Michael Steele: The RNC helped prevent tea partiers from going third-party

“The RNC welcomed the energy and limited government principles of Tea Party voters and grassroots conservatives, and worked hard to ensure that their views found expression within the Republican party, and not in a potentially ruinous third-party movement,” Steele said in a five-page memo sent to committee members Thursday.

“While President Obama and the Washington crowd treated the Tea Party with disdain or condescension, the RNC accorded them respect,” Steele wrote, in a clear allusion to Republican officials such as Karl Rove and Sen. John Cornyn, the Texas Republican who ran the National Republican Senatorial Committee…

“Given the shambles the party was in at the end of 2008, circumstances were ripe for a new party to emerge,” Steele wrote. “Encouraging those millions of disaffected conservative voters to become active Republicans was at the center of the RNC’s turnout strategy.”