Josh Marshall:All, All, All About Race

[cal04]

Josh Marshall
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2010/04/all_all_all_about_race.php#more?ref=fpblg

As I noted earlier, I don't think there's any question that when the conversation about Michael Steele starts going to whether and how much Steele is spending frivolously, likes the living the high-life and is living large on other people's money, that race is there in the mix. It can't not be.

But let's be honest: everything about Michael Steele's tenure running the RNC is about race.

Michael Steele got the job for one reason: Republicans needed someone who could be the point man for bashing Barack Obama while being immune not only from charges of racism but any discussion of the fact that the current GOP is a party made up pretty much 100% of white folks. As is common with Republicans, Steele is the mirror image, ersatz Obama. Whatever else you can say about the 44th president, in the 2008 campaign and to a great degree still, he was a phenomenon, a meteoric political figure whose power on the political stage was much greater than the sum of his parts.

(snip)
Steele was hired because he was black. And the other truth is that now he can't be fired, in significant measure, because he's black. Because canning Steele now would only drive home the reality that Republicans were trying to paper over, fairly clumsily, when they hired him in the first place. So Republicans are stuck with his myriad goofs and #pressfails and incompetent management and all the rest because of a set of circumstances entirely of their own making.

[jody]

1. I hope no one accuses Michael Steele of being the RNC's Uncle Tom. n/t

[classysassy]

2. The republican party

is as two tom party,Steele and Uncle Clarence.