Free Republic

The Republican Party has not given African Americans a good reason to vote for the party, Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele said Tuesday night. "You really don't have a reason to, to be honest -- we haven't done a very good job of really giving you one. True? True," Steele said at DePaul University, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. Steele, the first African-American chairman for the RNC, said the GOP has lost its historical link to African Americans. "This party was co-founded by blacks, among them Frederick Douglass," he said. "The Republican Party had a hand in forming the NAACP,...

Critics of Michael Steele's tenure as RNC chairman are motivated by racism, Steele suggested in an interview published today. Speaking to the Washingtonian Magazine (no online version), Steele wondered why his DNC counterpart doesn't get the same criticism he does. "I don’t see stories about the internal operations of the DNC that I see about this operation," Steele said. "Why? Is it because Michael Steele is the chairman, or is it because a black man is chairman?” The RNC has experienced significant staff turnover since Steele became chairman, especially in the communcations shop. That has prompted speculation about Steele's management...