Duke: RNC's Steele a 'Black Racist'

'Is it because a black man is chairman?'

(NEWSER) - Michael Steele suggests his race has something to do with the knocks he's taken since becoming chairman of the RNC in an interview with Washingtonian magazine. The interview isn't online yet, but Greg Sargent of Plum Line has an early peek: Steele acknowledges that he can "take things too far," but then wonders why there is so much media coverage of the internal workings of the RNC. More»

Chairman to announce intentions tonight

(NEWSER) - Michael Steele will announce tonight whether he plans to run for reelection as RNC chair—and it’s looking unlikely. Steele doesn’t appear to have a reelection team in place. Still, he’s been unpredictable in the past, Politico notes. He sent out a message this weekend advising committee members of a conference call at 7:30pm tonight; the email’s tone suggested he wouldn’t run, according to three Steele critics who got the email. More»

(NEWSER) - Things aren’t going well for Michael Steele in the media, but behind the scenes he’s undertaken a sweeping restructuring of the Republican National Committee, Marc Ambinder writes in the Atlantic. “He’s become clownish. And that judgment could endure until the end of his tenure,” Ambinder writes. “But it probably won’t.” If Steele helps the GOP win elections—that’s his job—all will be forgiven. More»

(NEWSER) - Ada Fisher, an outspoken critic of Michael Steele who supported his opponent in elections for the Republican National Committee chairmanship, wants him to step aside, the Hill reports. The “ineptness in our GOP leadership,” she writes in an intraparty email, is “eroding confidence.” Fisher, North Carolina’s national committeewoman and one of 3 black members of the RNC, has sent dozens of messages to colleagues criticizing Steele for his serial gaffes. More»

Katon Dawson, candidate for RNC chair, resigned from SC club this summer

(NEWSER) - One of the candidates for chairman of the Republican National Committee belonged for more than a decade to a whites-only country club, Greg Sargent notes on Talking Points Memo. Katon Dawson, chairman of South Carolina’s Republican Party, resigned from the club in September as he was preparing to run for the national leadership, saying he’d been working against the no-blacks rule. More»