Dave Weigel at Slate mourns “The End of the Michael Steele Era“:
… Steele gave the political press one of its best, saddest, and funniest enduring stories. This was the problem with him, even if it was a problem Republican National Committee members had sort of asked for. He was a celebrity in his own right, an African-American politician whose 2006 race for U.S. Senate had made the cover of the New York Times Magazine… Magazine reporters wanted to shadow him and profile him. Cable news and urban radio wanted to book him. And then he would honor these requests, and things would go horribly wrong, and he’d wind up getting made fun of by Jon Stewart or – so much worse – Jay Leno.
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When today’s vote began, Steele was already counted out. There were too many RNC members who’d promised to vote for someone else, some of them explaining their votes with horror stories about things Steele had botched. Speaker of the House John Boehner and former Vice President Dick Cheney had endorsed Maria Cino, a longtime party fixer and Bush administration veteran, and the fact that these men were dissing the chairman of their party was an afterthought…
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[Steele] promoted his own role with factoids like a 40 percent open rate for e-mail appeals, a 50 percent surge in traffic for the GOP.com redesigned under his tenure…
Most of that increase from DFHs and snarkbloggers looking for easy targets, would be the incivil thought.
… The news, however, was in Steele’s fortresses of solitude. When he switched rooms, he said he was not dropping out. When he left them to return for the next ballot, he smiled an anything-to-stop-me-from-punching-you smile at the reporters hounding him about his plans.
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“The crowd keeps getting bigger, and bigger, and bigger, and bigger, and bigger, and bigger!” he said, picking up speed as he got to the RNC members-only meeting floor. He finally gave the majority of members what they wanted. He dropped out and endorsed Maria Cino.
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“And now,” said Steele, “I exit stage right.” He walked stage left, because that was where his supporters were waiting for him. He hung around for the rest of the votes, away from the press, and inaudible in the din of the meeting.
RNC voters, of course, preferred to go back to their comfort zone: nondescript white penis-bearer.
Steele’s endorsement of Cino did her absolutely no good. She lost votes as Priebus gained them; on the seventh ballot, he won the chairmanship. The new leader of the Republican National Committee immediately grabbed an outsized gavel [ed: what is with the Repub penchant for oversized tools?], took over the podium, and starting running things… He took a few questions about how ready he was for the job, and how ready he was to raise lots of money. He invoked the divine to prove that he was.
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“We’re blessed to have John Boehner as Speaker of the House, we’re blessed to have Mitch McConnell as leader in the Senate,” he said. On his ability to work with the media: “With God’s help, anything is possible.”
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Brief, dull, bad for TV – just what Republicans were looking for.
Maybe they hope snarkers will be deterred by the difficulty of pronouncing or spelling his name correctly? Little do they appreciate our all-American ingenuity:
LITBMueller: Maybe its just me, but “Reince Priebus” sounds like a character from a Star Wars movie… Totally awesome!
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Wile E. Quixote: Yeah, but it’s a character from the first trilogy, and somewhere there’s a warehouse full of unsold Reince Priebus action figures.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
Et tu, Priebus?
Hunter Gathers
I’m going to miss the Daily Show’s Michael Steele puppet.
Joseph Nobles
“Exit, stage left even…”
piratedan
@Joseph Nobles: alright, I’ll give it to ya….. heavens to murgatroid!
Ruckus
I hear Rinse Repeat.
Triassic Sands
For entertainment value, Steele must be the greatest RNC chairman ever. After his stint, I’d expect induction into the Clown Hall of Fame would be pretty much guaranteed. (Assuming there is any room left for a new member, when one considers how much floor space Glenn Beck exhibits must take up.)
JGabriel
Hunter Gathers: Yes, but at least they still have the John McCain Puppet.
And I personally look forward to the orange John Boehner puppet, though I wonder if any of us will be able to tell the difference.
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J. Michael Neal
Does he now come out of the closet . . . as a Democrat?
Ailuridae
@Hunter Gathers:
They should really auction that puppet off for charity. Have the writers and Stewart sign it and some charity will be very happy at the end of the auction
TheNickronomicon
I keep turning his name around. “Prince Rhebus” sounds way, way cooler.
Viva BrisVegas
I thought funny sounding names were evidence of unAmericanism in teabaggerland.
S. cerevisiae
@Hunter Gathers: Exactly. Once he became a (real) puppet no one took him seriously. It is to laff.
S. cerevisiae
@Viva BrisVegas: Rience Priebus is Jabba the Hutt’s caporegieme. At least that’s how I see it.
Lancelot Link
Rebus Cannibus?
de stijl
I will always honor Steele’s acknowledgment that the Republicans have actively pursued the Southern Strategy since Nixon’s day. That took some stones.
