Well, so much for Michael Steele. After a rousing CPAC Steele comes out with this insensible CNN attack on Rush, calling him “ugly” and dismissing him as an “entertainer.” Whatever happened to the guy who had the chops to withstand flying Oreo cookies during his Maryland U.S. Senate race, the usual racist reference from the usual so-called tolerant folks? Call me naive, but I actually thought Steele had the cojones to stand up to these kind of people rather than play to them. Obviously, not so.

Rush Limbaugh can defend himself and certainly doesn’t need help over here. That, however, is decidedly not the point. The point is that at this stage Mr. Steele should know better, and not knowing looks the fool, not to mention two-faced. If these were his feelings than he should have said so before his election to the RNC chairmanship. Once in the door Steele then turns on someone who is not only making the central case for conservatives in crystal clear and (thank God!) entertaining fashion, but figuratively speaking starts throwing his own Oreos at him? What is he thinking? 

Apologizing to Rush, which I assume is somewhere on Steele’s agenda, is frankly not good enough. Rush isn’t on the air 3 hours a day talking to himself. Some of us — quite a lot of us — listen seriously to the conversation. The quite abrupt question is now: who is Michael Steele and what does he really believe? Not, apparently, conservatism. If the new GOP national spokesman doesn’t have the horse sense to understand he needs to know when he is being baited to accept liberal templates (Rush is a bigot, tax cuts failed, big government works etc. etc. etc.) then the door opens on a conversation we shouldn’t have to have but apparently must: why is this man the chairman of the RNC?