The GOP's Comeback Master Plan

[RottingCorpse]

I thought we should have a thread that keeps track of the GOP's attempts to stay releveant in the age of Obama, and follow their movement(s) toward trying to gain ground in 2010 and 2012.

Michael Steele becomes first black RNC chairman

WASHINGTON – The Republican Party chose the first black national chairman in its history Friday, just shy of three months after the nation elected a Democrat as the first African-American president. The choice marked no less than "the dawn of a new party," declared the new GOP chairman, former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele. Republicans chose Steele over four other candidates, including former President George W. Bush's hand-picked GOP chief, who bowed out declaring, "Obviously the winds of change are blowing."

Steele takes the helm of a beleaguered Republican Party that is trying to recover after crushing defeats in November's national elections that gave Democrats control of Congress put Barack Obama in the White House.

GOP delegates erupted in cheers and applause when his victory was announced, but it took six ballots to get there. He'll serve a two-year term.

Steele, an attorney, is a conservative, but he was considered the most moderate of the five candidates running.

He was also considered an outsider because he's not a member of the Republican National Committee. But the 168-member RNC clearly signaled it wanted a change after eight years of Bush largely dictating its every move as the party's standard-bearer.

Steele became the first black candidate elected to statewide office in Maryland in 2003, and he made an unsuccessful Senate run in 2006. Currently, he serves as chairman of GOPAC, an organization that recruits and trains Republican political candidates, and in that role he has been a frequent presence on the talk show circuit.

He vowed to expand the reach of the party by competing for every group, everywhere.

"We're going to say to friend and foe alike: 'We want you to be a part of us, we want you to with be with us.' And for those who wish to obstruct, get ready to get knocked over," Steele said.

"There is not one inch of ground that we're going to cede to anybody," he added.

"This is the dawn of a new party moving in a new direction with strength and conviction."

His job is to spark a revival for the GOP as it takes on an empowered Democratic Party under the country's first black president in midterm elections next fall and beyond.

He replaces Mike Duncan, who abandoned his re-election bid in the face of dwindling support midway through Friday's voting.

Two others who trailed farther back in the voting eventually followed suit, former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell and Michigan GOP chairman Saul Anuzis.

In the sixth and final round of voting, Steele went head-to-head with his only remaining opponent, South Carolina GOP chief Katon Dawson. Steele clinched the election with 91 votes; a majority of 85 committee members was needed.

Just eight years after Republicans controlled both the White House and Congress, the GOP finds itself out of power, without a standard-bearer and trying to figure out how to rebound while its foe seems to grow ever stronger.

The Democratic Party boasts a broadened coalition of voters — including Hispanics and young people — who swung behind Obama's call for change. At the same time, the slice of voters who call themselves Republican has narrowed. The GOP also has watched as Democrats have dominated both coasts while making inroads into the West and South, leaving Republicans with a shrunken base.

Despite the run of GOP losses, Duncan had argued that he should be re-elected because of his experience; his five challengers called for change and said they represented it.

As he left the race, Duncan thanked Bush and said of his two-year tenure: "It truly has been the highlight of my life."

Another candidate, former Tennessee GOP Chairman Chip Saltsman, withdrew from the race on the eve of voting and with no explanation, saying only in a letter to RNC members, "I have decided to withdraw my candidacy."

Saltsman, who ran former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's failed presidential campaign last year, saw his bid falter in December after he drew controversy for mailing to committee members a CD that included a song titled "Barack the Magic Negro" by conservative comedian Paul Shanklin and sung to the music of "Puff, the Magic Dragon."

[Tatertots]

I'm trying to figure out whether he's a token or not. I didn't want to jump to a conclusion, but it seems like the RNC is just putting new lipstick on the same tired old flawed ideas.

[Nubbins]

Yes, the world is crumbling around us.  Let's jerk off our own self image while we still can.

[Tatertots]

That sounds like GOP reasoning, yes. Hasn't that been their motto for the past 8 years? Deny the truth until it goes away?

[Nubbins]

I just hate politicians who don't see that the economy and our current crisis trumps anything else going on in their feeble little worlds.  Stories like these only point out that their party heads are focusing on an issue no one can afford to care about right now.  Rebuilding a party should be taking a back burner.  I mean, I know it's not exactly the same thing, but imagine if people were doing things like this in the wake of 9/11.  By announcing a rebirth of their party, they're merely showing us how little they've changed.

