I've been writing about my good buddy Michael Steele's precarious position for awhile now, but now it's official: the Steele Watch is on!
Jim Nussle had some strong medicine Wednesday for the Republican Party, as the former Iowa congressman and Bush administration official broke his public silence on politics since leaving the White House.
Nussle, the Iowa GOP gubernatorial nominee in 2006, said that the party nationally needed a thorough reorganization and that new Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele was not the figure the GOP needed to turn itself around.
"I don't think we've found that yet in Michael or anybody else yet for the party," Nussle said in his first public comments about politics since his time as President George W. Bush's budget director ended in January. "So we're going to have to struggle through that for a while."
It looks like the GOP is not buying his juvenile justifications for his ineptitude so far.
Steele: I'm a cause and effect kind of guy, so if I do something there's a reason for it. Even, it may look like a mistake, a gaffe. There is a rationale, a logic behind it.
Q: It's all strategic.
Steele: It's all strategic.
Howie Klein reports:
Steele has turned himself into a national laughingstock, but Republicans don't find his bumbling at all humorous.
Yesterday's Washington Post carried an item about how some RNC members were trying to get the committee's purse strings out of Steele's hand. A resolution is circulating among the 168 members of the RNC that would require that any spending over $100,000 be approved by the executive committee or the treasurer. They'll be meeting next month in a special session to decide whether or not to label Obama a socialist and will try to decide what to do about Steele as well. Steele is reacting hysterically and called the resolution a "scheme" and an attempted power grab.
Michael "Spassky" Steele's reign as the RNC's chief chessmaster might be over very soon indeed.
