With new book, Michael Steele turns the tables -- again -- on GOP

By Eugene Robinson
WashPost
Friday, January 15, 2010

Poetic justice is a beautiful thing. Republican Party grandees were all set to use Michael Steele in the most cynical way. Now it's becoming clear that Steele has been using the users all along.

Republicans must have thought that electing Steele as their national chairman was a brilliant stroke. The 2008 presidential election had been a debacle for them. The Democratic Party was on top of the world, with the first African American president taking office amid a national outpouring of goodwill. Among the mediocre field of contenders for the Republican National Committee job -- at that point, after all, who would want it? -- there was one intriguing option. Why not begin the process of rebranding and renewal by installing the first African American party chairman?

Steele was smooth and charismatic. He was effective on television, in a wall-of-noise sort of way, and he clearly loved the limelight. African Americans, Latinos and Asians had rejected the party in historic numbers, and smart Republican strategists understood the long-term implications of allowing the GOP to be pigeonholed as almost exclusively white and Southern. With Steele, the face the party presented to an increasingly diverse nation would be strikingly different. It would also be fraudulent, but hey, this is politics.

By now, however, it's clear that Steele had an agenda of his own.

(More here.)