Michael Steele is proved powerless by GOP

Did you guys really think he had any power? Well it seems this house negro was given a talking to by the real people in power and they said effectively ‘we run this, not you’. More below:

via Newser

Congressional GOP leaders met with RNC chairman Michael Steele late last month to assert their authority when it comes to policymaking, and while those involved said the get-together in House Minority Leader John Boehner’s office was routine, Politico’s sources described it as heated. Of particular concern was Steele’s “health care bill of rights,” an attack on Democratic health care reform apparently issued without consultation.

Steele backers, of course, say Republican legislators were in on the RNC offensive, and that it was a good idea: “I would defy anyone that it wasn’t politically smart,” one says. But others say the acrimonious meeting was evidence of the GOP’s continued uneasiness with Steele and his flamboyant ways. They’d like him to stick to fundraising and helping Republicans get elected. “He’s on a short leash here,” an aide says.

—Harry Kimball

Source: Politico

Steele: God Help White Men Appearing Before A Sotomayor Court

via HuffPost

RNC Chairman Michael Steele isn’t shying away from highlighting race as a signifying issue of the Sonia Sotomayor Supreme Court nomination hearings.

In an interview with CNN’s Campbell Brown on Tuesday, the Republican Party leader insisted that white males would not be granted even-handed jurisprudence under a Court with Obama’s nominee.

“God help you if you’re a white male,” said Steele. “If you’re seeking justice, this may not be the bench you want to go before.”

The remarks come at a time when Republican officials have attempted to remove any semblance of racial politics from their opposition to Sotomayor’s nomination. Earlier on Tuesday, Sen. Mel Martinez, a Hispanic Republican from Florida, defended Sotomayor’s now-infamous “wise Latina” remarks as sensible.

[video] Michael Steele Responds to Obama Ribbing: ‘Good Love Between Two Brothers’

Let me draw a correlation, being on the opposing team in Washington against Pres. Obama is probably how the players on the Atlanta Hawks feel about Lebron James. It’s hard not to admire the competition. Michael Steele is obviously enamored with the competition and finds privilege that he is even mentioned in the same sentence with the President, but let’s be for real he isn’t really bringing his A-Game to the court with him he’s just glad to be in the same stadium. I wouldn’t be surprised if he pulled an Arlen Specter once the conservatives are through beating him into submission. 

[video] Colbert Challenges Michael Steele to Rap Battle

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Joe The Plumber Blasts Michael Steele’s “Hip Hop” Ambitions

via TPMDC

Michael Steele now has another high-profile Republican publicly bashing him: Samuel “Joe The Plumber” Wurzelbacher.

At a meeting of conservative activists in Milwaukee, Mr. The Plumber had some tough words for the RNC chairman: “Unfortunately we have a chairman up there who wants to redefine conservatism; he wants to make it hip hop, put it in a new package and sell it.”

“You can’t sell principles; either you have them or you don’t,” he added, to applause from the audience of 800 people.

Joe The Plumber has really embraced his self-proclaimed role as the voice of the right-wing working-class voter — quite a different audience from Steele’s desire to expand the GOP into minority communities. And Joe’s pronouncement that conservative principles can’t be repackaged and sold — you either have them or you don’t — is strikingly similar to Rush Limbaugh’s line from CPAC that conservatism is unchanging and permanent, solidifying a definite line of anti-Steele thought.

[video] Michael Steele Gets Sonned By Limbaugh, Issues Apology

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via Politico

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele says he has reached out to Rush Limbaugh to tell him he meant no offense when he referred to the popular conservative radio host as an “entertainer” whose show can be “incendiary.”

“My intent was not to go after Rush – I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh,” Steele said in a telephone interview. “I was maybe a little bit inarticulate. … There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership.”

The dust-up comes at a time when top Democrats are trying to make Limbaugh the face of the Republican Party, in part by using ads funded by labor. Americans United for Change sent a fund-raising e-mail Monday that begins: “The Republican Party has turned into the Rush Limbaugh Party.”

Steele told CNN host D.L. Hughley in an interview aired Saturday night: “Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer. Rush Limbaugh — his whole thing is entertainment. He has this incendiary — yes, it’s ugly.”

