Today marks the 100th day of Michael Steele’s term as chairman of the Republican National Committee. And what a blooper reel it’s been.
To commemorate the occasion, here’s some of the, uh, highlights from Think Progress:
In all honesty, Steele’s struggles would be funny if they were not so sad and predictable. If you’re at all interested, here’s a handful of links detailing some of his problems here, here, here and here.
And with the 100th day upon us, I return to something I wrote the day after the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Mike Tomlin became the youngest coach to win a Super Bowl:
Republicans and conservatives themselves have been guilty of engaging in the worst kind of affirmative action, often going out of their way to reward marginal candidates with jobs – many times with the hope that they’d fail as proof of their manifest superiority. Folks like Clarence Thomas, Sarah Palin and now Michael Steele serve a peculiar purpose in that regard.
In the words of the late, great Ralph Wiley, who was speaking of Armstrong Williams but could have been talking about anyone in the aforementioned trio:
“And then he said some predictable things against ‘affirmative action,’ not realizing, probably, that he was the perfect embodiment of it as it should not (emphasis mine)be implemented. He rented his office due to his opinions … He said all the right things to the privileged and they opened their burgeoning coffers to make sure he was heard.”
Certainly he couldn’t have been talking about Steele, who didn’t pass the Maryland Bar Exam in his only attempt, once compared stem cell research to Nazi experiments during the Holocaust and defended former Maryland Gov. Bob Ehrlich’s decision to hold a $100,000 fundraiser at a country club that did not allow non-white members, saying that the club’s membership’s policies were “not an issue” because “I don’t play golf”?
So really, what did we expect? And even over the past week, the beat has gone on and on and on.
Think he’ll make it another 100 days?
