Why Is Michael Steele a Republican Candidate? Rove & Cheney.

[im10ashus]

It was last spring when Karl Rove called Michael Steele, the lieutenant governor of Maryland, to sell him on running for the Senate, and to close the deal, Rove paused to put President Bush on the phone. As Steele recalls it, the president's adviser said, "Here, the boss wants to talk to you." Steele froze, then demurred. "I went, 'No, no thank you.' I was so stunned that he was going to hand the phone to the president. I said, 'That's all right, we'll have that call later.' I couldn't believe it." Other top Republicans called. Senator Elizabeth Dole. Ken Mehlman, the party chairman. One day Steele's cellphone rang, and Vice President Dick Cheney was on the other end.

Steele is the first African-American elected to statewide office in Maryland, which is usually one of the most reliably Democratic states in the nation. The counties bordering Washington are relentlessly liberal, as is its largest city, Baltimore. Steele lives in Prince George's County, which used to be tobacco plantations and is now the wealthiest majority-black county in the United States and normally a huge trove of Democratic votes. But to a Republican Party intent on securing its ascendancy by building a new base among America's minorities, Maryland looks like a land of opportunity. And a place where Democrats might be caught sleeping.

Open and personable, Steele had a prominent speaking role at the Republican convention in 2004, and by the following spring the Republican hierarchy was trying to coax him into the Senate race. The field was kept clear. Money was promised. It didn't matter that Steele lacked some of the attributes typical of a candidate running for high office. He was not a proven vote-getter, having ridden to victory as the running mate of Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., a popular congressman from outside Baltimore who became the state's first Republican governor elected in 36 years. Steele, who is 47, had no personal fortune to offer up to the cause, no campaign war chest. He had been an associate in a law firm, then left that job to open a consulting firm that struggled.

What Steele had to offer, as a candidate, was personal biography, his inspiring life story: childhood in a poor section of Washington; college at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore; then three years studying for the priesthood at a monastery, where he wore the long white tunic of the Augustinian order before deciding that his call to service lay elsewhere. His mother had worked in a laundry, making the minimum wage; his stepfather drove a limo. His parents weren't educated themselves, but they valued learning and made sure the homework in their household got done. Steele's only sibling is Monica Turner, a Georgetown-educated pediatrician (as well as an ex-wife of Mike Tyson, the former heavyweight champ).

cont'd...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/26/magazine/326steele.html

[rocktivity]

1. He sure doesn't LOOK like the bassist for the Bangles

:evilgrin:
rocknation

[im10ashus]

2. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

No, no he doesn't. :rofl:

[qanda]

3. That wasn't a very balanced article

They should have highlighted the majority of blacks who won't support him. I'm in Maryland, they could have called me.

[im10ashus]

4. I was thinking the same thing.

WHERE are the voices for the African-American community in Maryland? :shrug:

[Pool Hall Ace]

5. Elizabeth Dole is considered a top Republican?

She's a piss-poor Senatwhore.

And Black voters are as likely to support Michael Steele as they did Alan Keyes.

[gratuitous]

6. When I see a chicken supporting Col. Sanders . . .

My first thought is "opportunist." Here's someone who can't be bothered to work his way up, pay his dues, and get ahead by dint of hard work. Oddly enough, I'm rarely wrong, what with the sterling examples of incompetency that rise to high rank amongst the Republican party and movement conservatism: Slappy Thomas, Jimmy Choo Rice, and Walletfat Williams. Michael Steele is just another in a long line of frauds.