Former RNC Chairman Mike Duncan said today that he would not seek his old job, using the widely-expected announcement to call on the committee to replace Michael Steele.
"With the American Dream being destroyed by Barack Obama and the Democrats’ reckless economic policies and lack of leadership on the global stage, the stakes are so high that, to save America, we must change the leadership at the top of the committee," Duncan said in a statement.
The Kentuckian made a surprise appearance at an RNC candidates’ forum earlier this month, but indicated to associates that he was unlikely to run. Now a leader in American Crossroads, Duncan will instead focus on the third-party group and, in the short term, work with the anti-Steele forces on the committee to ensure that the incumbent doesn’t win another term. As I wrote Monday, his goal is to keep the challengers in the contest united so as not to replicate what happened in 2009 when the vote was splintered and Steele was able to win on the sixth ballot.
Duncan touched on his behind-the-scenes RNC campaign role in his statement, vowing to "continue in the mission to provide competent, conservative leadership for the Republican Party."
Still a respected member of the committee — he’s the national committeeman from Kentucky — Duncan won fast praise from some of the candidates in the race who are vying for his allies.
"I thank my friend Mike Duncan for his continued service & commitment to the GOP,’ tweeted former Missouri Chair Ann Duncan, an RNC hopeful. "He’s a man of immense integrity & character."
Barring a surprise entry, Duncan’s decision firms up the RNC field. The candidates include Steele, Wagner, Wisconsin GOP Chair Reince Priebus, Michigan committeeman Saul Anuzis, former RNC political director Gentry Collins and longtime party operative Maria Cino.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) told the Duluth News Tribune that he wished he had run for another term now that he knows Republicans will control the legislature.
Said Pawlenty: “Yes, if I would have known then what I know now, given what I’ve been through and hoped to accomplish, but that (the DFL-controlled Legislature) blocked. But you can’t predict the future. And of course, I made my decision after the 2008 election when President Obama and the Democrats swept everything… Hindsight is 20/20.”
Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele has surprised many by deciding to run again for his job.
Steele has been the subject of widespread criticism, including from Connecticut’s GOP chairman, Christopher Healy. That criticism came despite a huge Republican tidal wave in November’s election, which swept the GOP back into control of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Some insiders said that the wave had nothing to do with Steele, and he should not receive much of the credit.
Healy had initially considered running for RNC chair himself, but he has decided against making a formal run. Instead, he is supporting Gentry Collins, who had previously worked with Steele as the party’s political director.
Lob an unfair or untrue accusation in a race for public office at your own risk. If a tale about an opponent turns out to be false, a campaign opens itself to the wrath of newspaper editorial pages and the dreaded PolitiFact franchises, all while affording the opponent the opportunity to wiggle out of the attack.
In the race for Republican National Committee chairman, there is no PolitiFact and no editorial page cares enough to opine. That creates the perfect atmosphere for what has become, over the last two elections, one of the most underhanded contests in American politics today.
The 2009 contest, in which Michael Steele outlasted competitors after half a dozen ballots, was marked by a flurry of anonymous attacks of dubious provenance. Steele was hammered as a fake conservative; incumbent chairman Mike Duncan, who runs a bank in Inez, Ky., was accused of taking TARP funds (He didn’t); and a steady stream of emails attacked candidates Saul Anuzis, Katon Dawson and Ken Blackwell.
This year is no different. Emails have already circulated accusing each contender of some unforgiveable sin, though most are either inaccurate or misleading. Anuzis has come under fire from a group calling itself the Conservative Young Guns PAC (No such political action committee is registered with the FEC), while bloggers are picking up dissatisfaction with Wisconsin Republican Party chair Reince Priebus from some elements of his state’s GOP.
The latest charge, leveled by FrumForum, accuses Priebus of working for a division of his Milwaukee-based law firm that promised to help clients obtain stimulus dollars. Priebus’s name appeared in several places on the website, but Priebus himself denied working for the division.
“Reince is not a part of that Firm Team and his listing is an error on our website. I apologize for the confusion,” firm partner Michael Green wrote to FrumForum reporter Tim Mak in response to an inquiry about Priebus’s connection. Still, conservative bloggers are picking up the report and using it to raise questions about Priebus’s candidacy.
