Wednesday, April 07, 2010
Tick, Tick, Tick...
Into the RNC coffers, and back out again.
The Republican National Committee at the end of last year struck a deal with the Michigan Republican Party that if the state party could raise what turned out to be a half a million dollars for the RNC, the committee would immediately give the money back, in a scheme apparently devised to increase the RNC’s 2009 fundraising numbers, possibly even to circumvent federal spending limits.
“It was a known secret that a deal had been struck on the topic,” a former RNC official confirmed to The Daily Caller.
“I think the benefit to them was them getting guaranteed money,” the source said of the Michigan GOP, “and the benefit to the RNC was getting higher fundraising numbers.”
RNC spokesman Doug Heye, contacted by a reporter Tuesday afternoon, did not comment.
The last line is the most foreboding. Heye is a competent long-term communications veteran -- and has worked for Steele a lot in the past. For him not to comment speaks volumes. It means he has been shut out from having the information to craft a response -- or he refuses to pass along an answer that he knows to be false.
This sort of fiscal shenanigans gives RNC members material with which to fire Steele for cause -- unless he resigns first.
Labels: Michael Steele, RNC
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
A Pro-Choice RNC?
(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion;
Faithful to the first guarantee of the Declarationof Independence, we assert the inherent dignity andsanctity of all human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life whichcannot be infringed. We support a human lifeamendment to the Constitution, and we endorse leg-islation to make clear that the FourteenthAmendment’s protections apply to unborn children.We oppose using public revenues to promote or per-form abortion and will not fund organizations whichadvocate it. We support the appointment of judgeswho respect traditional family values and the sanctity and dignity of innocent human life.
"We do'nt want to get into a debate with candidates on general principles," he said. "These are specific items, when possible, that we expect to come up this year or next year."
The goal, he said, is stopping the Obama agenda.
"After the Republicans take over Congress after the 2010 election, this will change," he said. "This is how we're going to look at the standards for funding candidates election cycle by election cycle."
Labels: abortion, Republican Party, RNC
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Good Idea, Bro!
Labels: Michael Steele, RNC, RNC Chairman
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Steele-ing For A Fight
The latest step in RNC Chairman Michael Steele's ongoing do-si-do to keep his job occurs today as he gives a major speech urging the party to remain unified on core principles:
"We've got to coalesce around some core ideas and a core vision for this party, which is what I'm laying out this week, and we're going to move forward," he said. "And so, you know, I'll either win you over or I won't. I don't have time to stop and really figure that out for you."
Unfortunately, Steele's own Committee members seem as hell-bent on upsetting the party applecart – as Steele himself does in making unwise rhetorical or managerial mistakes.
For example, on Wednesday, party leaders want to pass a bylaw officially declaring that their political opposition should be called the “Democrat Socialist Party.” Steele doesn't like the idea, calling it (rightly), “name-calling, finger-pointing and blaming,"
Another word: Stupid.
Exactly what does calling the other guys the “Democrat Socialist Party” gain? For years, Republicans have made reference to “the Democrat Party” (as opposed to its official name, “the Democratic Party”), to coyly insinuate they are a European-style big government party (a la “Christian Democrats” or “Social Democrats”). Of course, that did nothing (except get Democrats annoyed). Does the RNC really think that now calling Democrats, “Democratic Socialists” will do anything – other than look the party (the Republican Party) look ridiculous?
During the Bush years, how would it have looked if the DNC decided to pass a resolution calling the GOP, the “Republican Fascist Party”? The party – and any who used the phrase – would have looked like out-of-step, extremists – the very image of what Michelle Malkin refers to as “moonbats.” Sometimes, what one says about one's political foes says as much about you as it does them.
On the other hand, Steele himself continues to make what can only be considered head-scratching decisions:
Mr. Steele hired another family friend, Angela Sailor, to be the party's outreach director at a salary of $180,000, more than double her predecessor's compensation, though new responsibilities have been added to the job, according to a high-ranking RNC official and Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings.
Mr. Steele's early record and personnel decisions figure to be hot topics at a special meeting of Republican state party chairmen Tuesday and Wednesday at National Harbor in Washington's Maryland suburbs. His hiring of friends and the salaries he is paying them already helped to instigate a struggle over who controls the party's purse strings, one that forced the new party chairman to relinquish some control to elected RNC members.
Okay, Angela Sailor's a smart, competent, woman; she worked in the Bush White House for some time. But having done a bit of “outreach” myself at the RNC, back in the '90s, I was never paid anything quite like $180,000 (or even $90K, for that matter). In fact, $180,000 is pretty high even for a top RNC official like a political director. And, especially for a party out of power.
With items like that, it's no wonder that the RNC members are trying to put clamps down on what Steele should spend.
The chairman's speech today had better be a good one -- and the committee tomorrow had better make wise choices of its own.
