Steele's Strategery
Wasn't Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele supposed to go underground for awhile? Hire staff, start raising money, revamp the party's tech operation. Quietly convince RNC members and lawmakers and big money donors that he's up to the task of reorienting a struggling GOP after making a string of embarrassing public gaffes that put his job in jeopardy.
Well, Steele gave CNN an interview in which the one-term lieutenant governor of Maryland -- a position he won on a joint ticket with one of the most appealing centrist GOP gubernatorial candidates the blue-leaning state has seen in some time -- said he'll run for president if God wills it. Really? God would have had to turn off his television set over the last two months to will that kind of uncertainty on the GOP.
Here's Steele yesterday talking to CNN's Lemon:
"God has a way of revealing stuff to you, and making it real for you, through others," Steele said. "And if that's part of the plan, it'll be the plan....[If I run] it'll be because that's where God wants me to be at that time."
Steele also told CNN that his knock on Rush Limbaugh and subsequent apology were "strategic" -- in other words intended, not accidental, part of his bigger plan.
Per TPM:
Steele: I am very introspective about things. I don't do -- I am a cause and effect kind of guy. So if I do something, there's a reason for it. Even, it may look like a mistake, a gaffe. There is a rationale, there's a logic behind it.Lemon: Even with the current events in news--
Steele: Yeah.
Lemon: There's a rationale behind Rush, all that stuff?
Steele: Yup. Yup.
Lemon: You want to share it with us?
Steele: Sure, I want to see what the landscape looks like. I want to see who yells the loudest, I wanted to know who says they're with me but really isn't.
Lemon: How does that help you?
Steele: It helps me understand my position on the chess board. It helps me understand, you know, where the enemy camp is and where those who are inside the tent are.
Lemon: It's all strategic?
Steele: It's all strategic.
The exchange reminds me of a classic Chevy Chase line in Caddyshack: "For me there's a subtle perfection in everything I do. I have my own standards, my own way."
(JENNIFER SKALKA)