a question. Nevertheless, his answer and the African American Republican response have shed light on Steele's central flaw. As always, it isn't the mistake that brings you down; it's the coverup.

In Steele's case, the coverup is pride -- an unwillingness to take personal responsibility. Whether it's the poor staffer who approved $1,900 for a strip club or the chief of staff who got the boot, it's always someone else's fault.

Steele needs to face the truth and set himself -- and his party -- free.

kathleenparker@washpost.com