Obama vows to lead US from dire ‘day of reckoning’

via My Way

WASHINGTON (AP) – President Barack Obama promised a nation shuddering in economic crisis Tuesday night that he would lead it from a dire “day of reckoning” to a brighter future, summoning politicians and public alike to shoulder responsibility for hard choices and shared sacrifice. “The time to take charge of our future is here,” Obama declared, delivering his first address to a joint session of Congress.

Offering words of reassurance to an anxious nation, he declared, “Tonight I want every American to know this: We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.”

“We are a nation that has seen promise and peril,” he said. “Now we must be that nation again.”

Cheered robustly as he entered the House chamber, Obama grinned, shook hands and kissed lawmakers and stopped for a lengthy embrace with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, back on the bench only this week after surgery for pancreatic cancer.

To deal with the current crisis, deepening each day, the president said more money will be needed to rescue troubled banks beyond the $700 billion already committed last year. He said he knows that bailout billions for banks are unpopular – “I promise you, I get it,” he said – but he also insisted that was the only way to get credit moving again to households and businesses, the lifeblood of the American economy.

Along with aid for banks, he also called on Congress to move quickly on legislation to overhaul outdated regulations on the nation’s financial markets.

“I ask this Congress to join me in doing whatever proves necessary,” Obama said. “Because we cannot consign our nation to an open-ended recession.”

Thinking longer-term, Obama said in a speech lacking many specifics and devoid of initiatives that both political parties must give up favored programs while uniting behind his campaign promises to build better schools, expand health care coverage and move the nation to “greener” fuel use.

Just five weeks after his inauguration, Obama addressed an ebullient Democratic congressional majority and an embattled but reinvigorated GOP minority as well as millions of anxious viewers. Despite the nation’s economic worries and the lack of support for his plans from all but a few Republican lawmakers, Obama enjoys strong approval ratings across the nation.

Louisiana’s young, charismatic governor, Bobby Jindal, delivering the televised GOP response, exhorted fellow Republicans to be Obama’s “strongest partners” when they agree with him. But he signaled that won’t happen much, calling Democrats in Congress “irresponsible” for passing the $787 billion stimulus package that Republicans have criticized as excessive and wasteful.

GOP head Michael Steele promises PR blitz in ‘hip-hop settings’ and for ‘one-armed midgets’

via Daily News

WASHINGTON — New GOP party chief Michael Steele is promising an “off the hook” public relations blitz into “urban-suburban hip-hop settings” in hopes of wooing Latinos and African-Americans.

Steele, the first African-American Republican boss, is searching for Americans of all stripes to join his Grand Old Party. “We need to uptick our image with everyone, including one-armed midgets,” he joked.

Steele told the Washington Times that he aimed to revive the party by breaking out of the South and Southwest and to “reach beyond our comfort” zone to expand in Democratic strongholds like the Northeast and Midwest.

“We missed the mark in the past, which is why we are in the crapper now,” he said. “We had the White House, the Senate and the House and were not building a farm team over the last years.

He said he’s planning a massive advertising outreach online, on TV and on the radio that will “surprise everyone.”

“We need messengers to really capture that region – young, Hispanic, black, a cross section ,” he explained. “We want to convey that the modern-day GOP looks like the conservative party that stands on principles. But we want to apply them to urban-suburban hip-hop settings.”

Last week at a GOP meeting in Virginia, Steele said “As a black, Roman Catholic conservative from Washington D.C. and Maryland, I know how to lose elections.” But now, Steele said, “I’m in the business of winning elections.”

Former La. Klansman David Duke Says New RNC Chairman ‘Black Racist’

via WDSU

NEW ORLEANS — Former Klansman David Duke, who ran for governor of Louisiana, is blasting the newly appointed chairman of the Republican Party as a “black racist.”

In a lengthy process on Friday, GOP leaders voted former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele into the party’s leadership post.

Steele is the first African-American to hold that position.

Duke described those who supported the move as “traitorous,” and cited Steele’s positions on gun control, affirmative action and the death penalty in a sometimes rambling condemnation posted on his personal Web site.