Of course he walked it back the next day, because he realized (or was tactfully reminded) how his bread got buttered, but you have to give it up for a Republican who actually told the truth about race and politics, however briefly.
Comrade Javamanphil
Rience Preibus is clearly latin for bland white penis owner.
SGEW
I believe his name is German and Greek.
And as someone who has a “funny” name (my handle is just made of my initials, by the way — my full name is a mouthful of non-English word salad), and whose president is named “Barack Obama,” I hope people will back off on just making fun of this guy’s name all the time.
I know we’re all going to miss the ease with which we could make fun of Mr. Steele (so easy!), but I’m sure there will be ample opportunities for ridicule of Mr. Priebus based his words and actions — not just the “ethnic” name given to him by his parents.
[I honestly don’t know if I’m being a concern-troll, if I’m just drunk on the fumes of “civility” that have been leaking from the internets recently, or if it’s just that making fun of peoples’ given names for being “foreign” or “funny sounding” bugs me for personal reasons. But it’s how I feel this morning.]
ploeg
No, it’s “Exit, pursued by a bear“.
Gin & Tonic
@SGEW:
As the inheritor, myself, of a name that commonly has people wishing they could buy a vowel or two or three, I’m with you. So the guy is not named “John Smith” — let’s let him say something stupid, and then begin the mocking.
Although I do love the part, as seen elsewhere, that if you take out the vowels his name becomes RNC PR BS.
PurpleGirl
@Gin & Tonic:
That is some powerful disemvowelment snark. And a true description of his job. Yes, he was meant for the job.
RalfW
Prince Riebus indeed should be it!
A pretender to a throne, alludes to all the money and king-making, and the GOP disdain for a functioning democracy .
martha
That dipshit from Wisconsin will continue to provide all of us with as much entertainment as Steele did…he will embarrass those of us who call WI home. He’s more wacko than Steele, mark my words.
chopper
@RalfW:
plus you can show his name using pictures of stuff and plus and minus signs, so illiterate goopers will be able to identify him.
ET
I know that other than the frequent embarrassments, one of his biggest problems was the dwindling incoming donations. I am sure some of this can be put down to the upheavals at the RNC as alluded to by someone quoted in a WaPo article, but I wonder how much of the diminishing donations problem can be put down to people giving up, however temporarily, in the GOP. Might the RNC problem be bigger than Steele.
Tea Partiers seem more likely to give directly to candidates and independents that lean GOP may just have dropped out period.
aimai
@ET:
Also, as far as I can see, the whole Steele fiasco simply enabled the real power brokers to offshore their money into the hands of Karl Rove where it could be doled out without supervision by the press. Steele, in retrospect, looks like a distraction that encouraged meaningless non informational reporting while feeding into the sense of alienation and rage that the regular voting Republicans feel. The party isn’t funded by its grassroots, anyway but by its deep pockets and billionaires.
aimai
djheru
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”
piratedan
anyone have a clue why it is that the last two RNC chair’s have names that sound as if they were lifted from comic books?
Ash Can
@martha: The question is, though, will he be as harmless as Steele was? I always got the impression from Steele that he was never up to anything more nefarious than picking his own party’s pocket. Working to actively harm one’s political opponents in particular, and the nation in general, always takes the luster off the entertainment factor. We didn’t really have that with Steele.
maya
Prince Reebus’, whatever, first real test will come with how he handles the upcoming Reagan Day
inebriationscelebrations.Nellcote
So perfectly Steele. But my favorite will always be “cow on the tracks of progress”.
Frank
Ploeg @17 ~ Love the reference! In Steele’s case, he was pursued by an elephant clad in red, white and blue (dangling teabags from his floppy ears).
ricardo
Priebus has the misfortune of having his name sound almost exactly like “prepuce.” Let the fun begin.
Mnemosyne
@ET:
I have to agree with aimai, unfortunately — Steele caused the deep-pocketed donors to give their money to Karl Rove’s organization and similar post-Citizens Republican front groups. Which, not coincidentally, do not have the same dollar amount restrictions that a donation to an explicitly political organization like the RNC does.
Which, also not coincidentally, is one of the big reasons Democrats got their asses kicked in November. When you have five Republican front groups that all have $50 million to spend, it’s hard for Democrats to keep up.
AuldBlackJack
Reince Priebus?
…sounds French to me.
tam1MI
So, let me get this straight – Michael Steele, who presided over a Republican sweep of the House, gains in the Senate, and a near tsunami taking over state houses and governorships, is run out of his position heading the RNC on rail; but Tim Kaine, who presided over a near historic-shellacking of his party (60-plus seats lost in Congress, the entire midwest going over to total control by the Republicans, among other disasters), remains safely ensconced at the DNC?
Politics, it’s funny.