Michael Steele's con job

For me, one of contemporary politics' few enjoyable pastimes is that of watching former RNC chairman Michael Steele proudly peddle himself as a through-'n-through Establishment Guy--a Prospero-like shazam that comes complete (most often on Chris Matthews' "Hardball") with Steele's worldly tsk-tsking of the incorrigible, establishment-wrecking tea party types.

Three years ago, however, as chairman, Steele vigorously embraced those tea partiers, for they, as his then-visionary mind foresaw matters, were the GOP's future. For instance, as a TPM story from 2010 reported, Steele in that year sent a memo to his committee members "in which he highlighted his efforts to reach out to the tea party and drive turnout by reaching out to the Republican grassroots. And he took a less-than-subtle shot at establishment types who kept the fired-up conservative activists in the tea party at arms length for most of the cycle."

But that was then, before the tea partiers thoroughly humiliated the establishment and brought the Grand Old Party to a historic low point. Now, Steele is almost disdainful of them, as though he and he alone had been warning his party of their creeping influence and power, all along. This quote, in Politico, is representative of Steele's self-denial: "This process is one that has been unfolding for a while, so the idea that you are now going to wrestle control back from the people who vote, good luck with that.”

Perhaps this bit of history will someday find its way to Chris Matthews' eyes; and then, just maybe, Matthews will start calling out Steele on his unbroken-Establishment con. It's true that such an intervention would rob me of no little enjoyment--my pornographic love of naked political guile compels my fascination with watching Steele so completely turn his own recent history on its head--but Steele's angle, it seems, is that he wants back into elected office. And frankly, he's flakier than even the tea partiers.

Comments

[RT]

We have always been at war with Eastasia.

[Peter G]

Steele puzzles me. Known largely by his reputation as a bumbling incompetent while running the RNC he comes across now as if he possessed a solid if not brilliantly insightful understanding of politics. I find it difficult to believe that he did not understand exactly what he was doing when he encouraged the tea party takeover of his party. And who they were going to screw.

[shsavage]

It's all relative, Peter. Back then he came across as a bumbling idiot. With the GOP's ever-accelerating rush to embrace it's Know-nothing roots, Steele is now a Wise Old Man; and he hasn't changed a bit.

[AnneJ]

Unfortunately, for all of his stumbling and bumbling, Michael Steele was very successful in his tenure at the RNC. That was the last time republicans were truly victorious in elections, and to me, that makes him one of the most destructive people in modern American politics.

[Monty]

Not only Chris Matthews, but Bill Maher loves this guy too. Always on Realtime where he actually comes across as "reasonable" - that being a fluid description of course.