Steele's answers

Via Maryland Moment, Michael Steele has published his replies to a survey by the Baltimore Sun on his website -- as he bills it, submitting his answers "to Marylanders, not [the] paper." It kind of sounds like he's practicing disintermediation a la Al Gore, but in fact it's just an instance of Steele's (perhaps understandable) grudge against the Sun.

As for the substance of his answers, it's mostly standard Republican boilerplate: he supports President Bush's Health Savings Accounts, is against a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, wants to deal with border security before immigration reform, and opposes embryonic (but supports other kinds of) stem cell research. The only two topics on which Steele dissents from the GOP line are affirmative action and energy policy, though global warming is conspicuously absent from his rationale for reform.

Steele is clearly styling himself as a moderate Republican: his rhetoric is shot through with calls for getting past "political posturing" and "partisan rancor," and he expresses admiration for John McCain and the so-called Gang of 14 (which I guess is now 13). It's a shrewd tactic, given the state he's running in. But his invocation of McCain should be a reminder that what we call moderate Republicanism, is, in fact, a mirage. You can see this in the way Steele, for example, decries partian bickering over the budget deficit, only to propose as part of the solution the very partisan and very divisive tax cuts for the wealthy that Bush and the GOP have been pushing for the last five years. As we saw with the flap over his on background comments, his attempts to distance himself from the Republican Party are, at best, superficial, and serve mainly to hide his conservatism from view. In other words, if you call President Bush your "homeboy" and support the vast bulk of his policies, then no matter how many times you say otherwise, you're not that independent.

UPDATE: As a white guy who's supporting Mfume, I find Steele's remarks about Mfume's supposed racial loyalties to be rather offensive. What, exactly, about Mfume's platform is "black"? The part about bringing the troops home from Iraq, or the part about fighting poverty, or the part about serious health care reform?

UPDATE 2: Steele in a car wreck. Despite the above drubbing, I hope he gets well soon.

Tags: MD-Sen, Michael Steele, Kweisi Mfume