Listen, Michael Steele has every reason to be pissed about not being RNC chair anymore after a very successful run there. No matter what you think of Steele (yes he suffers from huge foot-in-the-mouth disease), the GOP picked up the House under his watch. But now after getting support to run for a second term, which led him to quit, Steele goes on MSNBC of all places and makes himself into a clown kowtowing to Rachel Maddow. In other words, he's clearly bitter and become sad to watch:
Last night Rachel Maddow drew a stark comparison between the confident post-midterm rhetoric of a recently victorious GOP — who repeatedly averred “no compromise” to anyone that would listen — to the recent willingness to find common ground with the Obama administration. Maddow explained the many reasons behind the alleged 180 degree turn-around, namely that GOP House leadership “metaphorically punched themselves in the face so hard, they hurt no just their face, but also their hand,” before running down what she sees as numerous political missteps.
The missteps include the reading of the Constitution on the House floor (excepting the parts that they didn’t like or where pages where stuck together); the constitutional crisis of having to swear in to Republican members of the House who oddly took the oath in front of a television instead of the official swearing in; the dueling state of the union responses from Michele BachmannPaul Ryan; and the alleged proposal to raise taxes over Abortions. What follows in the pretty damning segment is Maddow surgically adding injury to insult, summing up by claiming that “the Republicans today don’t seem to be off message, they appear to be at war with themselves.” and
She then had on the former RNC Chair (and surprisingly new Maddow BFF) Michael Steele who seemed to claim that he predicted the challenges with governance that the MSNBC host had just laid out so reasonably, and yes some would say, lopsidedly. But interestingly, Steele didn’t seem to argue with the lopsided or biased presentation, rather he was quick to point out just how correct Maddow’s tough assessment was.
What do we really learn from this segment? As Steele points out, its very hard to play the role of leader in today’s political climate, and very easy to list all the missteps of leading political class by those in the opinion media game (see Jon Stewart during the Bush era and/or Fox News prime time programming in the last two years.) This is not what a harmonic convergence looks like.
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