[nacho]

I actually had to read up on this because one of my Virginia coworkers came in and told me Maryland was Satan's penis. 

So while he hovered over my shoulder, I looked this up and my reaction is:  "Huh."

[Matt]

So how much is this guy a shithead? let's see....


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/30/michael-steele-rnc-chairm_n_162589.html

Steele tried portraying himself as a Democrat in his Senatorial race in 2006, handing out a "Democratic Sample Ballot" that implied he was a party member and distributing signs that read, "Steele: Democrat."

"Are Republicans now picking Democrats to run the RNC?" a DNC member asks. "Shouldn't they pick someone who was proud to run as a Republican?"

He was caught hiring homeless people to hand out literature (misleading literature at that) in African American neighborhoods during that same campaign.

"If that is their national strategy to broaden their appeal to minority voters," emailed another Democratic source, "it's going to get awfully expensive....."

Then there is the kooky biographical material, like Steele's repeated references to George W. Bush as his "homeboy."

More facts were pointed out by Judd Legum, Hillary Clinton's former research director and now heavily entrenched in Maryland politics:

"Steele compared stem cell research to Nazi experiments during the Holocaust."

"Steele was endorsed by Mike Tyson during his run for Senate. When Tyson, who used to be married to Steele's half sister, pleaded no contest to assault in Montgomery County in 1998, Steele was on hand to support him."

"Steele defended former Gov. Bob Ehrlich's decision to hold a $100,000 fundraiser at a country club that did not allow non-white members, saying that the club's membership's policies were "not an issue" because "I don't play golf."

Finally, a reader points out that Steele failed in his only attempt to pass the Maryland Bar exam. "This is a joke," the reader wrote, "isn't it? Michael (can't pass bar exam) Steele, about to become RNC chairman?"

And yet, for all this, Steele candidacy remains a far more difficult one to attack than that of his nearest competitors, in large part because of race. South Carolina GOP Chairman Katon Dawson, who finished second in the balloting, was a member of a whites-only country club and had many Democrats stunned that he could even get that close to a prominent national post. And now-former chairman Mike Duncan was a vestige of the Bush years.

Steele largely abandoned his moderate Republican roots in order to secure backing for the RNC post, but it is conservatives not Democrats who have taken issue with that path.

[Tatertots]

If onlhy half of that is true, it's still supremely awesome. The GOP is doomed.

[Cassander]

dude, hiring homeless people is a major Democrat M.O.

[Tatertots]

This guy is hilarious.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/01/31/bipartisanship-is-overrated-says-new-rnc-chair

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The new chairman of the Republican National Committee praised House Republicans Saturday for their universal opposition to President Obama's stimulus bill and used his family's own life experiences to justify voting against it.

"I know we're living in the era of bipartisanship," Steele joked to the House GOP congressmen who gathered this weekend to discuss policy and politics. "I thought it was very important to send a signal, and you sent it loudly, very clearly, that this party, the leadership of this caucus, would stand first and foremost with the American people. You made it very clear that in order to grow through this recession that you not redistribute the wealth of the people of this nation."


The former Maryland lieutenant governor specifically spoke about his mother as he slammed the Obama plan.

"My mom was a sharecropper's daughter with a fifth-grade education," Steele said. "And my mother knew how to balance the budget without taking money out of my pocket."

Steele drew cheers from the crowd when he pledged the GOP would re-take the majority in Congress, beginning with the fight over New York's 20th congressional district — recently vacated by the state's newly-named senator, Kirsten Gillibrand. She defeated GOP Rep. John Sweeney in 2006.

"I'm in the business of winning elections," said Steele. But he also noted that he was unsuccessful in his 2006 bid for the Senate.

"As a black Roman Catholic conservative from Washington, D.C., and Maryland, I also know how to lose elections," he said.

[RottingCorpse]

I'm almost starting to feel sorry for the GOP. It's like watching a coke addict who refuses to see they have a problem.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iinqe_4O9bM" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iinqe_4O9bM</a>

[nacho]

Oh man... I've been hearing about it all day, but haven't bothered to delve into the story.  Jesus.

[Nubbins]

holy fucking shit

[Cassander]

way to go north carolina piedmont area! 

[RottingCorpse]

Republican Savior's Wife Starred Half-Naked in Music Video About Handjobs

http://gawker.com/5454403/republican-saviors-wife-starred-half+naked-in-music-video-about-handjobs