Well, I was wrong.

More like the creation of the Anti-Obama. An interesting move (if not exactly unforeseen).

I can't say that I know much about Mr. Steele. I have also seen him on Real Time and he seems to just stick to the Republican Talking points.

It's all about his ideas. They need to start fostering new and younger ideas (back off the tax cuts!) or else these will be difficult years for them.

Yeah, Dawson's a moron. I saw him on television a few weeks back blaming the state of the current economy on the Clinton administration.

Bizzar-Obama?

Met him two years ago during his run for Senate.

He's a great man with a lot of great ideas. I'm very happy to see my party at least attempt to begin to change from its recent ways. Personally, I'm quite happy with this back and forth between the moderates and the crazies. Steele isn't a crazy like Dawson or Mike Duncan.

Steele and I had a conversation when we met. I told him about my problem as a social liberal in the party. I told him how fed up I was about the crazy partisanship and lies of *certain* Republican pols. He told me to stick through it because he believed that eventually with time the Republican Party would grow back to a Big Tent.

I believe Steele's election will help start the movement to allow opposition within the party.

This is actually a big deal for me because I hated switching my party affiliation from R to I last election. I refused to vote for McCain because of his crazy rhetoric and his pick of Sarah Palin. I'm starting to have some sort of hope that maybe, just maybe, the saner minds of the Republican Party will shine brighter than the cynic, destructive ones of years past.

Huzzah.

I can't say much because I don't really know the guy. But if this begins the purging of the social-conservatives and anti-intellctuals and gets the Republican party back to the party of where it stays the fuck out of people's personal lives. More power to him.

http://www.pamshouseblend.com/showDi...B?diaryId=9281

Steele is an asshole.

Well there's no doubt that Steele is an oreo.

These were my exact words when I came across footage of him being nominated while channel-surfing.

My mom laughed nervously and made a comment about the RNC "jumping on the bandwagon".

God, I'm glad that she and my stepdad voted for Obama.

It's a real testament to the intelligence level of the republican base that they are so happy to embrace such an utterly, gob-smackingly shameless act of me-tooism by the RNC.

...or it simply points to a cheerleading political mentality of winning at any cost regardless of how.

I'm stunned the RNC have been so completely shameless with this (tho I probably really shouldn't be), Steele must have thought all his christmas's had come at once when Obama got elected.

Is there anyone here - anyone, repuiblicans included - who think this would have happened organically had there not been a black Democrat elected to the White House?

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0109/18233.html

Jesus.

As I said, a cheerleading political mentality of winning at any cost regardless of how, with no real sense of standing for anything - except victory and giving it the other side.

Oh well. Lets see how those clowns do in 2010.

Haha.

"This is the dawn of a new party....so let's keep doing the same shit we've always done!"

"Yaaaaay!"

So when the Democrats elect a black candidate it's progress. When the Republicans elect a black candidate it's shameless. Gotcha.

Georgetown Law Grad, corporate securities attorney for 7 years, founder of his own business and legal consulting firm, County Republican Party Chair, Maryland State Republican Party Chair, Lt. Governor of Maryland, 2006 Senate Candidate, Chairman of GOPAC, partner at one of the most prestigious international law firms, and one of the most respected spokesmen for the Republican Party over the last several years. Clearly the man is unqualified to run the RNC. He was only elected because he is black.

He's still an asshole.

Just because he's qualified, that doesn't mean he's not being used.

I had the same line thrown at me by Republicans/Conservatives/Neo-conservatives et al right after the election, so it kinda feels good to give something back.

No, Steele's been around. He's been on Maher, of all places, and he gives as good as he gets. I still think he's a douchebag, but make no mistake - he was eminently qualified to head the RNC. Maybe his race is a bonus perception-wise for them, but it wasn't the only reason, or the biggest one. As far as press relationships go, he's basically another Howard Dean.

I have no way to contest that. So, point conceded.

Used by whom? Steele chose to run. He wanted this seat. He campaigned for it, participated in debates, and ultimately prevailed. Where was the using? It was a tight election that had him down on two of the six ballots before he finally won. He got less than 29% on the first ballot. It's not like there was a conspiracy to place this guy in his seat. He won it fair and square after six tight ballots. And is Obama being used by the Democrats?

I'm actually interested to know if Obama's race was a net positive, net negative, or neutral factor in his win. You have the open racists and the closet racists on one side and the increased black turnout and the people who wanted to be a part of making history on the other. I'm guessing/hoping that the overwhelming majority of voters made their choice based on policy, vision, and merit. I think that's what happened in November with Obama and last week with Steele.

The problem I have with Steele is that he said the GOP's way forward is to fix the messaging and marketing of the party platform.

