More often than not, Politico serves as a right-wing echo chamber. That being said, their headline today is just too good to pass up: "Steele Trap? GOP Fears Grow."
The article starts off with all of Steele's gaffe-tastic moments over the last month: from his promise to remake the GOP in the image of one-armed midgets' hip-hop fantasies, to his sendin' some "slum love" out to "freakin' awesome" brutha Bobby "In-da-Hizzouse" Jindal, to his referring to Chuck D's hometown of Roosevelt, Long Island, as "the projects" and "the streets," only to be quickly corrected by an unamused Chuck.
But Steele's problems go far beyond his idiotic gaffes and his seeming obsession with fitting in with Those Hip Kids. Obviously, there's the small matter of the FBI investigation into whether he funneled money to his sister's company during his failed 2006 Senate bid. But, wait, there's more!! According to Politico, Steele has set up hardly any infrastructure despite having been in office over a month, choosing instead to spend his time basking in the media's adoring glow. Republicans are starting to worry that the man doesn't know what he's doing.
On the organizational side, Steele does not have a chief of staff, a political director, a finance director or a communications director. Last week, one of the two men sharing the job of interim finance director was forced to resign.
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"There’s frustration that there’s no discipline, no planning," said a well-known Republican consultant. "He’s risking being overexposed by accepting every interview, which makes gaffes more likely."
The story includes the obligatory insistence from associates that great progress is being made behind the scenes, and that in time we'll all find out about it. While that may be true, I would frankly be shocked if Steele managed to build a disciplined and effective RNC. The man has little if any experience running a large organization, outside of his disastrous 2006 campaign, which adopted the John McCain approach of lurching from message day to day in an attempt to convince people that he wasn't just like all the other crooks and hacks who form the foundation of his party. His eyebrow-raising comments show not only that he is undisciplined but that he is trying desperately to play into an outdated and, in many ways, insulting stereotype of African-Americans that only serves to discredit him and make him look desperate and pathetic.
In any event, I won't be shedding any tears if the self-proclaimed (and quickly disclaimed) de facto head of the Republican turns out to be an incompetent boob. In the last year, the GOP has seen the disastrous rollout of no fewer than four "rising stars": Grandpa Fred Thompson, Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal, and Michael Steele. I truly believe that Karma is coming back their way, and judging from the damage they did to the country over the past 20 years, we can expect much more entertainment from the Hip-Hoppin' Grand Old Party.