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You are here: Home / Politics / Is Steele in trouble?

Is Steele in trouble?

by DougJ|  February 8, 200910:05 am| 28 Comments

This post is in: Politics

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You may have seen this story already:

Michael S. Steele, the newly elected chairman of the Republican National Committee, arranged for his 2006 Senate campaign to pay a defunct company run by his sister for services that were never performed, his finance chairman from that campaign has told federal prosecutors.

Federal agents in recent days contacted Steele’s sister, a spokesman for Steele said yesterday.

[….]

The recent allegations outlined four specific transactions. In addition to the payment to Steele’s sister, Fabian said that the candidate used money from his state campaign improperly; that Steele paid $75,000 from the state campaign to a law firm for work that was never performed; and that he or an aide transferred more than $500,000 in campaign cash from one bank to another without authorization.

The bank transfer was made against the explicit wishes of other Maryland Republicans

Now, the usual rule here is that IOFYAR IOKIYAR, but remember, it’s often not okay if you are a Republican who is distrusted by the real wingnuts in the party (just ask Harriet Miers), as Steele is. And the NRCC treasurer scandal, which led to the retirements of Congressmen Jim Walsh and Tom Reynolds (and possibly others as well), is still pretty fresh in people’s memories.

I wonder if there will be a move to dump Steele now.

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Reader Interactions

28Comments

  1. 1.

    CrazyDrumGuy

    February 8, 2009 at 10:13 am

    IOFYAR? You mean IOKIYAR?

  2. 2.

    JL

    February 8, 2009 at 10:15 am

    Raise you hand if you heard a discussion about this on MSM.

  3. 3.

    John Cole

    February 8, 2009 at 10:22 am

    You have to be kidding me, right? You guys claim I am the one who is naive, but have you not paid attention to ANYTHING the last ten years?

    Steele being under assault from the evil Bush Justice department and attacked by leftist America-hating Democrats and the liberal media will not cause him to be dropped from a purely political position at the RNC. To the contrary, it STRENGTHENS his position there.

  4. 4.

    Andrew

    February 8, 2009 at 10:29 am

    IOFYAR? What about IOKIMTWMTYS*?

    (* It’s okay if Mike Tyson was married to your sister. How fucking weird is that?)

  5. 5.

    The Grand Panjandrum

    February 8, 2009 at 10:31 am

    I saw this "defense" of Steele at NRO.

    Not until you reach well down on the jump page do you learn this interesting little detail: "The U.S. attorney’s office inadvertently sent the confidential document, a defense sentencing memorandum filed under seal, to The Washington Post after the newspaper requested the prosecution’s sentencing memorandum." Inadvertently sent what was supposed to be a sealed document to the Post? Yeah, sure, and the Post will sell you the Brooklyn Bridge real cheap, too.

    Kevin Drum had this FTW.

    Well, considering that U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein was appointed by George Bush, my guess is that he will indeed lose his job pretty soon. Just like all the rest of Bush’s USAs. As for an investigation, that seems like it would be a petty and vindictive partisan attack on a Bush appointee who’s going to be out of office soon anyway, but I guess it’s OK with me if conservatives insist.

    Does NRO have access to the Google? Or maybe they could just go to the DOJ website and find out who the USA in that district is.

    EDIT: Looks like Cole linked to the Mojo post earlier. But Drum’s point is that Hayward wants the USA fired or reprimanded or something, and blames it on the Obama folks.

  6. 6.

    Reverend Dennis

    February 8, 2009 at 10:40 am

    The media certainly jumped on the fact that Labor Secretary Hilda Solis’ husband’s business owed $6400 in back taxes. Solis isn’t a partner in the business but her confirmation hearing has been put on hold anyway. Steele, on the other hand, is defending his payment of campaign funds to a company run by his sister – after the company was dissolved.

    Oddly enough, I haven’t seen any drumbeat of comments in the press characterizing this as "The worst week for the Republican party."

  7. 7.

    El Cid

    February 8, 2009 at 10:46 am

    Maybe the Republicans just want to make sure that by the end of the Steele affair, their ratio of African Americans reaches truly microscopic numbers.

  8. 8.

    MattF

    February 8, 2009 at 11:01 am

    So… Steele has an ethical/"If I only had a brain" problem? He’s a Republican, right? What’s the issue?

  9. 9.

    jcricket

    February 8, 2009 at 11:03 am

    My first thought on reading this news is that Republican party officials are having to bite their tongues to avoid saying, "this is why we can’t trust black people to run our party"…

    It will be interesting to see if Republicans break their "11th commandment" for something that tons of them are guilty of (Cunningham, Delay, etc) or not.

  10. 10.

    Common Sense

    February 8, 2009 at 11:21 am

    Steele is a fucking moron. He seems to believe that all government jobs are temporary, and only private sector jobs are long term. Despite those same jobs disappearing by the millions in front of his face.

