Chuck's thoughts on Steele's victory
Posted: Friday, January 30, 2009 5:54 PM by Mark Murray
Filed Under: Republicans
From NBC's Chuck Todd
The GOP averted a P.R. disaster after the race came down to Steele and Dawson. It was a pretty obvious choice: Pick the African American or the guy who had to quit an all-white country club. Had Dawson not had that negative mark on his resume, he would have won because he was a party insider. (Will this lead to him and other southern Republican politicians to end these country club restrictions? It's very retro in this day...)
As for Steele, he's got a lot of work to do. The big knock on him was that he wasn't an RNC insider and he's not the best organizer. His Senate campaign in 2006 was a lot of hot air, but he was simply crushed and he ran as a moderate at the time. Get used to a lot of sentences that end in "baby," Steele is fond of the word when he wants to showboat a tad in speeches. He certainly will be a better TV book than Duncan or Dawson would have been. And that does matter.
But Steele will be judged on mechanics more than optics. The issue for the GOP isn't finding a new face; it's finding a new political identity and catching up with the Democrats on the technological front. Steele may become a good spokesperson for the party -- the bar's kinda low right now as it stands. But can he raise the real money and put in place the grassroots tools necessary to make the party competitive?
By the way, while Steele's an outsider to the RNC, he's not exactly a Washington outsider. He was born and raised in the DC area and has hob-nobbed plenty with the powers that be in the GOP. So it won't be the culture shock to the GOP leadership that, for instance, an Anuzis or Dawson election would have been since neither were DC guys.
Steele and the party of Lincoln
Posted: Friday, January 30, 2009 4:52 PM by Domenico Montanaro
Filed Under: Republicans
From NBC's Mark Murray
Earlier this month, the candidates for RNC chairman -- every single one of them -- cited Ronald Reagan as their favorite Republican president.
Today, with Michael Steele becoming the party's first African-American chairman, they turned to Abraham Lincoln.
After the fourth round of voting, Ken Blackwell -- who is also black -- dropped out and referred to Lincoln before endorsing Steele. "We must be a party that makes good on the promise of Lincoln," he said.
Then Steele mentioned Lincoln at a press conference after his victory. "It is just one more bold step the party of Lincoln has taken," he said.
When the race turned into a contest between Steele and South Carolina party chair Katon Dawson -- who once belonged to a whites-only country club -- the choice for some RNC members became obvious, especially after Barack Obama made history last week by becoming the nation's first African-American president.
Besides race, picking Steele over Dawson was a signal that Republicans wanted to expand their reach beyond the South -- as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell urged his party yesterday.
"It is time to get to work," Steele said. "We've got a party to build." |
