Steele tackles changing the face of his party
Hazel Trice Edney/NNPA Editor-in-Chief
Issue date: 3/1/09 Section: Cover
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"I firmly believe that if Hillary Clinton had been the [Democratic] nominee and had won or Joe Biden or any of them, I think that it was a moment in time just as it was for Barack in which various things came together to create this moment," Steele said in an interview with the NNPA News Service. "Now we will see what we do with it. Now we'll see what we'll both do with it."
A widely-held belief is that the Republican strategy is now to glean from the Obama euphoria in order to win back defected Republicans and African-American votes in four years.
"While I congratulate Steele, I am also aware that it probably would never have happened if Barack Obama had not won the presidency," wrote NNPA columnist Ron Walters. "So now that he is chair, the biggest question he confronts is how to turn around the strong perception that Republicans are actively opposed to Black interests. Steele himself said just after the recent election while campaigning for the office that Republican Party officials 'just don't give a damn.'"
Steele concedes that galvanizing the Republican vote enough to take back the White House in four years will be nearly impossible.
"It will be like climbing Mount Rushmore in a pair of shorts and a T-Shirt. It's going to be very, very, very tough," he said. "You're laid bare in many respects as a party because you're trying to say, 'look, this is what we've done wrong in the past'."
Known for his outspokenness, Steele said, "We did a lot of things that led the people to distrust our leadership."
By that, he not only meant violating Republican principles of frugality and fiscal conservatism, but outrightly demonstrating the insensitivity toward Black concerns for which the Republican Party has gained a reputation.
"I got in trouble in 2006 when I ran for the Senate because I called out the failure of a Republican administration to appropriately and affectively deal with [Hurricane] Katrina," Steele says. He lost that election despite his earlier win as Maryland's first Black lieutenant governor.
Now, he says, he will use his outspokenness to start an energetic conversation within the largely, southern White male party that he believes will attract others to the table.
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