“I think the insanity of nominating ‘Mr. Amnesty’ John McCain and now this black racist will lead to insurgency in the Republican ranks,” Duke said.

He further referred to Steele as “Obama Jr.” and a “servile dog of Israel.”

While he has been largely off the mainstream political radar for years and no longer lives in Louisiana, Duke is still politically active, speaking largely to a fractional segment of the spectrum.

He said he was interviewed this weekend by the Washington Post, though he was not mentioned in any published items through the weekend.

Micheal Steele Blogs to Hip Hop on Global Grind

via Global Grind

Washington is currently locked in a debate over a federal government “stimulus” package but millions of Americans in poverty remain locked out of that debate. If we are to stimulate our economy for real growth, we must empower more Americans to move up the economic ladder. We won’t be healthy as a nation until we do. Republicans have in the past been accused of caring more about the statistics that define the poor than the reforms necessary to lift the poor out of poverty. However, if we are to be true to the foundational principles of the Party of Lincoln–free enterprise, individual liberties and access to equal opportunities–then we know that any efforts to improve our economy must include a pathway of empowerment and opportunity for the poor.

Some have faith in government in order to create such a pathway; Republicans have faith in people. Thus, a truly effective stimulus package would rely less on government solutions and more on individual solutions that encourage enterprise, job training and educational opportunities for those seeking to free themselves from the shackles of poverty. HUD Secretary Jack Kemp once noted, “the purpose of a great party is not to defeat the other party but to provide superior ideas, principled leadership and a compelling cause.” The Republican Party now has an obligation to provide solutions and ideas that demonstrate our capacity to lead on behalf of the poor of America and to provide them a pathway to legacy wealth creation. No cause can be more compelling than that!

-Michael Steele

Dems Start Petition Against Limbaugh

via CNN

(CNN) – In a bid to capitalize on Rush Limbaugh’s recent comment that he hopes President Obama “fails,” national Democrats launched a petition drive Wednesday taking direct aim at the conservative radio host. “Jobs, health care, our place in the world — the stakes for our nation are high and every American needs President Obama to succeed,” says the petition, sponsored by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “Stand strong against Rush Limbaugh’s Attacks — sign our petition, telling Rush what you think of his attacks on President Obama.”

President Obama Attempts to Shut Down Limbaugh, Puts Republicans Under the Deodarant

via NY Post

WASHINGTON — President Obama warned Republicans on Capitol Hill today that they need to quit listening to radio king Rush Limbaugh if they want to get along with Democrats and the new administration.

“You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done,” he told top GOP leaders, whom he had invited to the White House to discuss his nearly $1 trillion stimulus package.

One White House official confirmed the comment but said he was simply trying to make a larger point about bipartisan efforts.

“There are big things that unify Republicans and Democrats,” the official said. “We shouldn’t let partisan politics derail what are very important things that need to get done.”

That wasn’t Obama’s only jab at Republicans today.

In an exchange with Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) about the proposal, the president shot back: “I won,” according to aides briefed on the meeting.

“I will trump you on that.”

Not that Obama was gloating. He was just explaining that he aims to get his way on stimulus package and all other legislation, sources said, noting his unrivaled one-party control of both congressional chambers.

“We are experiencing an unprecedented economic crisis that has to be dealt with and dealt with rapidly,” Obama said during the meeting.

GOP Warned to Embrace Technology or Face ‘Suicide’

via CNN

(CNN) — When Michigan GOP Chairman Saul Anuzis decided to throw his hat in the ring to head the Republican Party, he announced his intentions on an unlikely forum: Twitter.

Not too long ago, the social networking Web site most popular among teenagers and 20-somethings was probably the last place you would expect to find a candidate for the Republican National Committee chairmanship.

But then Barack Obama’s presidential campaign appeared to revolutionize the way technology could be integrated into every facet of a campaign — from fundraising to media outreach to voter mobilization.

The result was a Democratic Party that outpaced its rival in nearly every measure — in the process revealing how detrimental the GOP’s apparent lack of tech fluency proved to be on Election Day.

The Republican Party is playing catch-up, hoping to compete with Democrats in the next two pivotal election cycles.