Anderson@Large

Molten Steele

Michael Steele’s erratic performance as chairman of the Republican National Committee brings to mind the wisdom of Uncle Remus: If you try to be something you ain’t, you ain’t.

From throwing the GOP's pro-life plank under the bus to riffing about his love for the “Pack Rat,” it ain’t working. BTW, Mike, baby, it’s the Rat Pack.

Former presidential wannabe Mike Huckabee threw the Platform book at Steele:

Comments attributed to Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele are very troubling and despite his clarification today the party stands to lose many of its members and a great deal of its support in the trenches of grassroots politics. Since 1980, our party has been steadfast and principled in believing in the dignity and worth of every human life. We have supported a Constitutional amendment to protect life and the party has taken the position that no one individual has the supreme right to own another person in totality including the right to take that life. For Chairman Steele to even infer that taking a life is totally left up to the individual is not only a reversal of Republican policy and principle, but it's a violation of the most basic of human rights--the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. His statement today helps, but doesn't explain why he would ever say what he did in the first place.

Steele’s rival for RNC chairman, Ken Blackwell, threw the Good Book at him:

Chairman Steele, as the leader of America’s Pro-Life conservative party, needs to re-read the Bible, the U.S. Constitution, and the 2008 GOP Platform. He then needs to get to work -- or get out of the way.

In an interview with GQ magazine, Steele said:

I mean, who’da thunk it in 1963 that in 2009 two black men would sit on top of the political world of this country? How friggin’ awesome is that? You cannot look at that and not go, “Wow.”

Wow, baby. You're friggin' off the hook.

Showtime in Iowa

Tonight, Iowa voters, or more accurately, a narrow slice of caucus-goers, will separate the presidential contenders from the pretenders. Or not.

On the Democratic side, the race is too close to call. Polls show Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards in a three-way tie. I won't predict a winner because race matters and respondents don't always tell pollsters what they really think on matters of race. So, it remains an unanswered question whether white voters are ready for a black president.

That said, the election will turn on voter turnout. While a record turnout is expected, it's anyone's guess who will show up. Sixty percent are projected to be first-time caucus-goers; a whopping 40 percent may be independent voters.

Candidates will use high-tech data mining and low-tech "knock and drag" to get their supporters to the caucuses. While Clinton won't hang a lamb chop in the window á la Perle Mesta, she is dangling sandwiches and chips to draw crowds.

On the Republican side, it's a two-man race between Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee. In politics, organization trumps inspiration. Huckabee's underfunded volunteer army of Christian soldiers, home-schoolers and gun nuts will likely be outflanked by Romney's war chest and brigade of paid campaign workers.

Boom Boom! Other Voices of the '60s

I spent the holidays in Central Florida, where the only signs of life political life were a Huckabee for President sign propped up on a John Deere tractor, Rudy Giuliani's 9/11 TV ads and Ron Paul's blimp flying over Orlando.

Before leaving for the airport yesterday, I watched Tom Brokaw's talk on his book, "Boom!: Voices of the Sixties," personal reflections of the "causes and effects" of that tumultuous decade.

For me, the leading voices include Fannie Lou Hamer, Eldridge Cleaver, Huey P. Newton, and Bill Lucy who helped organize the Memphis sanitation workers' strike. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his last speech, "I've Been to the Mountaintop," on April 3, 1968, at a rally for the striking sanitation workers.

The voices also include James Brown who told Negroes to "Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud," and John Lee Hooker, who released his signature song, "Boom Boom," in 1962.

Massachusetts Miracle

With less than three weeks to go, it may take a miracle for Mitt Romney to catch Mike Huckabee in Iowa. Romney hopes Huckabee's support for tuition breaks for illegal aliens will slow his momentum among Republican caucus-goers for whom illegal immigration is a top concern.

Romney's claim that he "vetoed in-state tuition for illegal aliens" was disputed by Massachusetts state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson. At the National Black Caucus of State Legislators' recent political forum, Wilkerson said:

He never had a bill. The bill passed in the Senate but died in the House. The problem with Mitt Romney is not that he's a Mormon. He's a liar.

Well, this is the season of miracles. Mormons do believe in Jesus, don’t they?

The (Other) Man from Hope

I’m back from a week in “the Natural State.” But it doesn’t seem natural that a city with a population of 10,616 is the birthplace of the 42nd President of the United States and perhaps number 44.

With Mike Huckabee rising in the polls, I decided to ask a tablemate at the National Black Caucus of State Legislators’ Nation Builders Award Dinner whether black folks should do the huck-a-buck if Huck wins the Republican presidential nomination. My source didn’t want to be identified because he’s a Hillary Clinton supporter but with his anonymity assured, he sang Huckabee’s praise.

He said former Gov. Huckabee garnered significant support among black voters because “he said all the right things and did all the right things.” He pointed to Huckabee’s advocacy of the children’s health program, public school consolidation in rural districts, and the number of blacks who served in his administration, including  the heads of the departments of Environmental Quality and Workforce Education.

The bottom line: “If Huckabee weren’t a Republican, you’d think he was a Democrat.”

While Huckabee could count on black votes, his new national campaign chairman, Ed Rollins, was a top adviser to former Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris in her failed run for the United States Senate. And the whole world knows what she did with black votes in the 2000 presidential election.

As troubling, Rollins boasted that he paid black ministers $500,000 in “walking around money” to depress black voter turnout in the 1993 New Jersey gubernatorial election. As Jack E. White reported:

We went into black churches and we basically said to ministers who had endorsed Florio, “Do you have a special project?” And they said, “We’ve already endorsed Florio.” We said, “That’s fine – don’t get up on the Sunday pulpit and preach. We know you’ve endorsed him, but don’t get up there and say it’s your moral obligation that you go on Tuesday to vote for Jim Florio.”

Time will tell whether African American voters should put on their dancing shoes and rejoice that a “Christian leader,” who’s now hooked up with a bare-knuckles political strategist, is “a different kind of Republican.”