Being on the same wavelength as Daily Kos in something like this was half reassuring and half creepy at the same time. Here's the story:
Michael Steele's been chairman of the GOP for a short time now and I noticed about a week back that video of him on Cavuto's show saying something along the lines of "I'm ready for anything, baby", which was a bit odd but I'm usually willing to forgive slips of the tongue here and there so I just set it aside for the time being. But!
Two days ago I noticed an article about Michelle Bachmann saying "you da man" to Steele and some other tomfoolery on Steele's part, which then led to a search that led to that other quote of his that I apparently missed before where he said he wanted to make the GOP not just cutting edge, but
"...beyond cutting edge!"
...
WTF is wrong with this guy? ....
he reminds me of somebody...
snap that's it, he's Poochie from the Simpsons! thought I. Quick as a jiff I wrote up a post on why he's exactly like Poochie:
http://mithridates.blogspot.com/...
and included a nice bit of analysis (if I do say so myself) that I'll include here in a bit below. Later on that day I thought I'd check to see what would turn up if I did a search for Michael Steele Poochie, and lo and behold:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Daily Kos was well aware. I'm very glad that a lot of other people have noticed the connection. He really is Poochie. Now for some of what I wrote on my other post:
What's fascinating about Michael Steele is that he's exactly what a lot of Democrats during the early primaries feared Barack Obama might turn out to be as nominee. The fear at that time was that they would pass up a sure thing for something that might turn out to be all flash and no substance, and that come October or so Dems would be groaning at another missed opportunity as their candidate spit out lines like "bringing the hip-hop Dem message to the streets" or "we're beyond the cutting edge" or "let's kick this like it's 2008 y'all!" that got played on the news over and over again, and the GOP got their candidate elected by appearing serious and responsible. As it turned out Obama was all substance, and a good amount of style, but he never campaigned on the latter. That brings up the other point:
People don't want you to demonstrate that you're cool, they want to find out themselves. This is of critical importance when you're running for office or anything else that demands people like you. You'll remember that during the campaign people were always finding out interesting things about Obama that made him really cool that he had never mentioned himself. Oh, he uses a Blackberry religiously. Wow, he was an avid comic book collector. Hey, his favourite tv show is The Wire. Interesting, he still remembers a fair amount of Indonesian from when he grew up there. Hm, he's even been to countries like Pakistan. Wow, here's a photo of him just chilling at a shack in Kenya back in the 80s (I think). Barack Obama never had to mention any of this himself, and indeed he knew that if he were to campaign as the Blackberry-using, comic-book-knowing, good-at-basketball nominee that he probably would have lost considering the seriousness of the climate.
This is something that Michael Steele doesn't get at all, and that's what makes it all the more interesting. It's also what probably made a lot of us realize that he's exactly the same as Poochie - take a stale brand, gather a focus group together, add a new character that comprises all the flash and none of the substance that people actually wants, and presto! you have a complete flop.
I don't think I'm the only one that hopes Steele keeps up his "I'm a kung-fu hippie from gangster city" persona over the long term. Steele as chairman and Palin-Jindal for 2012 sounds like a dream ticket to me.