Labels: Michael Steele, RNC
Monday, March 23, 2009
Party Flip-Flop
- Holding the White House for the first time in eight years;
- Having won the presidency with more than 50 percent of the vote for the first time in 32 years.
- The other party forcefully repudiated in consecutive elections.
One also has to ask "What the hell did the DNC do during the biggest, boldest, most expensive Inauguration of all time!!????? Did Obama's people take all the Inaugural money for themselves???? For just the Inaugural Committee??? Did the DNC not have a semi-[inaugural-related] Gala???? How could that be?? [Based on Republican post-inaugural experience,] follow-up calls and chasing checks goes on for weeks after events. There should have been some spillover from the Inaugural deposited into February [accounts]. Another thought is that now that Hillary Clinton is at State Dept. where are the Clinton Rolodex of donors going?? Clearly, they are not being contacted by the DNC yet. A third thought: The DNC has safeguards on taking illegal online donations that the Obama campaign did not. It will be interesting to see if that changes after this disgraceful first month of fundraising.Of those notions, the last is the most intriguing. Beyond possible problems with Tim Kaine, would future months with measly results create renewed media speculation on the clarity (i.e. legality) of the Obama campaign's donation track record.
Labels: Democratic National Committee, DNC, Michael Steele, Republican National Committee, RNC, Tim Kaine
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Barack Obama -- A Black Republican's BFF?
A few of my homies talk about being an African American Republican in a Barack Obama world (A measure of how pathetically persistently lonely can be the "professional black Republican" existence: Of the four people quoted in this article, I personally know/met three of them -- and I haven't worked for the party in nearly a decade).
Don Scoggins sings a similar lyrics as yours truly:
Scoggins, 63,...says his support for Obama wasn't just out of a sense of racial pride. But he was moved by Obama's forceful speech last June on personal responsibility, particularly among black men. "In the black community," Scoggins says, "the biggest problem is the deterioration of the black family. McCain wasn't interested in that — and I don't think he could ever have been the person to articulate it." Scoggins has faced criticism in some conservative circles for supporting Obama. But, he says, "Sometimes you have to lose in order to win. The Republican Party losing [is] forcing it to re-create itself into a party for the 21st century."Former Maryland state party chairman, lieutant governor and 2006 U.S. Senate candidate, Michael Steele has already thrown his hat in for national party chairman (the election is in January):
Michael Steele does not diminish the power of the Obama victory. "As a black man, of course I am very proud of his accomplishment," Steele says. "It is at once uplifting — of not only a people but a nation — and sobering in light of the work that remains to be done to address the systemic erosion of black wealth, health and opportunity." But Steele predicts that Obama as President will find it difficult to appease his more liberal supporters as he is forced to moderate views on the economy and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, among other issues.And yet, Mike Memoli, Marc Ambinder's assistant, shares this nugget about a possible, ahem, "dark horse" in the committee race:
Steele says if he is selected as the RNC's chairman in January, he will move swiftly to temper the party's tone, using the model of Ronald Reagan, who, he says, "made it cool to be a conservative." But one of Steele's more daunting mandates will to be to broaden the GOP's base of black voters. "I'll tell local chairmen, 'If you want to be chairman under my leadership, don't think this is a country-club atmosphere where we sit around drinking wine and eating cheese and talking amongst ourselves. If you don't want to drill down and build coalitions in minority communities, then you have to give that seat to someone who does."
That will be a particularly difficult challenge during an Obama presidency. But Steele says that people have to be reminded of the origins of the things over which they take issue with the GOP. Many blacks, he says, "look at the party as this bastion of racism, which it isn't. Democrats have to keep defining us as racists because that's how they stay in power. But just look at the inner-city school systems and the poverty levels that have been high for years. It's systemic, and you can't blame Republicans for that. I haven't heard Barack Obama talk about the recidivism rate among youth in the prison system, or drug addiction. I don't know what he's going to do. But I know we're going to be developing strategies that put us in places where we need to talk about entrepreneurship. We're going to offer something more."
The Hotline reporting [Monday] morning:There are already several other -- Caucasian -- names in the mix for the RNC chair, but an energetic battle between two black candidates could get the party far more attention than the usual party leadership races get when the party is out of power. And suddenly, the traditionally completely marginalized black Republicans find not one, but two of their own having prominent roles in the future of the party. Talk about change we might believe in!After receiving calls from RNC members asking him to run for RNC chair, ex-OH Sec/State Ken Blackwell is now considering a bid (Wake-Up Call!Blackwell was soundly defeated in his Ohio gov bid in '06, after a
sources).
controversial stint as the secretary of state there. He's since been writing at Town Hall and heading up the Coalition for a Conservative Majority....
As candidates in 2006, Blackwell mostly held to his strict conservative views on abortion, taxes and gun rights, while Steele presented a more moderate face in the deeper blue Free State.
Gee, thanks, Barack. Couldn't have done it without you.
Labels: black Republicans, Ken Blackwell, Michael Steele, RNC
