20
Jul
Author: Dylan Ris | Category:
Republicans
Embattled GOP chairman Michael Steele has spent most of his brief tenure driving people away from the Republican Party. Whether it’s losing once solidly conservative congressional districts or blaming the recession on gay people, Chairman Steele has been about as welcoming a presence as Newt Gingrich in a union hall.
Well now it’s time to win the people back. And Steele, apparently drawing ethnicities out of a hat, has decided to begin with African-Americans. Now for those skeptics who weren’t impressed by Steele’s effort to kindle an “off-the-hook… hip hop” GOP earlier this year, the chairman promises this time will be different.
Because this time, he’s bringing Southern slang and soul food…
Asked what efforts he’s undertaking to include minorities in the Republican Party, Michael Steele, the party’s new chairman, replies, “My plan is to say, ‘Y’all come, because a lot of you are already here.’” He adds laughing, “I got the fried chicken and potato salad, OK.”
While we applaud Steele’s presumed intent — to bring new faces into American politics — we question his methods of doing so. When your party hasn’t sent a single African-American to either house of Congress since J.C. Watts retired, it’s hard to expect minority voters to disregard this fact simply because they were offered a plate of chicken.
But we don’t think Steele has it all wrong. The truth is that by offering fried chicken and potato salad, he will draw a certain type of voter who, as Steele himself puts it, is “already here.” The problem is that this voter isn’t an African-American. It’s Mike Huckabee.
19
May
Author: Dylan Ris | Category:
Gay Rights,
Republicans
After a year of economists blathering that wage disparities, cheap foreign labor, and a worldwide recession were to blame for the demise of America’s small businesses, RNC Chairman Michael Steele has finally cut through all the intellectual elitism and identified the real culprit:
Gay marriage.
Republicans can reach a broader base by recasting gay marriage as an issue that could dent pocketbooks as small businesses spend more on health care and other benefits, GOP Chairman Michael Steele said Saturday…
“Now all of a sudden I’ve got someone who wasn’t a spouse before, that I had no responsibility for, who is now getting claimed as a spouse that I now have financial responsibility for,” Steele told Republicans at the state convention in traditionally conservative Georgia. “So how do I pay for that? Who pays for that? You just cost me money.”
You’ve gotta hand it to Steele. Nothing says big tent party quite like “you just cost me money.”
Politics Daily’s Tommy Christopher was all over this story when it broke, and points out that gay marriages wouldn’t be the only ones that “just cost Steele money.” By the chairman’s logic, straight marriages already do!
You see, Steele appears to be referring to the healthcare costs that businesses are obligated to subsidize for their employees under our current system. A pro-business solution to this problem would be eliminating all employer burdens in the healthcare system and switch to single-payer care as many of our western allies have already done.
Unfortunately single-payer health care seems like a pipe dream at this stage, due to vociferous opposition by interest groups like the Swift Boat Veterans for Moneyed Hospital CEOs and some guy named Michael Steele, who had this to say while running for U.S. Senate in 2006:
Who pays for universal health insurance? Who pays for socialized medicine? I don’t need government dictating to me when I go to the doctor, which doctor I go to, how much is going to be paid for my health care. That’s not the America I want to live in.
No, the America that this 2006 Senate candidate wants to live in is one where small businesses are obligated to subsidize healthcare costs for their employees and their spouses. Sounds like he has some issues to work out with the guy who addressed the Georgia Republicans on Saturday.
Ever since David Souter announced his resignation, news reporters have been racing across Washington, trying to figure out whom President Obama will nominate to fill a soon-to-be-vacant Supreme Court seat.
Apparently they should hang out at more NRA meetings. Or at least ones where RNC Chairman Michael Steele is the guest speaker…
Addressing the National Rifle Association, Steele warned that “liberal Democrats could control every lever of every branch of government” if Obama picks a “young, activist, left-wing justice…
“Sounds like instead of another Judge Roberts, the President is looking to put Doctor Phil on the Court.”
In our judgment, Steele is overestimating Obama’s affinity for Dr. Phil. While it’s true that both the president and the TV psychologist have ridden Oprah’s coattails to considerable fame and power, Obama has actually made reference to Dr. Phil in the past– and it wasn’t exactly to nominate him to the Supreme Court.
We refer to Obama’s scolding of then-opponent John McCain last July, when McCain henchman and recesssion architect Phil Gramm announced that the nation was experiencing a “mental recession” and that America had become “a nation of whiners.”
Obama’s retort to McCain? “Well, you know, America already has one Dr. Phil. We don’t need another one when it comes to the economy.”
If Obama doesn’t think the economy needs a Dr. Phil, we can’t imagine he’d think the Supreme Court does. Anyway, we’re surprised Michael Steele, as Republican-in-chief, hadn’t heard this remark. Now why could that be?
Oh that’s right! He was jockeying to be McCain’s running mate at the time.
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