Restoring Themselves to Grace

I had high hopes for Michael Steele as chairman of the Republican National Committee (despite words to the wise from wise reader PMG) but they were quickly dashed. Not long after his election to the chairmanship, Steele jumped on the leftie bandwagon and lambasted Rush Limbaugh for having the temerity to wish the president's socialist visions would fail.

Steele, alas, turned out to be just another Republican hack, whose notion of economic conservatism is to, say, protest mightily a $4 trillion spending program from President Pelosi and her White House subordinate, insist that $3 trillion is more than adequate and finally compromise at $3.85 trillion.

So it is with some satisfaction I read of Eric Odom, the organizer of the upcoming "Tea Party" in Chicago on April 15th to protest the nation's going down the road to serfdom, declining the self-invitation of Chairman Steele to speak at the rally. I am sure it required little insight on Odom's part to determine Steele "only just decided to reach out after realizing how big the movement has gotten and how much media is now involved" and that he prefers "to limit stage time to those who are not elected officials, both in Government as well as political parties. This is an opportunity for Americans to speak, and elected officials to listen, not the other way around."

It may be too much to hope the snubbing of Steele will wake up the Republicans to the fact outrage over the government's increasingly socialistic agenda is not just a Democrats-only problem, from which they might profit. The Republicans' dismal performance during the last administration has shown us most of them (with notable exceptions like Representative Jeff Flake and South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford) are nearly as complicit creating the Leviathan state as the Democrats.

The Democrats are well beyond redemption but there still is a chance (just a chance) for Steele and his Republicans returning to conservative grace; only, however, if they repent of their profligate past and, as Eric Odom helpfully suggests, "LISTEN to what we have to say and perhaps gather some thoughts on what the RNC needs to be doing moving forward."