    Christ this dude makes my head hurt. He is so dense I’m pretty sure he’s sucking small asteroids into Earth’s orbit as we speak.

  11. 11.

    CrazyDrumGuy

    February 8, 2009 at 11:24 am

    They’re going to have no choice but to kick Steele out of their country club party.

  12. 12.

    mellowjohn

    February 8, 2009 at 11:24 am

    steele was on "this weak" this morning, sputtering his way through this with the traditional republican defense, i.e., "it’s all the media’s fault for reporting it."

    btw, stephanopuseless let him get away with repeating the blatant lie that bush inherited a recession. not even a "boo" in response.

  13. 13.

    EL

    February 8, 2009 at 11:51 am

    To Common Sense

    Steele is a fucking moron. He seems to believe that all government jobs are temporary, and only private sector jobs are long term. Despite those same jobs disappearing by the millions in front of his face.

    Spot on, I was sputtering when I watched that. But he also ignores the fact that this is supposed to help in the short term until the economy recovers. Idiots!

  14. 14.

    JenJen

    February 8, 2009 at 12:02 pm

    He was just awful on George Steph’s show. Runaway Beer Truck-Awful. It was an interesting experiment while it lasted, I guess, but yeah, I think Steele’s not gonna last long. Less because of the check to his sister, and more because he is a godawful shit-poor surrogate. Haley Barbour was probably laughing his fat ass off.

  15. 15.

    Zifnab25

    February 8, 2009 at 12:08 pm

    @mellowjohn: In two thousand and fucking one. Unless Steele wants to argue that we’ve been in a recession for the past 8 years, I’m not sure what his point is.

    And, for the record, I do hold Clinton partially responsible for the collapse of Enron and the tech bubble. His administration wasn’t vigorous enough in shutting that scam down, and it was a scam running through a large part of the 1990s.

    But someone somewhere decided that the Republican Party isn’t in the job of actually taking any new responsibility. Why anyone would vote for a party that considers, "My administration wasn’t, strictly speaking, worse than my opposition party’s previous one" a HIGHLIGHT of the term in office boggles my mind. The GOP keeps lowering the bar for itself and people keep applauding the ability to cross increasingly lower standards.

    Thank god the Republican Party isn’t in charge of the fucking fire department. I could see the headlines. "Firefighters arrive to half-burned house and succeed in making sure only the other half of the house burns down." Even if they weren’t completely full of shit and the 2000 recession and the 2008 recession were comparable, is it really something to brag about? "Oh, but Clinton left us with a recession too, so hurray us! Par for the course!"

  16. 16.

    August J. Pollak

    February 8, 2009 at 12:21 pm

    You’re very naive if you think this is going to get Steele removed from the RNC. The Freeper mantra is already exactly the same as the Palin stuff was- that "this is proof the libs are afraid of him."

    Right-wingers are only furious and outraged at a Republican if there’s an immediate replacement for him/her which is their actual motive for wanting the former removed. They hated John McCain because they magically wanted Sarah Palin to be the nominee. They hated the previous RNC Chair because they wanted Steele. Harriet Miers needed to be dumped for a more conservative SCOTUS justice.

    Don’t get me wrong, Democrats do this too (the kos kids should really just admit they jumped on the "dump Daschle" movement because they had a magical pony fairy fantasy that this would somehow make Howard Dean chair of HHS and not because they became gravely, gravely concerned about voluntarily-corrected mistakes on tax forms).

    But there’s no alternative for Steele- he’s the one they wanted, just as they’ll defend every corrupt act Palin’s pulled off as governor because she’s who they want.

  17. 17.

    Will

    February 8, 2009 at 1:14 pm

    Steele is a fucking moron. He seems to believe that all government jobs are temporary, and only private sector jobs are long term. Despite those same jobs disappearing by the millions in front of his face.

    He only thinks that because the only government job he ever held was temporary.

    The fact that his sister’s fake company was named "Brown Sugar" can’t be helping him with the GOPers right now.

    Oh, and if the following doesn’t doom him, I don’t know what will:

    http://oliverwillis.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/tysonsteele.jpg

  18. 18.

    JenJen

    February 8, 2009 at 1:21 pm

    @August J. Pollak: But my gut tells me that Steele isn’t "their guy." I didn’t follow the chair election closely, but I would think the wingnuttiest wing of the party would’ve preferred Katon Dawson.

    Also, his talking points this morning were uncharacteristically off, for an RNC Chair, from the air-tight points most Republican members of Congress used in their appearances today. "The Japan Stimulus Failed," "Keynesian policies prolonged the Great Depression," and "Bush was wrong about a lot of stuff but his tax cuts worked" seemed to be the three prevailing themes, and Steele sounded like he was going all broken arrow when he got into the "government jobs are temporary" thing with George Steph.

    I could be way off on this. I haven’t ventured over to Red State/Freeper-land in a very long time.

