By now, it should be fairly obvious that Michael Steele's
comments about Rush Limbaugh were an unmitigated public relations
disaster. Steele managed to simultaneously reinforce the
Democratic talking point that Rush is the real leader of the
Republican Party and outrage the party's conservative
base. This is pretty much the problem the GOP has faced since at
least 2005: it vacillates between a mushy moderation that
deflates its base and a tin-eared Bushian bellicosity that
doesn't mean anything to swing voters. The results go by the
names Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid.
Steele's own election as chairman of the Republican National
Committee owes to this dilemma. The RNC was faced with a choice
between an attractive African-American candidate whose
conservatism and nuts-and-bolts party-building skills were in
doubt and a Southerner with a clearer track record and, at best,
a tin ear on race. Forget the all-white country club; this fellow
was on record saying that the political experience that turned
him against big government was the integration of the public
schools. It was a choice that was really no choice at all.
Another major Steele selling point was that he "got it." He could
tell commiteemen from states where Republicans were really taking
a pounding that he understood that President Bush was unpopular,
that the Iraq war had been unpopular, that the GOP brand was in
the tank. But there was no substance to his "getting it" beyond
those admissions. And because many on the right doubt his
conservatism, Steele has to back down even when he tries to make
rhetorical concessions.
It's still very early in Steele's tenure, but the Limbaugh
brouhaha doesn't bode well for his chairmanship. Steele's biggest
asset was that he was an effective television spokesman for the
Republican Party, not any turnaround at the Maryland Republican
Party or GOPAC while he was running those party institutions.
This was the area where he was really supposed to shine. I still
maintain that Steele is more conservative than his critics
allege, but he definitely has the apologetic blue-state
Republican mentality. If this means a few years of vacillating
between sucking up to D.L. Hughey and apologizing to Rush
Limbaugh, it will be more of the same for the GOP.
