Steele Book Tour Has GOP Steamed

GOP lawmakers are so irate over loose-canon Michael Steele's pronouncements on his book tour—including a prediction Monday that Republicans will not win back the House and Senate in 2010—that they had their aides give his aides a dressing down on a conference call Wednesday. “You really just have to get him to stop,” said one aide of the RNC chair. “It’s too much.”

Another aide said Steele was on “a Republican apology tour at the exact wrong time,” an insider privy to the call tells the Washington Post. Yet another called the head of the national party “unprepared and unknowledgeable” in interviews. Steele’s camp says they have little control over his statements, as publicity for his book is handled by an outside firm, but were happy to report that he had softened his doom-and-gloom rhetoric. “Not this year” has become “playing to win.” (More Michael Steele stories.)