Who's Your Daddy? Steele was smacked back
into place by Limbaugh
“Michael Steele, you are head
of the RNC; you are not head of the Republican
Party”—Rush Limbaugh, talk host
 It
has been about a month after the first Republican
Party’s first African-American chairman Michael Steele
took his first initial victory lap around America’s
major media outlets, proclaiming the rebirth of the
party of Lincoln.
He tried to put a bolder, hipper image on the tired old
bastion of white conservatism, saying it was going to be
more inclusive, more accepting in its recruiting of
minorities and women. He was going to breathe new life
into the demoralized GOP.
Following his narrow victory into the top post of the
RNC, Steele should have known that his “house Negro”
stance was not going to be swallowed by the die-hard
Christian right or the staunch bigots who never liked
anything dark unless it was the chocolate lawn jockey at
the edge of their driveways or their narrow-butted
corn-silk haired wives with their bronzed Florida tans.
Actor George Hamilton’s orange skin hue was too close to
the real thing for them. And now Steele was attempting
to shanghai the leadership of one of the last citadels
of white political supremacy. No damn way!
What Mr. Steele did wrong was he started to claim his
“hood-rat” side. That did not sit right with the good
ole boys at the segregated country clubs and the lily
white secret societies. He bragged to The Washington
Times that he planned to get his posse of “off-the-hook”
public relations wizards to target Latino and Black
youths in “hip-hop settings.” Huh?
Then he went on the radio waves to blast President Obama
as pushing a budget of pork with a heaping helping of “bling
bling” through Congress and the Republican faithful
grimaced at this phony show of bogus soul.
Mr. Steele was not finished. He challenged late night
funny man Stephen Colbert in a podcast to a “rap off”
contest. A phony Vanilla Ice knockoff in dark face
chanting Public Enemy rhymes. He began to strut like the
new president, chat on his Blackberry, and trash-talk
about his new crossover dribble. When CNN’s D.L. Hughley
quizzed the pretender to the GOP throne about Rush, the
oracle of the Right, Steele retorted: “Rush Limbaugh is
an entertainer.” Smelling himself, as the folks from
down home say, he called the fat boy’s hugely popular
show as “ugly” and “incendiary.”
Repeating what James Carville, former Clinton adviser,
noted about Rush’s imperial reign the week before,
Hughley needled Mr. Steele with a barbed comeback that
Limbaugh was the “de facto leader of the Republican
Party. Everyone knows that fact is on the money. Even
the veteran party members tiptoe around “Tiny” Limbaugh
whose tyrannical wrath they have come to fear.
In a recent speech in Washington with the conservatives
roaring approvingly, Limbaugh outlined the future of the
Republican party, took President Obama to task as an
enemy of free market capitalism and individual liberty,
and dressed Mr. Steele down as the pompous lackey he is.
He put Mr. Steele in his place. He also reminded that
the newly elected RNC chairman was his creation, had his
time in the conservative sun on his program, and chided
the Negro to not let the job go to his head.
Or as Limbaugh said to his listeners: “something
happened to” Mr. Steele. He further drove his point home
by adding, “He got airtime on this program. Now I’m just
an entertainer” and I’m ‘ugly’ and my program is
‘incendiary.’” The verbal whipping by Limbaugh didn’t go
unnoticed by the underlings of the party. In the hours
after the show’s conclusion, the phones rang off the
hook with praises and kudos.
As for Mr. Steele, he put his tail between his legs and
went hat in hand to the Master. He took low. He
groveled. He told Politico that Monday that he didn’t
mean no harm. “I went back at that tape and I realized
words that I said weren’t that I was thinking,” the
submissive front man moaned.
“It was one of those things where I was thinking I was
saying one thing, and it came out differently. What I
was trying to say was a lot of people want to make Rush
the scapegoat, the bogeyman, and he’s not.”
America was watching the weak-kneed performance by
Steele. Gov. Tim Kaine, chairman of the Democratic
National Committee, issued a statement that Steele’s
whimpering indicated that “Limbaugh is the leading force
behind the Republican Party, its politics, and its
obstruction of President Obama’s agenda in Washington.”
The new president probably had a much needed laugh at
the Negro’s reversal of views.
But racially, it sent a poor signal. African Americans
and Hispanics, especially the young and the politically
curious, looked at the humiliating turn of events
between the Oxycontin-popping blowhard and the
submissive Negro as another indication of the GOP not
being the party of the first choice. It was not lost on
them when pundits said that the GOP convention resembled
a gathering in Nazi Germany. Or the sour images of
convention attendees wearing t-shirts with monkeys on
the chest. Now this, they get to see Mr. Steele doing a
buck-an-wing before the magnificent Limbaugh holding out
his hand with the thumb down.
Truthfully, the Republican Party lacks capable
leadership, except some retreads. Their policies of
arrogance and aggression cost them two recent elections.
They are desperately clinging to the policies of yore
and are resisting change or progress. They need fresh
ideas and an alternative plan to the president’s
hail-Mary stimulus plan. They blame Senator John McCain
for their disaster at the polls.
They blame conservative senators Olympia Snowe, Susan
Collins, and Arlen Specter as duped traitors of the
Obama socialist regime. They will muzzle Mr. Steele and
bring him into zombie lockstep in their frenzied quest
to take the country back. God, have mercy on your soul,
Mr. Steele
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