Michael Steele Makes It Official: He Running To Stay At The RNC
Evan McMorris-Santoro | December 13, 2010, 8:12PM
Turns out the Steele is stronger than scandal. Embattled Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele will seek another two-year term, despite a first that was marked by gaffe after headline-grabbing gaffe. Politico has his official announcement, which you can read here.
A Steele reelection effort was all but a foregone conclusion until Sunday, when news of a private Steele conference call with the RNC’s 168 voting members led to speculation that Steele might decide against running, leaving a wide-open field of prospective replacements.
The arguments against Steele running fore reelection are many. Not only has Steele gone almost totally unmentioned by Republican leaders since his party’s huge victories on Nov. 2, he’s suffered a string of embarrassing leaks from inside the RNC that paint him as an ineffective manager and poor fundraiser.
Yet Steele, who laughs off most of these criticisms (and has for a while now) soldiers on.
This is just gonna have to be ugly.
This is for Steele’s GOP opponents..we here at JJP told you a long time ago about Steele:
Going forward, maybe the Daily Caller should get its scoops somewhere else … This was their headline, cribbed from the folks at Fox: Well, funny thing about that … this is part of the statement that Steele sent to the RNC membership on Monday (and yes, those lower case “i’s” are authentic: So tonight i […] The Reid Report
Politico said he wasn’t, now Fox News (and Frum Forum) say he is. To help you process this news, read Ed’s post from this morning about Obama potentially spending a cool billion on the 2012 campaign and then have a look at Jay Cost’s graph of Republican fundraising over the last four cycles. Said Cost, […]
When Evan Bayh decided not to seek re-election this year almost at the last minute, speculation held that the two-term Senator and former Governor had grown tired of life as a legislator and wanted to go back to executive office. Mitch Daniels can’t seek a third term in Indiana, and the timing seemed perfect for […]
During yesterday’s NFL football game between the NY Jets and the Miami Dolphins, a member of the Jet’s coaching staff intentionally and purposely stuck his leg out and tripped a Miami playerrunning down the sideline on punt coverage. How pathetically rotten and despicable could one be. To make matters worse, the player was injured. Video here.
Is this what the Jets call swagger? We call it a complete lack of class. This is what it has come to with the Jets after being destroyed by the New England Patriots a week ago 45-3 and losing yesterday to Miami 10-6. All of Jets management should be ashamed of themselves and the individual who did this dastardly act should be fired.
This play happened with 2:58 left in the third quarter, when the Dolphins punted to Jets receiver Santonio Holmes(notes). As Holmes took the ball for a short return, cornerback Nolan Carroll(notes) was hurt on the right sideline as he rushed down to cover the play. The replay showed strength and conditioning coach Sal Alosi extending his knee just enough to trip Carroll up on the play. Carroll was down for a minute, but returned to play later in the game.
Jets cioach Sal Alosi – idiot of the week award
Jets coach Sal Alosi later admittedhe interfered with Carroll. You made a mistake, really? You don’t think! You not only should be fined, the organization should as well and this coach should be terminated immediately. What is up with all the crap that has been going on with the Jets lately …Brett Favre/Jenn Stergersaga, Mexican reporter Ines Sainzsexual harassment and now this. Maybe it is an organizational issue.
“I made a mistake that showed a total lapse in judgment,” Alosi said in a statement released by the Jets about 2½ hours after the game. “My conduct was inexcusable and unsportsmanlike and does not reflect what this organization stands for.”
If the NFL is going to fine player for hits on QB’s that are nothing more than playing the game, they better fine this fool triple.
Larison compares Gary Johnson's record on abortion to Rudy Giuliani's:
As governor, Johnson signed parental consent and partial-birth abortion ban legislation. At least by the standards of most national Republicans, that makes him as “operationally pro-life” as anyone, and he managed to do those things without engaging in a lot of absurd pandering by telling phony conversion stories. It makes a difference that Johnson has signed pro-life legislation. That is as much as most of his likely competitors in 2012 have done on this issue, and in some cases it goes beyond what other probable candidates did while in office. Giuliani’s claims that he would satisfy pro-life voters once in office were based on nothing in his record, so there was no reason to accept what he was saying.
Matt Strawn announced Thursday that he’ll seek a second term as chairman of the Iowa Republican Party, a move that would position him in an important role in the run up to the 2012 Iowa caucuses.
