FREAK OF THE WEEK: Michael Steele
This week, the FredBlog shines the freaklight on Michael Steele, the chairman of the Republican Party who can’t seem to stand up to Rush Limbaugh.
They say that politics loves a vacuum. And right now, the Republican Party in the U.S. has no political leader – after all, Democrats control the White House and both houses of Congress. So that leadership role should fall to the chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC), the party’s administrative and strategic arm.
Steele is the new chair of the RNC, elected by committee members back in January. He is also the RNC’s first African-American leader and was seen as a moderate who could bring the Republican Party back to big-tent status, rather than the right-wing regional party it has become.
But if Steele isn’t strong enough to stand up to radio talk-show toad Rush Limbaugh, he certainly won’t be strong enough to bring the party back to power.
And his capitulation to the Toad was the biggest political news story of this past week.
First, Steele seemed on solid footing. In response to all this talk about the Toad being the leader of the Republican Party, Steele told CNN, “Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer. Rush Limbaugh's whole thing is entertainment. Yes, it is incendiary. Yes, it is ugly."
So good, so far.
But then the Toad burped back on his radio show, “Why do you claim to lead the Republican Party when you seem obsessed with seeing to it President Obama succeeds?”
OK Mr. Steele, ignore the Toad and remain as strong as, well, steel!
That didn’t last long.
After the Toad Show, Steele apologized, saying, “I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh. I was maybe a little bit inarticulate. There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership. I went back at that tape and I realized words that I said weren’t what I was thinking. It was one of those things where I thinking I was saying one thing, and it came out differently. What I was trying to say was a lot of people want to make Rush the scapegoat, the bogeyman, and he’s not."
Just try to diagram those sentences!
As if that ridiculous statement weren’t enough, Steele issued yet another apology, calling the Toad “a national conservative leader, and in no way do I want to diminish his voice. I truly apologize.”
Mr. Steele, if you can’t stand up to some radio loudmouth, how are you going to stand up to the Democrats who, by the way, control everything right now?
At least one member of the RNC is now calling on Steele to resign, citing “eroding confidence.” Got that right!
I think you could have done a FREAKS of the Week and just lumped all Republicans together into one group. They all want Obama and the country to succeed except for when Rush says he wants Obama to fail and then the Republicans in Washington seem to offer a tacit agreement with Rush by their simple failure to denounce Rush's pronouncements. So which is it? Either they want Obama to succeed or they want him to fail; this isn't a fence sitting competition because come the next election they're going to be called on the carpet for inaction at the very least or for being major roadblocks to the success of the Obama agenda at worst. In any case, they are only going to marginalize their party even further. And since when is a radio voice given any credence by Republicans? They certainly painted Al Franken and Rachel Maddow as members of the lunatic left when they were radio critics of the Bush administration but those two never wished failure upon Bush -- maybe because Bush was a failure all on his own and didn't need anyone to wish it upon him. I would put Rush into a similar category -- the whacko right -- and suggest that if the Republican party wants to be taken seriously, sound less like a whining sore loser, and offer alternative solutions to the country's problems that they find some real leaders who are willing to work toward successful outcomes for this country rather than sit myopicly on the sidelines hoping that if the Democrats fail that spells success for them. What that means is failure for all of us! Freaks! Each and every one of them!
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