While I agree that the GOP has not done a good job explaining and selling its principles to the voters, the bigger problem lies in not living the principles they espouse. Limited government? Fiscal responsibility? Open and ethical government? Not from the last few GOP majorities. And certainly not from the Bush Administration. The GOP sold its bill of goods to the voters for the better part of the last decade. What the voters paid for is not what they got. That's the first problem they need to address.

I'd like to find an article or a poll or something quantifying that too, to be honest. If you come across anything definitely toss a PM my way, and I'll do vice-versa.

Electoral-vote.com has a pretty neat analysis of the "Bradley Effect". Scroll down a bit -- that's from November 6th.

I think this is one of the major problems of the party that needs to be fixed. We should not have an inherent fear or disgust for the government, but we should have a duty to slightly distrust the power of the government. I believe it should be a duty for all Americans, regardless of who is in power.

This leads into the other problem, which is my major beef with the party. The recent leaders of the party (Bush and Cheney) had an immense disgust for government with certain issues, but then asked the American people to trust them with other issues to the point of disagreement = unpatriotic. It's not okay for our government to regulate industry, but it is okay to wiretap citizenry, declare which love is more important than others, and challenge a woman's right to her own body?

I think its healthy to feel distrust toward the government. I find putting much faith in our leaders can be a very dangerous thing (especially with the uber love Obama still gets). However, there's a major difference between not letting government do its job because you hate it (Katrina) and keeping an eye on our leaders when they do something you disagree with.

An interesting read from Ta-Nehisi Coates on Steele's appointment.

How long has he been in office?

It's starting already. Sites like Daily Kos and Huffington Post along with the likes of Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann are bowing to Obama and the Democrats' economic stimulus plan. They do not challenge anything other than the Republican tax cuts in the bill when there is plenty of wasteful spending that is borderline special interest money. http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/...ies/index.html

I hate to defend the likes of Limbaugh and Hannity (as they stuck their head in the sand for Bush) but they made some serious valid complaints regarding much of the stimulus spending including the contraceptive, std, and anti-smoking funds.

I'm not a total cut spending Republican, but how about we stop hiding spending programs in so-called stimulus packages and start putting those programs in real bills? It comes off as politically expedient and sneaky. The only spending that should be in this bill is a massive spending in infrastructure (1 trillion and up) and green jobs.

The problem is that while the republicans have a point, they prefer to take cheap shots on the bill in public rather than actually discussing the relative merits of each individual item. Some of the things in that list (smoking cessation, STD prevention, alcohol abuse prevention) are directed at real public health issues that don't cost much and would have long lasting medical and economical effects (when you factor in the amount of money spent on treatment rather than prevention). But it's much easier to feign outrage at free condoms than explaining why lowering the marginal tax rates would be beneficial.

Admittedly the democrats aren't doing themselves any favors by packing the bill with items that are only peripherally related to the stimulus (and as you point out, the democratic mouthpieces don't add anything substantive to the debate), but the republicans are being incredibly obstructionist on the issue.

I'm a little shocked how so little of the bill is actually devoted to doing just that, and also dismayed that the republicans just shot down a senate amendment geared towards exactly that goal.

You got your facts wrong in the first paragraph. Obama's took some hits from the left. Maybe they're not being as loud as the right, but then again, the echo chamber kinda tunes out the far left. To be fair he's still on honeymoon with the left, but also, the fact is Obama's been very responsive. They made a stink early on, the bill got amended quickly.

Also, there are valid reasons to include some of what the right-wing charitably calls left-wing special interest spending. Some of it is directly stimulative, some of it isn't directly stimulative, but will help any long-term stimulus later on take root. For example, we need to start spending money on education right now. It may not be an instant job-generating machine, but as far as investments go, its one of the safest, and since the effects are long term, the sooner they get enacted, the better.

But to many of the right, public education is just another special interest. Its hard to argue with people who are so ideologically opposed to any spending (not saying you are Muha, but you're getting some of your info from many who do think that.)

Take for example the new RNC chief, Michael Steele who just recently said that "Not in the history of mankind has the government ever created a job."

Or Sen Kit Bond (R-MO) who said that the 5.5 billion in mass transit infrastructure spending is "not stimulative." Seriously, fuck both of these guys.

The above quotes do not make for an intelligent discussion over the merits of the stimulus bill. So the goal, as I see it, is for Republicans to shit on the bill as much as they can, so that it gets unpopular and becomes a political liability for Obama. Who cares if it might actually work or not? Who cares if the long-term stuff won't work unless we include some of this early spending at the beginning as groundwork? Not the Republicans.

Your narrow focus on infrastructure and green jobs, while ideologically pure, doesn't take into account how big the problem is. In other times, some of this stuff would sound suspect. But given how soft the economy is in all sectors, I'm not as upset about certain bits in the bill. Now if every single bill looks like this, then we've got a real problem.