WataugaWatch

National Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele was in Greensboro yesterday and announced that North Carolina will be his come fall -- "Mine, MINE, I tell you!" -- and forever after. Apparently, come November 3, we North Carolinians will awake from our frightful nightmare to find ourselves wrapped in the sweet embrace of reactionary right-wingism, breathing in the miasma of obstructionism that has so far served the working class so well in this state and elsewhere.

Oh, goody.

Labels: Michael Steele, Republican "brand"

I heard this interview with Michael Steele this a.m. on NPR and couldn't believe my ears. A flabberglasticon of contraditions and confusions, Steele was all over the map, trying to sound half-way competent about the facts and stumbling repeatedly instead into deep potholes of faulty logic and twisted reasoning.

Hence, he's the perfect spokesman for the Party of No, the Party of Torture, the Party of the Smugly Prosperous.

Labels: health care, Michael Steele, Republican "brand"

Madam Foxx (R-LooseCannonville) is not the only Republican copying the words of Republican consultants looking for language that will galvanize citizens to run away from the president's health-care reform.

Republican smear merchant Alex Castellanos advised his pay-masters to harp on the word "experiment," and ever the obedient mouthpiece, Republican national party chair Michael Steele used some form of that word over 30 times in about as many minutes.

Dana Milbank was in the room for the ventriloquism.

Labels: Alex Castellanos, health care, Michael Steele, Virginia Foxx

Dr. Ada Fisher, representing North Carolina, is one of three African-Americans on the 168-member Republican National Committee. During the recent tussle over the chairmanship of the RNC, which Michael Steele won on the sixth ballot, Dr. Fisher supported Katon ("whites only") Dawson of South Carolina. She has apparently been a sharp little pebble in Michael Steele's shoe ever since, to the point that she wrote an e-mail to 11 people on Steele's "transition team" at the RNC, urging them to urge Steele to resign. Said e-mail was promptly leaked to The Hill newspaper.

Among other things, Dr. Fisher wrote: "I don't want to hear anymore [sic] language trying to be cool about the bling in the stimulus package or appealing to D.L. Hughley and blacks in a way that isn't going to win us any votes and makes us frankly appear to many blacks as quite foolish."

Last night, Fisher went on The Rachel Maddow Show to explain why she was calling for Steele's resignation. She cited the Eleventh Commandment for Republicans ("Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican") without specifying which Republican Steele had spoken ill of (or noticing, for that matter, that she herself was breaking that commandment big-time on the Rachel Maddow Show).

We are left to assume that Limbaugh is the Republican Steele spoke ill of and thus earned the wrath of Dr. Fisher. But we're not entirely sure.

This is not the first time Dr. Fisher attracted a little attention in trying to discipline a fellow Republican. She got after Chip Saltsman back in December after she received his CD of "Barack the Magic Negro." Chip Saltsman was also running for the chairmanship of the RNC at the time, and as we said earlier, Fisher was supporting another Deep South white boy whose own racial foibles did not seem to bother her at all.

Fisher has also run twice for Congress, both times against Mel Watt. For more background on Fisher, her Wikipedia page is here. Her campaign website is here.

Labels: Ada Fisher, Chip Saltsman, Katon Dawson, Michael Steele, National Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh

The things one learns from the Sunday morning gasbags!

First, we hear George Will say the greatest thing that President Obama has done -- really, an act of sheer statesmanship -- is to remove the "buy American" provisions in the stimulus plan.

Less than an hour later, some senator from Arizona (McCain, I think his name was) said that it's just plu-perfect AWFUL that the bill has a "buy American" provision in it.

One of these two gentlemen is right and the other is lost somewhere in the space-time continuum.

But the best yuck of the morning came out of the mouth of Newt Gingrich on ABC's "This Week." Newt was alarmed -- perhaps even a little saddened, in that smug, self-serving way of his -- about the "partisanship" that has reinvaded Washington, all because President Obama thinks that it was Republican policies that got us into this mess. It's just a fact: Newt's shit don't stink.

And, oh yes, via the new chair of the Republican National Committee Michael Steele: a government-created job is not actually a job. It's really more of a social indiscretion, like paying your sister $37,000 out of campaign funds for work she didn't actually do.

Labels: George Will, John McCain, Michael Steele, Newt Gingrich

Via Joshua Micah Marshall ... one of the yard signs that "proud Republican" Michael Steele used in 2006 in his run for the U.S. Senate in Maryland.

Labels: Josh Marshall, Michael Steele

Michael Steele, the new Chair of the Republican National Committee (who, incidentally, has been known to pal around with Republicans), said yesterday after his election, "This is the dawn of a new party moving in a new direction with strength and conviction."

Mummies on the march!

Steele also said, somewhat cryptically, "We're going to say to friend and foe alike: 'We want you to be a part of us, we want you to be with us.' And for those who wish to obstruct, get ready to get knocked over."

Obstructionists? Was he talking about Republican members of Congress? Did he clear those remarks with Rush?

Steele's an interesting politician. A black Republican in the heavily Democratic state of Maryland, he was elected lieutenant governor of the state partly by posing as a Democrat. Really. He used bamboozlement. And his campaign recruited homeless men and women from Philadelphia (twice) to hand out flyers on election day that identified him as a "Democrat."

Steele was supposedly the most moderate of the candidates running yesterday, but he has struck poses that look remarkably similar to the far right. During his failed Senate campaign in 2006, he said stem cell research was like Nazi experimentation.

He didn't say a word, however, about the morality of reanimating the dead.

Labels: Michael Steele, National Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh

As predicted down-column, it's Michael Steele on the 6th ballot.

Came down to a contest between Steele and South Carolina's Katon Dawson, who was apparently the favorite of the party's most conservative elements.

One North Carolina conservative sounds unhappy at the prospect of Michael Steele, whom she labels a "squishy moderate" and then a "main street Republican" (apparently, that's a bad thing) but then backpedals and says she's happy happy happy to have any new chair of the Mummy Party.

Looks like a lot of the same old dust to us. But time will tell, as it always does with mummies.

Labels: Katon Dawson, Katy's Conservative Corner, Michael Steele, National Republican Party

The Mummy Party is supposed to be choosing its Head Mummy today at the Republican National Committee's winter meeting. According to The Politico, incumbent RNC Chairman Mike Duncan is in the lead, followed by former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele and South Carolina Republican Party Chairman Katon Dawson, with Michigan Republican Party Chairman Saul Anuzis and former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell far back. Former Tennessee Republican Chair Chip Saltsman, he of "Barack the Magic Negro" fame, dropped out of the race yesterday (bless his heart).

We're betting on Michael Steele to win. Republicans may feel that they need their OWN magic Negro to counter-balance President Obama.

Not that any of this matters very much. Whoever becomes the new Republican Chair will have to answer to the REAL party boss, Rush Limbaugh, who's already decreed that President Obama must be made to fail at all costs. Madam Virginia Foxx and all the other little Republican foxes in the House instantly obeyed their leader and voted for Obama's failure in the stimulus bill. Even Congressman Phil Gingrey of Georgia was forced to apologize to The Great One for asking him to pipe down about hoping for Obama's failure. You DO NOT cross the Limbaugh!

All of which is yummy pudding for Rush's fragile ego.

Labels: Michael Steele, National Republican Party, Phil Gingrey, Rush Limbaugh, Virginia Foxx