Anyone who lived in the DC television market probably remembers the Michael Steele ads from his Senate bid in 2006.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svzDQivKq8Y[/youtube]
I have to say, I like that he’s different. He’s an out-of-the-box thinker, or at least willing to give those who have ideas for these non-traditional messages a go. No, I don’t agree with him on every policy point. In fact, I probably disagree with him more than I agree with him. But the role of RNC Chair isn’t about setting policy or casting votes on the House or Senate floors. He’s there to raise money, promote the brand, and run a great election shop. It will be interesting to see how Steele performs.
I hope you’re right…because I am SO tired of the GOP’s stupidity.
And most of that gets dumped on the so-called Christian right. But most of the members of the Christian Right I know of, aren’t the one’s asking for crap like marriage amendments, and token crap that seems to be the only thing the GOP has been offering conservatives. Crap that won’t make a difference, won’t get passed, or won’t stand the test of time.
Most I know want less government, less interference in their lives. And to stop having the ‘separation of church and state’ used to block their activities. While at the same time forcing them to submit to policies they object too.
The Constitutional Amendments the GOP should be pushing for are:
I. A balanced budget
II. One item per bill, and line-item veto for bills with groups of like items.
Those are the amendments we need to be pushing for.
Steel was the RNC chairman of Prince Georges county a majority black middle and upper class county in MD. He did a great job and was tapped to be erlich Lt Governor and it was the rare ( very rare case of an republican MD governor)
He ran for Sarbanes Senator seat and The Democrats smeared him, called him an Oreo etc. I voted for him but he lost in 2006. The GOP failed to turn out in MD and The Democrats did a sweep.
What the Democrats did t amear Steel was the forerunner of the crap they did to Palin when she got picked and before she gave that stupendous convention seat. All those smears and lies that were gobbled up by the cable news guys and girls with nothing else to talk about.
So Steel knows personally what Palin when through and he was for Palin before she got picked.
He was my pick for RNC chair and I hope he does well. He has experience as local chair in a primarily Democratic county and state.
What I really want is good candidates picked and promoted to win agains democrats next election. The Democats did that in 2006 and it worked.
Whoops please forgive the typos. Typed in poor light and did not spell check.
RAH: While I accept your general comments on him (and they match what I noticed while living in Arlington, VA back then), I’d like to point out that this:
“He has experience as local chair in a primarily Democratic county and state.
Isn’t good experience for the job.
As a country, we aren’t “Democratic”, and I think “the left” is still smaller than “the right” (the Republicans have damaged the brand too much as of late to try breaking it down by party right now).
Steele doesn’t have to win with Democrats (and absent a Jimmy Carter like presidency he can’t, except at the edges), he has to win with centrists and the Republican base (the same base, that, if they’d actually gotten out and voted like they did in 2004, would have put McCain into the White House (if I remember correctly)).
Right now it looks to me like that’s he’s too liberal including too anti-gun (“You draw the line. I mean, what do you need an assault weapon for?”) to play well to the base. Time will tell, but I can’t take it as a good sign for us that the RNC voted for the only candidate who didn’t own a gun (at the very least that tells you what we are to the party…).
I like Steele. I contributed to his senate run as “the lesser of two evils”.
But as RNC chair is this the best the GOP can do? If this is simply a PR post and they needed someone likable then, yes, Steele is the guy.
But if they wanted someone to embody the direction the GOP should take then they failed. Big time.
In my view Steele was absolutely the wrong choice for the GOP–more of the same type of pandering to ‘moderates’ that got the Party shot to bits in 2006 and 2008.
Unless the GOP exhibits a clear return to its conservative roots, there will be a mass exodus. Steele’s moderation and dubious record on gun rights is the last thing we need right now.
Steele is a product of an anti gun county and probably needs to be convinced to come over from the dark side to the light. I guess he may very ignorant about” assault weapons” Non gun enthusiasts generally are.
I believe he will be a good RNC chair. I will agree that he may be tend more moderate but he was an enthusiatic Palin supporter, more than I heard him about McCain.
Anyway he has to be better than Duncan the invisible.
Well, I will admit that his support for Palin is a big point in his favor…
See: “GOP Backs Holder, Elects Anti Semi-Auto Rifle Michael Steele as Chairman of the Republican National Committee. Base Reacts Poorly. ” at
http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2009/02/gop-backs-holder-elects-anti-semi-auto.html
Some of you apparently have some very serious reading comprehension problems. Get some glasses to read the author.
