After largely slipping out of the headlines for a while, Michael Steele is once again facing dissent from within his own party about his leadership as the chairman of the RNC. It all seemed to flare up anew a few weeks ago with the news that Steele was being paid up to $20,000 to give speeches, something former RNC chairmen reacted to with a healthy dose of curmudgeonly grumbling. Earlier this week he angered more Republicans when, during an interview about a new book nobody knew he had written, Steele told Sean Hannity that he wasn’t sure if the GOP was “ready” to control the House. Still with us? Good, it gets better.
Yesterday, Steele sassed his critics in an interview with ABC News radio, saying, “If you don’t want me in the job, fire me. But until then, shut up.” In a separate interview with Dennis Miller, Steele claimed that the role of RNC chairman is a burden that was unwillingly thrust upon him, as if he were compelled to take care of the GOP after its parents were killed in a car accident. “I mean, I didn’t ask for, I didn’t seek this job, I didn’t ask for it,” he said. “It wasn’t part of my, you know, chartered course in life to wind up as chairman of the RNC.” If that’s true, then Michael Steele has even bigger problems than we realized, because some impersonator who looks exactly like him went around campaigning for the RNC chairmanship a year ago.
After Declaring ‘I Want The Gig,’ Steele Claims He Didn’t ‘Seek’ RNC Chairmanship [Think Progress]
