Seemingly ruddlerless after Barack Obama’s decisive electoral victory, and embarrassed by Chip Saltsman’s “well-intentioned”, if racist, Christmas CD distribution, it seems the Republican party has decided that they need their own “magic negro”. Newly elected Republican National Committee chairman, Michael Steele, is also their first ever African-American leader, and one who sounds remarkably different from the GOP we’ve come to know and hate.
To wit: Steele claims he wants the GOP to reach out to candidates who support gay marriage and are pro-choice. Steele told Fox News Sunday’s Chris Wallace that it was “important” to reach out to those voters.
WALLACE: You are one of the co-founders of something called the Republican Leadership Council which supports candidates who favor abortion and gay rights.
STEELE: Yes.
WALLACE: Does the GOP needs to do a better job of reaching out to people who hold those views?
STEELE: I think — I think that’s an important opportunity for us, absolutely. Within our party we do have those who have that view as well as outside and my partnership with Christy Todd Whittman was an effort to build a bridge between moderates and conservatives.
While I may mock and sneer (a girl’s got to have a hobbby), Steele makes some excellent points. The Republicans, while almost uniformly conservative, weren’t traditionally the party of racism and douchebaggery (that’s the Larouchies), but instead positioned themselves as the social and fiscal conservatives of the American political spectrum.
I suppose what I’m wondering is, If Steele is leading the party towards greater outreach and inclusion, especially in previously taboo areas of gay-rights and pro-choice abortion rights, where is that going to leave the powerful voting block of the Religious Right?