Can the “Man of Steele” save the GOP?
By HHR | May 5th, 2009 | Category: Brandon Brice, Opinion/Reviews | 2 commentsBrandon Brice
In recent news the former GOPAC Chairman and Lieutenant Governor from Maryland, Michael Steele made history by becoming the first African American to lead the Republican National Committee. In Steele’s victory speech he proclaimed to set out a new mission to take the Republican Party to every corner and inner city neighborhood in America, as an effort to rebuild the Grand Old Party. Unfortunately all conservatives are not on board with this urban agenda, leading some republican critics to suggest that it’s the wrong direction for the party. In a recent article, former Klu Klux Klan member, David Duke ironically called Michael Steele a racist, suggesting that Steele was not the man for the job. Right wing conservative groups have stated that the role of the Republican National Committee Chairman is to simply raise money for the party and to help republican’s nationwide get elected which failed in last year’s election.
The million dollar question for the new RNC Chairman is can he successfully raise the funds to be competitive for upcoming primary elections? The true test of Steele’s candidacy will be centered on the direction he decides to take the Republican Party, which is vital to the GOP’s survival. For Steele to be successful as Chairman of the RNC, he must realize that America is changing; both demographically and on the issues. Steele who is a moderate Republican must be the new face of the GOP, by standing up to the extreme conservative right, by placing an emphasis on jobs, healthcare and education preparation for America’s future.
In my recent article, “Out with the Old, In with the New”, the bulk of the message was dedicated to the party fighting for real issues, i.e., jobs, education, healthcare and less government. As Lieutenant Governor of Maryland and former GOPAC Chairman, Steele has proven his ability to lead, but his most important task will be to lead the party into the millennium, which could be met with severe opposition.. In New York City, Mayor both Michael Bloomberg and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, won elections based on their stances on responsible government, not “social values.” In Washington, Chairman Steele’s new job is to test if this stance which has worked in New York, under Rudy and Bloomberg, or in New Jersey under Tom Kean, Sr.’s moderate approach, can work in our nation’s capitol, as a means to get new Republican candidates elected.
~Brandon Brice is a graduate of Howard University and a former fellow of the New Jersey Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University. As a long time member of Republicans for Black Empowerment, Brandon is an active contributor to HipHopRepublicans.com
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This again is conforming to the world instead of standing on principal. Winning means nothing if you have to compromise your ideals in the process.
Social values are what made this country great and the loss of those values has seen the country plummet into all sorts of negative and self destructive attitudes.
It’s amazing that God doesn’t judge us on anything except the moral law, the one your alluding to ditch here.
There was a time when the Democratic Party tolerated people more objectionable than John Ashcroft among its own ranks. But most of them began to leave during the 1960s and 1970s, DISGUSTED WITH THE PARTY’s EMBRACE OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT. Seeing an “opportunity”, the Republican Party ROLLED OUT THE WELCOME MAT via Richard Nixon’s infamous Southern Strategy–that is, deliberate appeals to reactionary southern voters, aka Racists. (Once the South was placed on the road to Republicanization, GOP strategists like Lee Atwater crafted a complementary Northern Strategy, which involved PROVOKING the simmering tension between blacks and working-class white ethnics and dislodging the latter from their traditional berth in the Democratic Party.) The Southern Strategy remained standard practice for Republicans even into the 1980s. Back then, Republicans offered far more than speeches to Bob Jones University, the now infamous institution that equates Catholicism with Satanism and only recently ended its ban on interracial dating. In 1982 the Reagan administration actually joined the university in a lawsuit aimed at granting tax-exempt status to racially discriminatory–that is, racist–private schools and colleges….
jes keep on minstrelin’, sho nuff!!