You ever heard of the old "country" expression: “Putting pig on pork?” That’s how it felt this week to criticize Michael Steele. Once Rush Limbaugh and the national media were finished having their way with the country’s first black Republican National Chairman, there wasn’t much new stuff left to say that would be any more negative, demeaning or embarrassing about the man. It all seemed so… redundant.
I’ve never been a big Michael Steele fan, despite the fact that he's "almost local," having actually entered a seminary to join the priesthood in nearby Villanova, before changing his mind and opting for a legal career. No, I lost all respect for him back in 2006, when his political campaign virtually hijacked a busload of people from Philadelphia’s “recovery community," transported them to the state of Maryland, where he was running for the U.S. Senate and “tricked” them into working for his election and distributing his campaign literature, by leading them to believe that he was a Democratic candidate.
In high school, I had a teacher who would say to students who made the mistake of standing up in front of the class and giving the wrong answer: “Go back to your seat and sit down before somebody sees you.” As I watched the whole sordid exchange unfold between Michael Steele and Rush Limbaugh, last week, I began to wish that Steele had been in those classrooms and that he had absorbed just a bit of Mr. Watters’ wisdom.
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I just get the impression that Michael Steele doesn’t really know his own audience. As strange as it may seem, it appears that he doesn’t really understand the present demographic and philosophical profile of the members of the Republican political party.
In 1964, as most folks know, Republican Presidential Candidate Barry Goldwater adopted an uncompromising, “states rights” platform (i.e., anti- Civil Rights) in a failed effort to unseat Democratic President Lyndon Baines Johnson. While Goldwater didn’t win the election, his campaign platform struck a popular chord among many conservative whites in both parties and it launched a migration and a transformation that makes today’s Republican Party very, very different from the party that Abraham Lincoln and recently emancipated blacks used to love so much.
Post-Goldwater, the Republican Party became, at least at the national level, more conservative, more upscale, more white, more suburban and rural, more “Christian right,” more uncompromisingly supportive of the Second Amendment, (the right to bear arms) and absolutely less black, less poor, less urban and less working class.
In that context, at last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Rush Limbaugh gave his first “State of the National Republican Party” address and Steele, the party chairman, became a bit player and the butt of racially tinged jokes.
In fact, after Steele made his remarks to CPAC’s Presidential Banquet, the moderator, a Minnesota congresswoman named Michele Bachmann, said condescendingly of the Party’s chairman, who holds a Juris Doctorate from Georgetown University, “Michael Steele, you be da man. You be da man.”
“You be da man?!”
Did they surgically remove Michael Steele’s spine when they elected him RNC chair? How could he have possibly just grinned and accepted that comment?
Even further, had Brother Steele been paying appropriate attention to what the word “conservative” actually means, in the first place, he would have, perhaps, recognized that his chances of bringing any semblance of an ‘Obama-like” change to the Republican Party are probably slim and none.
According to an October 2008 survey by Pew, Republicans are not only more monolithic, they also have more money than Democrats, fewer financial worries, they like their own communities better, they have substantially more family wealth, and the median value of their homes is greater.
That's why, at the national level, the word "conservative" has become virtually synonymous with the word "Republican." The Republicans have become the party of the “Haves,” and they like it that way. They are the people who have the most financial resources and they apparently plan to do everything in their power to conserve those resources.
Here’s a basic fact: If you want to be a true conservative, you have to, first, have something of value to conserve.
Build better public schools, improve public health, construct more effective mass transit systems? All of that implies two things to conservatives: "Big Government" and the distinct probability that those with the most money (themselves) will be asked to share their wealth for the good of those less fortunate. They simply ain’t feeling it.
In fact, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines "conservatism" as: “The disposition in politics to preserve what is established.” and “the tendency to prefer an existing or traditional situation to change.”
Over time, the national Republican Party has evolved to look more like a social movement, a private club or a lifestyle choice than a simple, political philosophy. It appears that, while Republicans prefer, of course, to win elections, they’d rather lose them than to change their current principles or share their current net worths.
This is the audience that has heard Michael Steele just two weeks after he was elected the Party’s national chairman, say that he wants to “surprise everyone” by creating a new, “off-the-hook,” public relations strategy that will have the party reach out to “hip-hop settings” and that, in its outreach, the Party shouldn’t overlook “one-armed midgets."
This is the audience that heard him say that he was sending the oratorically challenged Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal some “slum love,” after Jindal embarrassed himself on national TV and cable outlets trying to offer a counterpoint to Barack Obama’s own, extremely well-delivered "State of the Economy" message.
This is the audience that overwhelmingly and warmly embraced Limbaugh, the erratic, former substance abuser, who also happens to be a highly influential and widely popular Republican thought leader.
This is the audience that watched Steele’s appearance on CNN’s D. L. Hughley show, where he decided to dismiss that same Limbaugh as a mere, “entertainer,” who makes ugly remarks.
And then came the final travesty: After his "entertainer" comment about Limbaugh, Steele embarrassingly was forced to say to reporters almost immediately afterward that he deeply apologized for saying any of that about Rush and that he (Steele) was “maybe a little bit inarticulate” on the subject.
I think that was the point when the whole charade finally came to an end for Michael Steele, whether he knows it or not.
Once the smoke had cleared, it seemed that conservative Republicans were in absolute lockstep behind Limbaugh and diametrically opposed to their own Party chairman. In fact, Mike Allen and Andy Barr, on the Politco website, recently carried a comment that said Republican Party leaders, just one month after Steele’s election, already are worried that the GOP "has made a costly mistake in electing Steele as party chair."
Two ships passing in the night, one named Obama, still needing work in providing services and support to the black members of its crew, but seemingly negotiating very well the stormy political seas. The other, the USS Steele, apparently without a crew of any kind, running rapidly toward the nearest political iceberg.
I never thought I’d ever agree with anything of a political nature that Rush Limbaugh would ever say, but last week there was one thing he said that I happened to agree with: “Michael Steele, why are you running the Republican party?”
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