Note to Steele: Make it Real Before You Keep it Real

By: Deborah Mathis

Having been read the Riot Act by the Republican National Committee elite, Michael Steele is now said to be abandoning his Here I Am Tour to focus on fundraising and rebuilding the RNC infantry – jobs one and two in regaining political power.

Or so they say.

Where both the party faithful and Steele are off-track is in their assessment of what it will take to win the hearts and minds of the American majority and, thereby, the power they seek. No doubt, it is essential to raise money – the “mother’s milk of politics,” as an old pol once put it – and you need a staff of operatives to manage fundraising activities, execute the media outreach, activate the spin machine and get out the vote. But, that presumes you have something to spend all of the money and energy on.

So far, the GOP’s got bean bag, unless you want to count the same old staid ideas that took them pretty much nowhere in the 2006 mid-term and the 2008 presidential elections.

To his credit, Steele seems to have gotten that much of the message that came through so loudly and clearly last Nov. 4, with the election of a candidate who was, in practically every way, the polar opposite of the tiresome incumbent – the tiresome Republican incumbent, that is.

When he won the RNC chairmanship in January, he came out swinging. And swaggering.
To hear him tell it, the Grand Old Party was in reformation, and the new organization he envisioned would have a hip hop edge to it.

Note to Steele: Make it Real Before You Keep it Real....