  19. 19.

    opium4themasses

    February 8, 2009 at 3:16 pm

    @The Grand Panjandrum: I had an odd thought. I wonder if the U.S. Attorney leaked it as a way for Republicans to have a reason to get rid of Steele. Now that Obama is president, their tent may be looking awfully white and peaked.

  20. 20.

    TenguPhule

    February 8, 2009 at 4:36 pm

    I wonder if there will be a move to dump Steele now.

    China beat us to it.

  21. 21.

    jcricket

    February 8, 2009 at 5:37 pm

    And, for the record, I do hold Clinton partially responsible for the collapse of Enron and the tech bubble. His administration wasn’t vigorous enough in shutting that scam down, and it was a scam running through a large part of the 1990s.

    You can definitely blame Democrats for being too lax during the 90s. They share blame for creating the fundamental environment that lead to this mess. But Bush and the GOP happily poured gasoline on the fire they found, and then dropped napalm on top of that, and followed up with some white phosphorus. Or to steal Obama’s metaphor, they realized we were driving towards a cliff and they stepped on the gas and cut the brake lines.

    At least Democrats appear partially capable of learning from their mistakes. I doubt we’ll see a repeal of the bankruptcy bill or a real regulatory regime, but if we even move half the way in that direction, and get slightly more progressive taxation, it will be 1000% better than what the GOP is offering.

  22. 22.

    kommrade reproductive vigor

    February 8, 2009 at 5:46 pm

    @JL: [Raises hand]. I can’t remember if I saw it in the paper first (front page above the fold) or on Yahoo!’s news feed.

    Of course, any coverage or mention of this little misunderstanding is 100% racist. Or that’s what the GOP will tell us, right up until they kick him out and Faux Snooze calls him a Democrat.

  23. 23.

    DougJ

    February 8, 2009 at 5:50 pm

    I still think there’s a reasonable chance Steele won’t make it. He’s pushing back against the story and calling WaPo names. That’s never a good sign.

  24. 24.

    pattonbt

    February 8, 2009 at 6:03 pm

    @JenJen:

    The details of what he says really wont matter to the dead ender non thinkers (RedState) as long as it goes against reason, practicality and the Dems and is said with confidence. The Republicans will throw out any crazy souding argument / rationale to see what sticks. They just want a meme to win the daily news cycle, thats all.

    So they can say the craziest stuff and then let the dust settle to see which one works best. Then they will harp on it until that is discredited enough and move on to the next bogus talking point.

    Right now they seem to only have one agenda – ‘TAX CUTS!!!!!!’. I mean, tax cuts saved my marriage. Tax cuts cured my acne. Tax cuts tase great / less filling!

    The rest is fluff. But to be extra special prudent, throw in a tad bit of jingosim and Godsmite and all is well.

    They may not like Steele, but Steele is amoral enough to do what is necessary so he is just as good as any of the others (in their eyes).

  25. 25.

    Thoughtcrime

    February 8, 2009 at 8:24 pm

    I’m waiting for Chris Collinsworth’s color analysis of this Steele( R ).

  26. 26.

    rikyrah

    February 8, 2009 at 8:41 pm

    IFF Barack Obama had the LEGITIMATE ‘questionable’ associations that Michael Steele has – he never would have been elected Senator, let alone President.

    If Barack Obama had a sibling that had relationships with one of the biggest drug dealers on the East Coast, AND one with a convicted rapist athlete…

    IN addition to the ‘questionable’ financial dealings that Steele has…

    You don’t think the GOP would have torn Obama apart?

    After all, look what they tried to do with tangential relationships of Obama.

  27. 27.

    Cyrus

    February 9, 2009 at 9:51 am

    I wonder if there will be a move to dump Steele now.

    I hope not. It seems like Michael Steele would be bad for the Republican Party in the short term and good for it in the long term, which would be good for the country as a whole because of that whole "viable opposition party" thing.

    Steele as RNC marginalizes the racist, nativist side of the base. I’m not saying that they’re all Klan members, of course, or that they’re the only racists, but the party is way too willing to pander to that mentality, to tolerate intolerance. If Steele manages to keep the job, the Minutemen and Confederate fetishists will either leave the Republican party or grow up a bit and finally learn that they were on the wrong side, or at least that they’ve lost. So the Republican Party would probably lose the enthusiastic, unblinkered support of their base for the next few years, which might lead to a return to advocating sane policies.

    All this is assuming that the complaint about Steele’s financial shenanigans is trumped-up. If it’s real and if it’s as serious a matter as the blockquote makes it look like, then yeah, he’s probably gone. The Republican Party would get to tout its anti-racism ("look, we picked a black guy to lead us too!") and its anti-corruption ("look, we can hang a member of our party out to dry if he’s guilty too!"), without actually changing anything.

  28. 28.

    JHinAZ

    February 9, 2009 at 11:02 pm

    OK — so what the hell does IOFYAR mean??????

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