“Somebody needs to shake up the ossified GOP superstructure. I don’t know if Steele is the one, but I don’t want Mitt Romney or Ed Gillespie or one of hte Bushies selecting the Chairman and trying to rig the process in 2012. they have made a complete mess of the RNC since 2000 and even before.”
IMHO, Steele is not ‘the one.’ There is no ‘the one.’ What will shake up the ‘ossified GOP superstructure’ as you aptly phrase it, will be the decentralized power and influence of the Tea Party movement itself. It is raising money for Conservatives all over this nation - like Tea Party Nation, Tea Party Express and Jim DeMint are successfully doing and bypassing the idiots in the NRSC and the NRCC when they support people Scozzafava, et al, and Crist (that little traitor).
When the RNC, NRSC and NRCC no longer have the ability to influence the party’s candidates in key races - we will successfully displace the ossified structure we all destest.
We must press on to do so and it will only be a bonus if the NRC chairman or anyone else in those party positions would at some point (perhaps replaced by Tea Partiers) help us out in the battle for this nation.
“IMHO, Steele is not ‘the one.’ There is no ‘the one.’”
I agree with that. Palin’s point with regard to Steele seemed to me to be that he was not hostile to the tea party and was reaching out to them, which is the first step in transforming the GOP INTO the Tea Party. It had the earmarks of a Tea Party when Reagan was in power but became an ossified country club structure once the Bushies took it over. Palin wants to bring it back to its Reaganite roots.
Steele was not perfect but he was not part of the Establishment, and the GOP Establishment loathed him. The old adage, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” may have some applicability here.
In the long term, Steele should be replaced. But for the short term, he is better than someone whom Mittens or Jeb Bush would install.