Steele DOES Get It

This Politico article totally takes Rush Limbaugh's side in the Michael Steele/Limbaugh "battle".

(Michael) Steele’s job is really not that difficult. Being a party chairman is not what it used to be. Steele’s job is to raise money and go on TV every now and then and not screw things up too badly.

He has failed at this last task.

Unfortunately for him, Steele actually believes he should be the voice of the Republican Party, crafting its vision and shaping its strategy.

Enter Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh has his own voice, his own vision and his own strategy. And the real trouble for Steele is that Limbaugh understands the core of the Republican Party — where it wants to go and what it wants to do — far better than Steele does.

Steele has somehow gotten it into his head that hard-core Republicans want to expand the party base to attract new voters, especially minorities.

Well, I don't know for sure if all "hard-core" Republicans want to attract minorities into the GOP, but I'd like to think that there's more than enough reasonable ones that do. Steele is being victimized for going on talk shows and not hitting back the hosts hard enough when confronted with anti-GOP rhetoric. In this sense, criticism of Steele is justified (e.g., I would have NEVER let anyone associate the GOP with Nazis as Steele allowed D.L. Hughley to just recently).

OK. But the Politico article primarily hammers Steele for having the crazy notion that the Republican party shouldn't be reaching out to minorities. That's just ridiculous. One thing is to sell out your principles while reaching out, yet another is to maintain those principles intact while encouraging folks to come to our side of the fence. I mean, it's not as if people are banging down doors to join the GOP these days.

In this humble correspondent's view, it is VITAL that the GOP reach out to minorities. If Michael Steele, a minority himself, knows that, why doubt him? If we keep our heads in the sand and pretend as if folks are just going to magically show up and be Republicans, especially in a day and age when the media continues to feed misconceptions of Republicans and conservatives, when minorities will soon become the aggregate majority in this country, then you can kiss conservatism in this country good-bye.

True conservatism doesn't have to sell out in order to appeal to a wide range of individuals. This has been proven time and time again. People just want to be a part of something that makes sense, and conservatism in its purest form most certainly does. If it's indeed true that hard-core Republicans desire not to reach out to people outside the traditional GOP profile (again I'm not convinced of this), then perhaps it's they who need to reevaluate their values, not folks like Michael Steele who despite differences in style and personality have bravely swam against the tide in support of their true beliefs.

(Cross-posted at Babalu)