I finally read the GQ interview today and it left me with my mouth on the floor and wondering very seriously if Steele should have this job at all. First off, the slang references, the profanity and the really casual language were all turn offs. This is a guy who is supposed to be articulate and a communicator, but you would not know it from the quality of his conversation in this interview. I also thought he managed a series of silly questions ineffectively. If you’re trying to expand the tent, all of those questions need to be turned to getting the GOP view across to the people you want to entice in. I thought it was a very ineffective interview on that score.

On the abortion issue, his answer was incoherent mush delivered on a garbage can lid. Not to mention the fact that at the time he was born, abortion was illegal, so his mother’s choice would have been an illegal procedure in the shadows, something he ought to have an awareness of. His response about whether or not he would have this job if he were white was horrible, absolutely pathetic. I am the first to argue that the GOP has a problem with minorities. Its a fundamental problem that goes right to the issue of what the identity of the GOP is going to be. Steele believes that too, but as the chairman of the GOP, he ought to articulate the concern and issue much better than this. Because if you want to address that, you are going to have to raise the issue in a way that is accessible within the party and the way he did it was not at all.

I also found his comment about Starbucks in a black neighborhood to be tasteless and its one of a string of comments he’s made now where he routinely throws into the public or the interviewers face that he’s black. It is so unnecessary. Obama spent a campaign trying desperately to run away from race and Steele goes out of his way to make references to it and for the life of me I cannot understand why the guy is doing that. Its beginning to feel to me like his way of shoving his blackness down the throat of the party. I’m not sure why he feels that it is necessary to do that. But he sure keeps doing it.

I will give him credit for unflinchingly and candidly discussing the GOP’s dismal relationship management with blacks as a constituency. His sentiments are probably shared by the majority of black republicans like me (I think most of us who are republicans are moderate republicans). And its those comments that make me think one of two futures is possible. Future 1: Steele gets bounced from the chairman job, which I consider more likely if the fund raising numbers are not looking good. Future 2: Steele manages to stay on, but becomes marginalized and a token figure at the top of the party, and the real juice simply flows around him as the party avoids the funky atmospherics of dumping him.

Because on the issue of race and the GOP’s relationship with blacks, Steele and the party are worlds apart. Given the consistent manner in which Steele references his race, I think the GOPs stance relative to blacks really sticks in his craw. (heck, look at his public statements about the issue of blacks and the GOP, its not like he is hiding it). The GOP remains in the grip of the sort of low brow conservatism represented by the Rush end of the spectrum and that sector of the party’s thinking on race and Steele’s views are like anti-matter to each other.

He could finesse the issue by simply leaving it alone, but Steele is NOT doing that. He’s pushing it, and I’m not sure that will serve him well. He’s carrying his race on his shoulder and thats almost always not a good look.

Political Season on March 12, 2009 at 9:43 PM