As the fall campaign heats up, polls show voters’ disaffection is bipartisan.
A new Gallup poll found voters hold Democrats and Republicans in equal disdain:
Both parties' ratings are on the low end of what Gallup has measured since the question was first asked in 1999. The Democratic Party's current job approval rating is just three points above its low of 30% measured in December 2007. The historical low rating for congressional Republicans is 25% in December 2008.
Since early 2009, approval of the Democrats has generally trended downward, while the Republican approval rating has been mostly flat. This has resulted in a fairly notable situation in which the two parties in Congress currently receive similar ratings.
While voters harbor no illusions about Republicans, in a two-party system when incumbents fall out of favor, the opposition party wins. That’s why the Democrats’ message about the “Party of No” is falling on deaf ears.
So Republicans don’t have to offer new ideas, new policies or much of anything. They can simply remind voters that ain’t nobody here but us Republicans.
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele just can’t keep his foot out of his mouth.
Steele told a group of students there is no reason for black folks to even think about the GOP:
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.
[…]
We have lost sight of the historic, integral link between the party and African-Americans. This party was co-founded by blacks, among them Frederick Douglass. The Republican Party had a hand in forming the NAACP, and yet we have mistreated that relationship. People don’t walk away from parties, their parties walk away from them.
For the last 40-plus years we had a “Southern Strategy” that alienated many minority voters by focusing on the white male vote in the South. Well, guess what happened in 1992, folks, “Bubba” went back home to the Democratic Party and voted for Bill Clinton.
The GOP’s Southern Strategy is old news. In an appearance before the NAACP’s annual convention in 2005, former GOP chairman Mark Mehlman apologized for walking away from black voters:
Some Republicans gave up on winning the African-American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization. I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong.
So Republicans are asking, WTF?! Why is Steele dredging up the past now?
Steele’s latest gaffe comes on the heels of criticism that he is livin' la vida loca.
Hotline On Call reports the RNC spent more than $340,000 on its semi-annual meeting in Hawaii.
The Washington Times, meanwhile, reports the RNC’s finances are in disarray:
Barely 6 1/2 months before the midterm elections, an internal investigation by the Republican National Committee has revealed that the organization is beset with questionable financial management and oversight and is spending more money courting top-dollar donors than it raises.
The investigation found that the Republican Party’s national governing body is losing money on its major-donors’ fundraising program -- spending $1.09 for each $1.00 raised, according to RNC members privy to the investigation’s findings. It typically costs about 40 cents for every dollar raised from donors who give more than $1,000.
But here’s the bottom line: With the midterm elections looming, it’s cheaper for Republicans to keep Steele rather than get caught up in a divisive fight to remove him from office.
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour says the omission of slavery in Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell’s proclamation declaring April Confederate History Month “doesn’t amount to diddly.”
During an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Barbour was asked whether the omission was a mistake. His response: “I don’t think so.”
A former chairman of the Republican National Committee, Barbour did nothing to reach out to black voters. He admitted as much in a Jan. 16, 1997, Washington Post op-ed:
We are failing to communicate effectively to many women and minorities why our proposals are the right policies to solve the problems that concern them most. Too often we Republicans are satisfied to say what we’re for, but not why we’re for it.
In his speech before the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, RNC Chairman Michael Steele admitted the obvious, “I’m the first here to admit I’ve made mistakes.”
But Republicans would be making a colossal mistake if Barbour, a self-described “fat redneck,” becomes the face of the GOP. Their hopes of regaining control of the House would be gone with the wind.
I want to share my longtime friend Ellis Cose’s take on the embattled Steele. A best-selling author, Ellis has been thinking and writing about race for, well, a long time.
He writes:
But let’s assume that it’s possible that two things are true: that Steele, in many respects, has done an awful job, and that he is also held to a different standard. Since there is no white RNC chairman who has performed in precisely the same way and whose public acceptance can then be judged against Steele’s, there’s no real way to evaluate Steele’s complaint. There is only Steele’s suspicion, which is very easy to reject and even ridicule—particularly by those who believe we have approached that American ideal in which people, for the most part, are judged by their accomplishments instead of their race.
Ellis adds:
… And, even putting the latest imbroglio aside, it’s not as if Steele has been a paragon of managerial competence. But none of that makes his comment “silly” or even inaccurate. It merely makes it easy to dismiss.
The failure to include any reference to slavery was a mistake, and for that I apologize to any fellow Virginian who has been offended or disappointed. The abomination of slavery divided our nation, deprived people of their God-given inalienable rights, and led to the Civil War. Slavery was an evil, vicious and inhumane practice which degraded human beings to property, and it has left a stain on the soul of this state and nation. In 2007, the Virginia General Assembly approved a formal statement of “profound regret” for the Commonwealth’s history of slavery, which was the right thing to do.
But even as the RNC seeks to restore confidence to major donors, there were fresh signs of discontent Tuesday. Sean Mahoney, an RNC member from New Hampshire, resigned, calling the nightclub scandal “the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
The scandal represents a pattern of unaccountable and irresponsible mishaps that ought to unnerve every fiscal conservative,” Mahoney wrote in a letter to Steele. “Overspending on private planes, limousines, remodeling, catered parties and high-priced junkets demonstrates a complete lack of respect for RNC donors; a lack of respect that was spelled out all too clearly in a leaked PowerPoint presentation that mocked our Committee’s own donors.”
In the blaxploitation classic, “The Spook Who Sat by the Door,” the CIA realized their first mistake was letting a black man in. That mistake was compounded when they let him out.
The RNC made a mistake when they let Steele into their inner sanctum. But they’re not about to compound it. So they will let Steele act like he’s chairman.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs rejected Steele’s claim that black politicians are held to a higher standard. Gibbs told reporters:
I think that it is a very silly comment to make. I think Michael Steele’s problem isn’t the race card; it’s the credit card.
I’ve known Steele for quite a while. The notion that he is too “streetwise” for Republicans is laughable. His street cred, such as it is, was honed at a Catholic high school and seminary.
Truth be told, Steele was tapped by Republicans for two reasons: he’s black and was presumed to be a safe Negro.
While he’s still black, Steele has gone rogue to save his job.
He’ll succeed in the short term until the midterm elections. But come January, the RNC will likely kick Steele to the curb.