If you are going to censor the correction post, at least acknowledge that it HAS been corrected.
The thing you all don’t seem to understand is that “guest posting” is a form of endorsement – like it or not.
If you allow someone the forum to speak their mind on your webspace or blog, it is no different than allowing them to post a sign in your front yard that displays their views and opinions.
Hence, their views BECOME your views (the all caps is not shouting, just emphasis) – like it or not.
Paul, take some time to read the blog carefully. Even though it is clearly noted that the quotes were falsely attributed to Sebastian, no one said that Sebastian doesn’t agree. In fact, if you would take a few moments to inform yourself on the broader debate you would see a post from today where Sebastian said he did agree with me. Please take a few moments to fully educate yourself on the developments before commenting about unrelated endorsement opinions.
Bitter,
I was well aware that the comments were not Sebastian’s and that many of the comments made (including one of my own) were made much earlier without realizing that it was you and not Sebastian who made the comments, when I made the comment about “guest posting.”
My reference to guest posting was (and is) a generally applied statement that was in direct response to the following by Sebastian:
“I should point out that it was not me that commented on Michael Steele, but Bitter, who turned her blog into a food blog. Up until an hour ago, she was guest posting here on gun and political topics. If people are going to attack my positions, they should probably check first to make sure it’s really my position.” (Michael Steele)
And was posted here as this is the “center of the storm” if you will.
Even though Sebastian admitted he agreed with your position in the second paragraph of that post, the first paragraph (partially quoted above) leaves the clear impression that he is/was unaware that allowing “guest posting” is an implicit approval of the guest’s opinion.
That is why I am very cautious about links (as the same holds true for links) and guest posts on the blogs and websites I run.
BTW, it would be nice if a “comment preview” plugin were installed so one could preview and insure what is said, is said the way one wants it to be said. Just a suggestion.
Excuse me, but what is the problem? Many conservatives may not want Steele as the RNC chair. We can all disagree about shades on being conservative. But being progun has many nuances. In Maryland, a solidly democratic state, the best defense against the anti gun bills introduced has been the Democrats from the Eastern Shore and western counties. They are the hunters and since they are knowledgeable about guns they shoot down stupid bills like the ammo encoding crap last year. So the GOP has no input.
If we want Steele to be more pro gun then we need to take him shooting and educate him on the fine points of rifles and ” assault rifles”.
What many of gunnies forget is that many conservatives are not gun enthusiasts and do not know the details that make the difference. Education is the key.
Demonizing the ignorant is not helpful. Then they think that gunnies should not be trusted with guns. Trust is an emotional and not a real rational action. Gunnies have to earn the trust like CCW holders have done among many LEO’s and politicians who have the experience of the lawfulness of CCW holders.
That trust was earned from before CCW law and after the CCW law and the fact that shootouts in the street are very rare and even more rare are justified when they do happen.
That experience led to more trust and we got the NPS to allow CCW in the parks.
Steel was actually more conservative than Erlich and they had to work in a totally democratic controlled state and in that environment they would have to sound more moderate that in a very conservative state.
The only state that is as solid Democratic as Maryland is Hawaii and the non-state DC.
The RNC chair has to fundraise, and get a message out. For instance the new Louisiana congressman Cao when asked why he was Republican is that he was asked to be a Republican and run for a seat. Many people who have conservative traditions and ideas often are Democrat or unaffiliated until they are talked to and then realize their beliefs are more in line with being Republican.
The Bush administration though conservative, also had a strong big business streak and big government can be good nuance. That led to big programs that Bush campaigned on, like the Medicare expansion of prescription coverage.
The need to go on a war footing generally also leads to centralization of power. Homeland Security for instance that the Democrats pushed on Bush so he said OK and made the big change.
I like Bush and supported him but I disagreed on the McCain Feingold finance bill and his big spending issues.
No matter how much Bush increased government spending it never was enough for the Democrats.
That is why we need to get back to candidates that want to reduce government not expand it.
I am going to have to completely disagree with you on that one, otherwise you might as well start arguing that Mike is endorsing Bitter through his link back to this particular page.
Links can be used for clarifications, citations, examples, supporting information/data, and other similar concepts, and may or may not necessarily imply approval or agreement. Often that agreement or disagreement is made clear in the body of the post, but if it is not, the default setting is not approval.
