Michael Steele Clearly Doesn't Get The Meaning of "Minority Party"

As a blogger, I've got to say that I love Michael Steele. All I have to do when I'm having a hard time trying to find something to write about is pop over to Google News and type his name into the box. (I don't have a news alert set for him because I don't want to be overwhelmed with material.)

Today's source of inspriation comes from an op-ed Steele wrote for yesterday's Politico. It started on a note that almost made me feel a faint glimmer of hope that the GOP just might possibly be starting to figure out how to begin to start playing a constructive role in national politics:

The Republican Party finds itself the minority party in America for the first time in more than 15 years. I'll be the first to admit it has taken some adjustment. Republicans have engaged in some healthy soul-searching since Election Day, trying to come to grips with our minority status and debating the best way forward as we point out our differences with the Democrats and chart our return to the majority.

My hopes, alas, were rapidly dashed:

That is why I believe America needs the Republican Party now more than ever before. We may be America's minority party at the moment, but Republicans represent the views and concerns of a majority of Americans.
facepalm.jpg

Chairman Steele does not quite seem to have fully grasped just what's involved in becoming a minority party in politics. It's very hard to maintain minority party status for two consecutive elections if you truly do represent the views of the majority of Americans.

Let's put that another way: Chairman Steele might think that the Republican Party represents the majority of Americans, but there is copious empirical evidence that the majority of Americans disagree.

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You don't understand. Real True Americans were tricked by the Liberal Media Elite into believing that Obama was a conservative and an American. Once the mass of Real True Americans realise that they were misled they will come flocking back to the GOP. The GOP is only one election cycle away from regaining its permanent majority.

Mr. Steele just declared that the period of introspection is over.

Introspection is a process that, once begun, should never be "over". It's an ongoing process by means of which we confront our ignorance, our misinformation, and sometimes misguided actions and endeavor to improve ourselves. Declaring that somehow that process is at an end is tantamount to declaring that the party is actively and intentionally climbing back into the cave in which it has spent many decades, isolated from the real world, indulgent in fantasy and delusion, and out of touch with reality.

This is not a declaration of the reemergence of the party so much as a declaration of the continuation of its failed policies, coupled with a thinly veiled plea not to prosecute the criminals from the George W. Bush administration; something that, though emotionally and politically charged, really needs to happen if we are ever to fully heal, and to show that there really are consequences to the abuses of power in the United States of America. The integrity of our whole value system rides on it.

All that said, to the extent that the party can serve as a check against the Democratic agenda going too far, it has a role to play. But it must stay focused on that constructive role and not get lost in the same hot-button issues, often religiously motivated, that have mired it for so long and kept it out of touch.

However, to have any credibility in this pursuit, the party must once and for all embrace the Constitution of the United States of America in its entirity; not merely the amendments it likes. In particular, it must act in strict accordance with the foundational principal of the separation of church and state, never supporting efforts to legislate religion.

The party that speaks so frequently of keeping the government out of our lives as much as possible is also the party that repeatedly and continually attempts to legislate one of the most personal and difficult medical decisions ever faced - the abortion question, on religious grounds; and strives to force the definition of marriage in rigid traditional religious terms, rather than letting the democracy define it democratically.

The party that claims to stand for smaller government and fiscal responsibility has presided over the largest expansion of the national debt in history together with the creation of a whole new bureaucracy. It has made a mockery of our immigration policies, ineptly and unfairly managed the process for so many trying to do it legally, while create pressure to embrace those who have cheated our system.

While granted the present administration appears to be on course to make that expansion look small by comparison to its own, the counting is not done until it's done. If the Obama administration is successful in achieving its goals, its deficit and debt should shrink dramatically going forward. Time will tell.

So to you, Mr. Steele, I recommend you reconsider your well delivered words, examine the reality on the ground a little more carefully, and adjust your agenda in light of that reality. In particular, never, never, never stop introspecting. Introspection is an acknowledgment of our human fallibility and a tool for the betterment of all our endeavors. Never let it go.

Chairman Steele does not quite seem to have fully grasped just what's involved in becoming a minority party in politics. It's very hard to maintain minority party status for two consecutive elections if you truly do represent the views of the majority of Americans.

But they didn't really lose, dontcha know. It was all the fault of ACORN getting millions of illegals to vote, and that horrible RINO McCain. Had they let Sarah be Sarah, and the MSM had pursued the Rezcko, Wright, Ayers, and Alinsky matters in a less biased manner, they would have won.

Don't laugh. That's the mainstream view among GOP posters on blogs these days. They simply cannot grasp that no matter how many times they repeat their positions, most of us won't support them.

SEPARATION OF RAUNCH AND STATE !

(It's still legal - and always God-honoring - to air messages like the following. See Ezekiel 3:18-19. In light of government backing of raunchy behavior (such offenders were even executed in early America!), maybe the separation we really need is the "separation of raunch and state"!)

In Luke 17 in the New Testament, Jesus said that one of the big "signs" that will happen shortly before His return to earth as Judge will be a repeat of the "days of Lot" (see Genesis 19 for details). So gays are actually helping to fulfill this same worldwide "sign" (and making the Bible even more believable!) and thus hurrying up the return of the Judge! They are accomplishing what many preachers haven't accomplished! Gays couldn't have accomplished this by just coming out of closets into bedrooms. Instead, they invented new architecture - you know, closets opening on to Main Streets where little kids would be able to watch naked men having sex with each other at festivals in places like San Francisco (where their underground saint - San Andreas - may soon get a big jolt out of what's going on over his head!). Thanks, gays, for figuring out how to bring back our resurrected Saviour even quicker!

[If you would care to learn about the depraved human "pigpen" that regularly occurs in Nancy Pelosi's district in California, Google "Zombietime" and click on "Up Your Alley Fair" in the left column. And to think - horrors - that she is only two levels away from being President!]

Nobody cares about your masturbation fantasies, Billy. Stay on topic.

By minimalist (not verified) on 19 May 2009 #permalink

I think that Mr. Steele is confusing the things that the Republican Party claims to support with the things that it actually does support.

By Troublesome Frog (not verified) on 20 May 2009 #permalink