Steeling the show

Michael Steele has long been in the business of telling black voters that Democrats took their votes for granted.

Now this long-time champion of bringing blacks into the Republican Party is the first black Republican National Committee Chairman. He can add that to his long list of firsts which already included being the first black  person to serve in a state-wide office in Maryland and the first black person elected chairman of any state Republican Party.

Media coverage of this event has been somewhat under whelming. Perhaps after the election of Barack Obama journalists have run out of synonyms for “historic.”
Yet if the media is desperate enough for Republican leaders with a reportable national voice that they will cover a non-controversy between Obama and Rush Limbaugh, they ought to have devoted a little more attention to the man who is now the actual head of the GOP. 

Steele feels Republicans have written off a lot of voters, and his supporters hope his charisma will help the GOP make inroads with some of them. It is worth noting Steele’s roots in a deep blue state. The GOP insiders who elected him might indeed be wary of being branded a regional party.

If Republicans wanted to pick a black chairmen from a valuable state, they could have chosen the more doctrinaire Ken Blackwell, former Ohio secretary of state. With moderate stances on affirmative action and gun control Steele is more than a hodgepodge of Republican position papers. He is also personally opposed to the death penalty.

Even excluding 2008, blacks voters have swung for Democratic presidential candidates by nearly 90 percent. This is astounding. There are plenty of socially conservative black people, and inner-city minorities have been some of the biggest fighters for school vouchers. Policy differences don’t explain the cold shoulder black voters show the GOP.

Many Republicans seem to show little sensitivity to black people simply because they feel they are unattainable. The man who came in second place behind Steele was a South Carolina party leader who oversaw the election of the first black member of the Republican National Committee from the south. That same party leader didn’t even notice his country club was whites-only.

That can’t happen anymore.

Steele may have a hard time with black voters during Obama’s presidency, but how can he do with independents? So far congressional Republicans seem to be taking a lot of their cues from conservative agitators like Limbaugh and Michelle Malkin. More credible critics of the stimulus, such as former Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers Greg Mankiw, are having conspicuously little influence on Republican strategy. 

Steele didn’t show himself to be a master of policy when he ran for one of Maryland’s Senate seats, but he will certainly have to deal with the fallout over the Republican stimulus strategy.

The latest Gallup poll revealed 67 percent of Americans approve of how Obama handled the stimulus. 58 percent disapprove of how Republicans did.

When Steele became Chairman of the Republican National Committee, he proclaimed: “It’s time for something completely different.” We will see what he meant soon enough.