We Don't Need No Stinking Outreach!

What can I say about Michael Steele that hasn't been said before. Honestly after watching Steele wingnut out on FoxNews for the better part of last year, when his name was mentioned as a candidate to chair the RNC I thought it would be a great move.....for Democrats. But I have to admit that even I couldn't have predicted the lengths to which this man would go to help out the Democratic Party. His prolific "foot in mouth" disease is the gift that keeps on giving and it seems he just can't help himself. Having said that I believe that yesterday he out did himself.

First of all I think everyone would acknowledge that if the Republican Party is ever to make a comeback it will need to make inroads into two constituencies that they have not done well with lately, women and minorities. You would think that outreach to those two voting blocks would be one of the chief goals of any new chairman of the RNC. And you know what, maybe it is a goal of Michael Steele, but as usual he has a very odd way of showing it.

Every Friday Steele guest hosts Bill Bennett's radio show. For that reason quite a few liberal and progressive watchdog groups tune in on Friday to catch the gaffes that they at this point can assume the very reliable Steele will give them. So yesterday he presented his fans and foes with this ditty:

STEELE: The problem that we have with this president is that we don’t know [Obama]. He was not vetted, folks. … He was not vetted, because the press fell in love with the black man running for the office. “Oh gee, wouldn’t it be neat to do that? Gee, wouldn’t it make all of our liberal guilt just go away? We can continue to ride around in our limousines and feel so lucky to live in an America with a black president.” Okay that’s wonderful, great scenario, nice backdrop. But what does he stand for? What does he believe? … So we don’t know. We just don’t know.

Now just because I am a black man doesn't mean I can speak for all other minorities, obviously. However I can say for me that one of the things that pisses me off is when someone implies that the only reason I or any other minorities achieved a level of excellence is because of the color of our skin. It gives the impression that OBVIOUSLY no minority could make it on their own merits, they simply MUST have been helped by some mythical "white liberal guilt". And yet here is Michael Steele trying to further that notion in order to try to delegitimize President Obama, our first black President. But the problem of course is that this notion exists not only in politics but also in the business world. And many minorities have experienced a touch of this in their personal life. The wondering about whether we were "affirmative action" hires. The whispers about our abilities match up with our white counterparts. When Steele says these things on the radio you have to wonder if he thinks that this is the way forward to bring more minorities into the fold of the Republican Party. But then you remember that this is a guy who doesn't "think" much apparently before he speaks.

But Mike Steele wasn't content to just potentially offend minorities yesterday. You see the RNC also put up an attack ad against Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi which was supposed to hit her for saying the CIA lies to Congress "all the time" last week. Now I would like to be able to show you the ad so you could have a frame of reference to how offensive it was but it has since been taken down. But have no fear, Politco has a scathing criticism of the ad up, a criticism that may well have been the very reason why the RNC under Steele's leadership decided to take the ad down.

But when you see Nancy Pelosi, the Republican National Committee wants you to think “Pussy Galore.”

At least that’s the takeaway from a video released by the committee this week – a video that puts Pelosi side-by-side with the aforementioned villainess from the 1964 James Bond film “Goldfinger.”

The RNC video, which begins with the speaker’s head in the iconic spy-series gun sight, implies that Pelosi has used her feminine wiles to dodge the truth about whether or not she was briefed by the CIA on the use of waterboarding in 2002. While the P-word is never mentioned directly, in one section the speaker appears in a split screen alongside the Bond nemesis – and the video’s tagline is “Democrats Galore.”

The wisdom of equating the first woman speaker of the House with a character whose first name also happens to be among the most vulgar terms for a part of the female anatomy might be debated – if the RNC were willing to do so, which it was not. An RNC spokesperson refused repeated requests by POLITICO to explain the point of the video, or the intended connection between Pelosi and Galore.

But what isn’t open to debate is that the waterboarding conflict has been accompanied by a cascade of attacks on the speaker, not as a leader or a legislator, but as a woman.

Earlier this week, Pittsburgh radio host Jim Quinn referred to the speaker on his program as “this bitch”; last week, syndicated radio host Neal Boortz opined “how fun it is to watch that hag out there twisting in the wind.”

There has also been a steady stream of taunts about the speaker’s appearance, and whether it’s been surgically enhanced. On CNN’s “State of the Union,” Republican strategist Alex Castellanos said, “I think if Speaker Pelosi were still capable of human facial expression, we’d see she’d be embarrassed.”

Even erstwhile presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee took the time to pen a poem that begins:

“Here's a story about a lady named Nancy / A ruthless politician, but dressed very fancy.”

One might argue that face-lift and fashion gibes are just sauce for the goose these days – especially given the president’s crack about John Boehner’s perma-tan during the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner.

But “hag”? The P-word? Really?

Not only is it bad form, say Democrats and women’s advocates, it’s bad politics. “

They can’t seem to distinguish between a backroom smirk among the boys and something you put out in public,” says former Hillary Clinton senior adviser Ann Lewis of the RNC video.

“It’s an attempt to demean your opponent, rather than debate them. If they’re serious that this is an issue of national security, then you’d think that one would want to debate it on the merits,” she says. “It’s almost as if they can’t help themselves.”

Now make no mistake, I generally don't have a problem with a political ad being a parody or an attempt at humor. But its hard to see this ad as anything other than a hamfisted attack on Speaker Pelosi's femininity. While I support Speaker Pelosi on most issues and I truly believe that she has been honest while discussing the CIA briefings I will be the first one to admit that her handling of the subject was bungled last week in her press conference. There was plenty of fertile ground for the RNC to attack her on the substance of her response, yet they decided to forgo all of that and just go to her looks and "feminine wiles". Seriously. Now I don't imagine that this ad would have offended ALL women in the middle, but I do believe it would have offended many of them. And Michael Steele still decided to put the ad out at a time when the Republican Party is bleeding members from almost every demographic. Way to build that big tent buddy.

Nothing is ever set in stone when it comes to politics and anything can happen between now and the midterms and between now and the next Presidential election in four years, but at some point Michael Steele and the RNC might want to realize that they need PEOPLE to win elections. As long as he keeps pulling this kind of stuff the issues might not even matter. If you can't get enough voters to like your party enough to vote for it's candidates then you won't win many elections. Its just that simple.