For that matter, I disagree concerning guest authors, but to a lesser degree. Allowing someone to guest author on your site does imply a willingness to allow that person to say whatever he or she wants, but it does not, in any way, imply complete agreement with everything he or she says. Case in point: Say Uncle and Tgirsh, or whatever that liberal dude posts there under. They have had some amazing knock-down, drag-outs on his site, and yet the latter still guest posts on the former.
Unfortunately, both of these two concepts are artifacts of the “old media” mentality, and really are losing traction in the digital age.
All of the above are reasons why that one of these days you could easily be accused of being a collaborator and summarily shot. Facts are facts. Read your history, — especially of countries where the communists took over and how they determined who collaborated with whom.
The fact is, consciously realized or not, people do associate positive relationships with approval. This is how advertising works and why positive mention is the most effective form of advertising.
Why is it that Google page rank factors links heavily into the calculation of how high a site is ranked in their search engine? It does so because links are an indicator of site worth or value. Thus, links are a form of approval. Links are not the sole factor, nor the single most important factor, but they do weight them heavier than most other factors in the calculation.
Hence Linoge, you are wrong. Guest posting and links are implicit, and tacit forms of approval — no different than allowing someone to plant a sign in your front yard with their opinions on it.
So you are trying to argue that Mike was positively endorsing Bitter through his link back to this site.
I am sorry, but any point you might have had in the rest of your ramblings was summarily nullified by that obviously erroneous and fallacious stance. You are absolutely right on one thing, though – facts are facts, and the fact is that acknowledging something exists by linking to it in no way, shape, or form indicates tacit, open, or any other form of approval. You can think it does, all you like, to your little heart’s content, but that does not make it reality for anyone except yourself.
For instance, I already have been accused a collaborator, by the same folks who instigated this entire debacle, and I have little doubt that if they were to finally achieve their insurrectionists wet dreams, I might be on some of their hitlists. Does their accusation and my hypothetical murder in any way prove that I actually was a collaborator? Of course not. It simply indicates that a few idiots were able to delude themselves into thinking so.
You are arguing from a stance of perception, Paul, and while perception is 9/10ths of reality and all that, it also is not always fact (I can percieve that firearm to be empty all I like, but when I pull the trigger and it puts a hole in my head, facts tend to indicate otherwise.). Try not to argue from a flawed position by confusing the two, especially when there is a concrete example in this very thread that disproves your entire thesis.
Linoge, the problem with you analysis and your analogy is that they are both flawed. The reality is that inanimate objects like firearms do not have a mind and heart with which to conceive deception and then carry it out — men do have hearts and minds, and they conceive and carry through deceptions all the time.
The truth about individuals is told in their associations and activities, not in the denials they issue. Who someone associates with speaks volumes about who and what that person is. Which is precisely why the centuries old adage is entirely true:
You can squall about it and deny it all you like, and you can say I am wrong, however, the history of man weighs heavily against you. The very nature of anyone is to lie about their true intentions, and when they think an association might harm them, usually (not always, but usually) they will be very quick to deny it. My point was that the communists know this, and they do use it to determine who they dispose of and who they let live. I’ve read far to much of their literature, and the accounts of individuals who lived through communist takeovers and purges to believe otherwise.
When I stated the following, just what did you think I was saying?
I dunno, go ask David Codrea, he got his degree in advertising. I’ll hazard he’ll confirm the above statement, as would any individual who works in the advertising field.
I really don’t know what you are all bent about, I doubt seriously anyone of the 3 Percenters (who you say instigated this “debacle”) has a “hit list.” I doubt seriously they have much time to compile one. I rather think any “hit list” resides with those individuals who are steadfastly working to overthrow this country. Again, in fact, history would bear out the reasonableness of that assertion.
And no, in case you wonder, I am not a “3 Percenter” although I do see their point very well, and am just as hardline in my stance as they are in theirs. I do agree with them in many things, just like I agree with Wayne Fincher in many things. I (probably more so than them) see everything as black or white, good or evil.
However, I strongly believe the whole issue (of 2A and the rest of our rights) will be rendered moot in very short order, and no one will be able to do anything about it. This does not mean that I will willingly give them up, it simply means that I know what time it is. My point to you, them or anyone else is this: