Betty Winston Bayé Sees The GOP's Steele As A Token, Maybe; Dilemma, Definitely.
The GOP's Steele: token, maybe; dilemma, definitely
By Betty Winston Bayé
What to do with the black guy?
That's a real dilemma for the Republican Party.
No. It's not Barack Obama, whose presidency the GOP desperately wants to see fail. It's that that other black guy, Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee. It's all over the media that a growing number of Republicans — but, most troubling, the VIP Republicans, the big financial contributors — wants Steele out, and the sooner the better.
At issue is Steele's and his staffers' reported lavish spending of contributed dollars on private jets, limousines, high-priced tickets to various and sundry events and, most recently, an outing to Voyeur, a sex-themed nightclub in Los Angeles. The $2,000 tab at the bondage club, on its face, isn't a whole lot of money. But rich people are known to be offended when it appears that “the help” is competing to live as well as they do.
However, it's not just lavish spending that has soured many Republicans on Steele; it's the hypocrisy of members of the party that loves to tout its moral superiority to Democrats and its family values spending donor dollars at a strip club. There's also Steele's habit, whenever he gets into trouble with the party, to say that he's being persecuted because he's a black man. Republicans really hate that. Yet, there was Steele on ABC's “Good Morning America” the other day saying that he and President Obama are afforded smaller margins for error than the white men who've held their same positions.
“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?”
Racists in the Republican Party? Shut your mouth, Michael Steele.
James Edwards, of “The Political Cesspool” radio program, is having none of Steele's race card-playing. Edwards, whose organization describes itself as pro-white and “not for the politically correct or faint of heart,” called Steele the “unqualified token black leader of the Republican Party” and said that “white Republicans are scared silly to criticize Steele because they're afraid of being called racists. He only got the job because he's black.”
Well, Karl Rove isn't afraid. While some big-named Republicans such as Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani are sticking up for Steele, others, including Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl, are critical but not flatly calling for Steele's resignation, Rove is very publicly urging Republicans to stop donating to the RNC.
As for Steele, who has described his politics as “street wise,” “grassroots” and not “old-boy-network-oriented,” he seems perfectly content to let his party twist in the wind trying to figure out what to with him at a time when most undoubtedly would prefer concentrating on getting rid of that other black guy in the White House.
Though I seriously doubt that Steele is the worst RNC chairman of all time, the GOP has invested in Steele's rise into Republican leadership — surely with the expectation that he would be a magnet for black voters who've eluded their grasp for a couple of generations now.
The high hopes for Steele were evident back in 2004 when the GOP's response to then-U.S. Sen. Barack Obama's stirring and attention-getting Democratic National Convention keynote address was to cast Michael Steele as a featured speaker at its convention a month later. That convention was the one for which the GOP was ridiculed for having more black people singing and dancing than sitting in the delegates' seats. Meanwhile, fast-forward to January 2009 and recall that in the same month that Barack Obama ascended to the presidency, Michael Steele assumed the chairmanship of RNC. Coincidental? Perhaps. But when people made much ado about America's first black president, Steele reminded them that he'd made history, too.
I have no idea whether there's a bookie somewhere taking bets on whether Michael Steele will survive his most recent troubles, but what I do know for sure is that, unlike the Democratic Party, the GOP has few black people to spare.
Betty Winston Bayé's column appears Thursdays in the Community Forum and online at www.courier-journal.com/opinion. Her e-mail address is bbaye@courier-journal.com.
By Betty Winston Bayé
What to do with the black guy?
That's a real dilemma for the Republican Party.
No. It's not Barack Obama, whose presidency the GOP desperately wants to see fail. It's that that other black guy, Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee. It's all over the media that a growing number of Republicans — but, most troubling, the VIP Republicans, the big financial contributors — wants Steele out, and the sooner the better.
At issue is Steele's and his staffers' reported lavish spending of contributed dollars on private jets, limousines, high-priced tickets to various and sundry events and, most recently, an outing to Voyeur, a sex-themed nightclub in Los Angeles. The $2,000 tab at the bondage club, on its face, isn't a whole lot of money. But rich people are known to be offended when it appears that “the help” is competing to live as well as they do.
However, it's not just lavish spending that has soured many Republicans on Steele; it's the hypocrisy of members of the party that loves to tout its moral superiority to Democrats and its family values spending donor dollars at a strip club. There's also Steele's habit, whenever he gets into trouble with the party, to say that he's being persecuted because he's a black man. Republicans really hate that. Yet, there was Steele on ABC's “Good Morning America” the other day saying that he and President Obama are afforded smaller margins for error than the white men who've held their same positions.
“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?”
Racists in the Republican Party? Shut your mouth, Michael Steele.
James Edwards, of “The Political Cesspool” radio program, is having none of Steele's race card-playing. Edwards, whose organization describes itself as pro-white and “not for the politically correct or faint of heart,” called Steele the “unqualified token black leader of the Republican Party” and said that “white Republicans are scared silly to criticize Steele because they're afraid of being called racists. He only got the job because he's black.”
Well, Karl Rove isn't afraid. While some big-named Republicans such as Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani are sticking up for Steele, others, including Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl, are critical but not flatly calling for Steele's resignation, Rove is very publicly urging Republicans to stop donating to the RNC.
As for Steele, who has described his politics as “street wise,” “grassroots” and not “old-boy-network-oriented,” he seems perfectly content to let his party twist in the wind trying to figure out what to with him at a time when most undoubtedly would prefer concentrating on getting rid of that other black guy in the White House.
Though I seriously doubt that Steele is the worst RNC chairman of all time, the GOP has invested in Steele's rise into Republican leadership — surely with the expectation that he would be a magnet for black voters who've eluded their grasp for a couple of generations now.
The high hopes for Steele were evident back in 2004 when the GOP's response to then-U.S. Sen. Barack Obama's stirring and attention-getting Democratic National Convention keynote address was to cast Michael Steele as a featured speaker at its convention a month later. That convention was the one for which the GOP was ridiculed for having more black people singing and dancing than sitting in the delegates' seats. Meanwhile, fast-forward to January 2009 and recall that in the same month that Barack Obama ascended to the presidency, Michael Steele assumed the chairmanship of RNC. Coincidental? Perhaps. But when people made much ado about America's first black president, Steele reminded them that he'd made history, too.
I have no idea whether there's a bookie somewhere taking bets on whether Michael Steele will survive his most recent troubles, but what I do know for sure is that, unlike the Democratic Party, the GOP has few black people to spare.
Betty Winston Bayé's column appears Thursdays in the Community Forum and online at www.courier-journal.com/opinion. Her e-mail address is bbaye@courier-journal.com.
Labels: General information
posted by KYJurisDoctor at 8:09 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home