Posted on 01/19/2007 10:06:09 AM PST by NormsRevenge
For all the media discussion, blogging boom, and enthusiasm for Michael Steele as Republican National Chairman among RNC members, no one in the Bush White House ever offered or even suggested the party post to the former Maryland lieutenant governor and 2006 U.S. Senate nominee.
That’s what Steele himself told me this morning, as he arrived at the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting at the Grand Hyatt in Washington, D.C.
“No, we never had any offer,” said Steele, who was the nation’s highest-elected black Republican while serving in Maryland’s second-highest office from 2002-06. “The [talk of me as a possible national chairman] was purely a grassroots movement. Right after the election [in which Steele lost a Senate race to Democrat Ben Cardin], several members of the RNC approached me and thought it would be a good idea if I became chairman. And then the bloggers got into it. It was a grassroots movement, and it even caught me by surprise.”
But, no, he emphasized, “we never had an offer” from anyone in the Bush White House.
Recalling his days as state GOP chairman of the Free State and a member of the RNC, Steele said his presence at the latest meeting of the party’s ruling body was “coming back home for me. These folks are like family.” He also expressed gratitude to his many friends on the RNC who backed his race to become the fourth black senator since Reconstruction.
Steele said that he and the President talked after his defeat in November, that Mr. Bush “expressed his confidence in me.” But Steele also made it clear that for all the rumors that he may wind up in a Bush Cabinet or some other high-level administration post, “I have not talked to anyone about a position.”
Although he lost the Senate race and holds no office, attorney-businessman Steele is being courted by several leading Republican presidential hopefuls in ’08. “I have talked to Rudy Giuliani,” he said, “and I’m going to talk to John McCain’s people this afternoon, and later to [former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt] Romney’s people. I like them all, actually, because they helped me in my campaign last year.” Like many conservatives, Steele voiced severe doubts about McCain’s campaign-finance legislation that limited the amount and shape of money in national campaigns and in the national Republican Party.
“I’m not a big fan of that,” Steele told me, “Money is property, and I think I should do with it as I wish. Look, in Virginia, for example, you can give any amount of money to a candidate for [state] office just so long as you report it. And with the Internet, you can have it online the next day. That should be the model for the nation.”
But in stating his views on campaign finance, Steele made it clear he was not ruling out backing McCain on that issue alone and felt that, when the Supreme Court revisits the constitutionality of the campaign finance legislation, the issue “may be worked out favorably. That’s why we have the system we do.”
Although it is now confirmed that Steele was never actually considered by the White House for RNC chairman, that hasn’t stopped members of the national committee from talking him up favorably as their heartthrob for party chieftain. Over dinner last night at Washington’s Equinox Restaurant, one RNC Member told me privately: “Look, I’m not going to go up against the White House on their choice for national chairman. But I could have been really enthusiastic about Michael Steele.”
Bush made a mistake by not tapping Steele. It would have appeased alot of pissed off Republicans. Instead he went and pissed us off more by naming Mel.
time will tell on that....
Stupidity makes me angry - and not helping the career of someone with talent reeks of complete idiocy.
Regards, Ivan
I am angry about Steele and Ehrlich losing in Maryland. Maryland made a big mistake!
Steele would have been an excellent choice. Martinez is my Senator and boy am I already disappointed in his sorry amnesty butt.
Steele needs to be elected to SOMETHING. Senate, President, Congress, whatever!
O'Malley's getting ready to throw some more money at "education". Brace yourself!
I agree with you. If not RNC chair, surely he can be in another position. I expect good things will come to (and of) this man.
Mel Martinez is a jerk. But he managed to get himself elected, and for whatever reason Steele did not.
It was very disappointing. But if blacks cannot be persuaded to help elect one of their own, It's hard to know what to do about it.
That's nice, but it's just talk. There aren't too many things out there with a shorter shelf-life than a defeated candidate. It's clear this WH doesn't have any interest in Mr. Steele. He'd be better off fending for himself, whether that's in private business or seeking backing elsewhere for elective office.
BTW, it's probably a plus that he's not tapped (trapped?) for serving in the Cabinet. That's likely a dead-end job at this point, treading water for another 18 months in an outgoing Administration that is facing a hostile Congress. Not enough time to get much of anything positive done for a new Cabinet officer who has ambitions for elective office.
The problem is, blacks do nothing but help their own, as long as that person is a democrat.
Steele will do just fine and I hope he does run again for something, and I agree , taking a short term administration appointment to anything less than a position as a replacement for Cheney, were such a condition to arise, would be a dead end proposition.
The simple fact is Steele is a conservative, and Bush isn't. I think Steel would have been an excellent choice, a natural. Still, he and Bush aren't on the same page.
There could be a certain amount of payback involved in this as well.
Steele worked to distance himself from the prez and some of his policies during the campaign.
I like M Steele very much as a candidate in 08 for US Prez
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