How Can We Miss You…

…if you won’t go away…Michael Steele.

This man has been an embarrassment since he took office as head of the Republican National Committee.  If he breathes on you, you smell leather because he has put his foot in his mouth so many times. 

Mr. Steele seems like a nice enough fellow and I used to enjoy it when he substituted for Sean Hannity on the old Hannity & Colmes and needled Alan ‘The Annoying Nimrod’ Colmes, but it now seems as if The Peter Principle has come into play in his case.

Michael Steele should do the honorable thing and, figuratively, retire to his den and take the dusty Luger out of its case.

The final straw for me was his comment on Good Morning America, as reported on the show’s blog [I didn’t even know about comment made by him earlier to Washingtonian Magazine]:

The embattled chairman played the race card today when asked on “Good Morning America” if he has a slimmer margin of error because he is African American.

“The honest answer is, ‘yes,'” he said. “Barack Obama has a slimmer margin. A lot of folks do. It’s a different role for me to play and others to play and that’s just the reality of it. But you take that as part of the nature of it.”

“My view on politics is much more grassroots oriented, it’s not old boy network oriented, so I tend to, you know, come at it a little bit stronger, a little bit more street-wise, if you will. That’s rubbed some feathers the wrong way,” Steele told “GMA’s” George Stephanopoulos.

Today’s “GMA” interview is not the first time Steele has asserted that his race plays a role in the criticism he has faced as RNC chairman. During a recent interview with Washingtonian Magazine, which took place before the sex-club controversy, Steele said, “I don’t see stories about internal operations of the DNC that I see about this operation. Why? Is it because Michael Steele is the chairman, or is it because a black man is chairman?”

Over at the great Legal Insurrection, William Jacobson comments:

…Granted, Steele did not raise the issue and was responding to a question in which the “thinner [sic] margins” terminology was used, but Steele adopted the language by answering in the affirmative.

Such comments do infinitely more damage than any excessive spending ever could do. Suggesting racial motivations in others merely because they disagree with you has become the dominant theme of the attacks on opponents of Obamacare.

By using the race card himself, Steele has given indirect aid and comfort to those behind the smears of the Tea Party movement.

…

Steele needs to man up, argue on the merits, and stop whining. But most of all, stop with the race card crap; that’s the Democrats’ game.

The Prof pretty much sums-up my feelings on Mr. Steele, but he doesn’t go far enough…

Michael Steele must go — he has, obviously, risen to his level of incompetence.