Mark this day down on your calendars, ladies and gentlemen. In an interview posted on George Stephanoplous' ABC News blog, GOP Chairman Michael Steele provides a surprisingly intelligent analysis of yesterday's election results.
Steele goes on about many of the hot button topics that were discussed here and elsewhere in the blogosphere and seems to have little nice to say about the right wing of his party.
With regards to Palin, Armey, Pawlenty et al sticking their noses into the NY-23 race and supporting Hoffman over the official GOP candidate Scozzafava:
"If you don't live in the district, you don't vote there, your opinion doesn't matter very much," Steele said while assessing the intra-party strife that resulted in a Democratic pick up of a seat held by Republicans since the Civil War.
Steele recognizes he's got a problem with the crazies and he knows that the they are going to make it hard to recruit viable candidates in purple districts and states going forward. No one with any sense is going to open themselves up to that kind of abuse and it is going to make his job harder.
And on Erick Erickson's bizarro world belief that this loss was actually a GOP victory:
"I don't see a victory in losing seats," Steele said. "I'm in the business of multiplication and addition. I want more Republicans. I don't buy that we somehow find victory in defeat."
This one is so self-evident I really can't can't comment on it. It makes sense to me. It makes sense to Steele. But since when has sense ever mattered to Erick Erickson?
And on the now widely held view in the MSM that the GOP gubernatorial victories in Virginia and New Jersey were a referendum on President Obama:
Steele refuted the notion that the 2009 election was somehow a referendum on President Obama. "I don't think it is so much a referendum on the president," he said. "It is a check point on the
policies."
Mr Steele clearly didn't get the memo on this one. Everyone else on the right has been saying it would be a referendum for weeks, whereas those of us with two brain cells to bang together knew that it wasn't. These were clearly cases where the local issues of the state or the candidates themselves dictated the outcome, not the general public's view of the President which has remained very consistent throughout the fall.
Now this is not the first time Michael Steele has committed the heinous sin of telling the truth to the Republican party, see his comments regarding Rush et al. So the main question is how long until he has to walk it back?
Apology starts in three...two...one...