Strawn would be the first chairman in eight years to serve a second term at the helm of the Iowa GOP, barring an unexpected challenge. The Iowa State Committee will hold elections in January.
The Iowa Republican Party had a particularly strong cycle this year — no incumbent Republican lost in a statewide or congressional race.
And, from the sounds of this interview with the AP, Strawn is confident in his re-election chances.
“I’ve got well over majority support in the committee,” he said.
Strawn’s announcement comes the same week that the chair of another early presidential state, New Hampshire GOP Chairman John Sununu, announced he would not seek another term when the state committee holds their election in January. South Carolina GOP Chairwoman Karen Floyd also decided last month that she won’t seek a second term. The South Carolina holds its leadership elections in May.
“There’s nothing” that would compel him to run in 2012, Bloomberg told CBS News. “I’m not going to run for president,” he said. “Period. End of story.”
But interviewer Katie Couric persisted: “Ever?”
“I think at my age, ever is the easy thing to say,” said the 68-year-old Bloomberg.
In the guise of offering a blueprint to fix the broken economy, Bloomberg offered a withering critique of the broken politics practiced in Washington and Albany. The politician who started his career as a Democrat, became a Republican to run for mayor and then announced that he was an independent, took aim at left and right with equal abandon.
He attacked the “ideologues on the left” for clinging to the belief that taxing and spending can restore prosperity and for holding a government-knows-best approach to creating jobs. He attacked “ideologues on the right” for entrusting all faith in the free market and writing off any significant role for government in shaping the environment in which the economy can flourish.
“For New York City to continue our growth, we need our federal and state governments to chart a middle way – between a government that would wash its hands of the problem and one that seeks to supplant the private sector; between a government that would stand on the sidelines and one that would take over the game,” he said in Brooklyn on Wednesday morning, according to a text of his prepared remarks.
Bloomberg identified the symptoms of dysfunctional politics: partisan gridlock, political pandering, legislative influence-peddling, finger-pointing, blame games and endless attacks. Democrats, he said, lost the 2010 elections for the same reasons Republicans lost in 2006 and 2008. They “spent more time and energy conducting partisan warfare than forging centrist solutions to our toughest economic problems.”
The political parties, he argued, fuel the discontent instead of finding ways to improve people’s lives. “They incite anger instead of addressing it, for their own partisan interests,” he said. They follow the public mood rather than shape it.
“When did cooperation in government become treason?” he asked. “The new ‘politics as usual’ is making a mockery of our democracy and a mess of our country. We’ve got to stop it, because we’re paying a heavy price. In fact, right now, we are falling behind the world in education, technology, economic opportunity – even life expectancy.”
He praised the agreement between President Obama and congressional Republicans to extend the George W. Bush-era tax cuts for two years and extend unemployment benefits for 13 months. But he chastised politicians in Washington for not moving immediately to take up the recommendations of the national debt and deficit commission. “We need more than a commission and more than lip service,” he said. “We need results. And not next year or the year after, but now.”
He offered six principles for restoring the nation’s economic prowess: Instill confidence and create certainty from Washington, promote trade agreements rather than protecting threatened industries, reform regulations, cut business taxes, invest more in job training, and reform immigration by allowing brainy workers and serious investors to come here and do their work.
For a guy who says he isn’t running for President, that sounds very much like a speech that a guy running for President would make. The problem for Bloomberg, of course, is that it’s hard to see how he could turn this message into a Presidential campaign that actually had a chance of winning. For one thing, there doesn’t seem to be much of a desire out there for a Bloomberg candidacy among voters. For another, even if he did run, it’s unclear how he could do anything other than deny an Electoral College victory to either President Obama or whoever the Republicans nominate. That would throw the election into the House of Representatives, where it seems unlikely that Bloomberg would fare well at all. So, outside of the fact that pundits on the cable news shows and in the editorial pages of The New York Times like to talk about it, this idea of a Mike Bloomberg boom seems to be pretty non-existent. Perhaps Bloomberg recognizes that fact, and that’s why he’s telling Couric that he’s not interest in running.
He sounds pretty committed when talking to Couric, and yet, and yet… In a stinging and blunt address that at times sounded like a campaign speech, Mr. Bloomberg described a point-by-point plan for reigniting entrepreneurship and growth, calling for tax cuts for businesses, an overhaul of regulations and investments in job training… “Last month, voters […]
