WASHINGTON — The election last week of Michael Steele to be chairman of the Republican National Committee drew considerable notice, not surprisingly: he is the first African-American to hold that position in the party’s 155-year history.
Yet there are other ways that the selection of Mr. Steele, a former lieutenant governor from Maryland who lost a bid for the Senate in 2006, represents a break from the Republican past. And those could prove to be more significant than race, as the Republicans debate in the weeks ahead how much “opposition” they should put in the phrase “loyal opposition.” They face a president who is extraordinarily popular and a nation that appears weary of partisan politics as it confronts an economic crisis.
With Mr. Steele, the Republican Party has turned to someone who is markedly different from his recent predecessors in style and temperament. He is brash and brawny, takes chances that occasionally get him in trouble, and clearly relishes the idea of being portrayed as the fighting counterpoint to President Obama and the Democratic Party. This is not someone who is going to be spending a lot of time talking about microtargeting and the other mechanical aspects of politics.
The new face of the Republican Party does not seem to share the hunger for bipartisanship that Mr. Obama has made one of the stylistic touchstones of his first weeks in office. That became clear from the moment Mr. Steele took the job on Friday, as he all but invited the president of the United States to join him in the boxing ring.
“It’s going to be an honor to spar with him,” he said, before throwing down the gauntlet to Mr. Obama with a quotation from, apparently, an in-your-face late-1980’s rap song by Kool Moe Dee: “How ya like me now?” (Confession: A certain reporter initially suggested that Mr. Steele was invoking the country star Toby Keith, a reference that was convincingly challenged in a barrage of e-mail messages from readers.)
The stylistic and philosophical implications of the choice became even clearer when Mr. Steele appeared before House Republicans at a retreat on Saturday. Mr. Steele celebrated their refusal to give Mr. Obama a single vote for his economic recovery plan — albeit in language that was perhaps a tad eyebrow-raising, given the soberness of the country’s economic problems and the concern of some Republicans that the party was skating on thin ice.
“The goose egg you laid on the president’s desk was just beautiful,” he said.
(It is difficult to imagine Ken Mehlman, the buttoned-down lawyer who led the party during much happier days from 2005 to 2007, saying anything quite that colorful.)
This was the same Mr. Steele who, if he didn’t invent what became the signature chant of the Republican presidential campaign, certainly popularized it when he spoke at the Republican National Convention in Minnesota. “Drill, baby, drill,” he said, grinning broadly as the crowd picked up the slogan and repeated it for nearly 30 seconds.
This free-spirited way has gotten him in trouble. He ruffled Republican feathers in 2006 when he had a lunch with reporters at a fancy Washington D.C. restaurant in which he systematically disparaged President George W. Bush and his administration. The single condition he imposed on reporters at the lunch was that his remarks be attributed only to a “Republican Senate candidate” — though within 12 hours the world knew which Republican Senate candidate was trash-talking his president.
For a party as dispirited as his, Mr. Steele is certainly something of a tonic. The enthusiastic reception that greeted his elbows-out acceptance speech was a marked contrast to days of meetings that until that point had bordered between morose and laconic.
Yet while there are benefits to having a party leader who is given to a bit of showmanship — he will have little trouble getting bookings on the Sunday talk shows — there are arguably some risks here. When he spoke to Republicans on Saturday, he did something that some of his more cautious predecessors might have avoided: He set down out three markers to judge him by this year.
His three big targets, he announced, were the upstate New York Congressional district left vacant when Representative Kristen Gillibrand was tapped to replace Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, and the gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey. “I’m in the business of winning elections,” he said.
That New York Congressional seat, a relatively conservative district that had only recently gone Democratic, seems like a prime target for the Republican Party. Virginia and New Jersey are more problematic, and Mr. Steele could find himself wishing he had not bet on a trifecta come November.
Most significant, though, is where Mr. Steele placed himself in the debate about how aggressively the Republicans should resist Mr. Obama and his financial stimulus plan. Mr. Obama’s aides, who have conspicuously resisted getting drawn into the fight Mr. Steele is trying to pick, described the remarks as an attempt by Mr. Steele — who is viewed by some conservatives as not being conservative enough — to shore up his standing with his base.
Mr. Steele is taking over his party at what could prove to be an historically pivotal moment. A Gallup Poll released last week found that 36 percent of respondents identified themselves as Democrats, compared with 28 percent who said they were Republicans. That is the largest lead Democrats have enjoyed in that poll since 1983. And Mr. Obama’s popularity cuts across party lines.
“The American people are patient to turn this thing around,” said David Plouffe, who was Mr. Obama’s campaign manager. “What they are not patient for is more of the same Washington politics. The real danger here — particularly for those who supported the economic policies responsible for getting us here — is to not be part of doing all you can to dig this country out of this economic hole. You seem to be sailing directly into the headwinds of where the American people are.”
If the economic plan passes Congress without significant Republican support and then does little to help the economy over the next two years, Mr. Steele’s combative style could help conservatives build a case for a return to power. If the economic plan pays off, though, many Democrats suggest that he may find himself sharing blame for a miscalculation that could set the Republican Party back for a long while to come.
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