MD-Sen: Steele's Style

Great article by Brian Morton on the Maryland Senate race:

Michael Steele, Maryland's Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, gets to have it both ways, just like he has been trying to the entire election season. The lieutenant governor can take the high road and argue that the NBRA should yank the ads, and the group can ignore him and keep running them. This way, they get their message out, and he gets to appear above it all.

Steele wants this campaign to be about anything except the issues. America is divided more now than it ever has been in the last 46 years, with high-profile issues like the Iraq war, torture, stem-cell research, abortion rights, energy policy, and the regulation of big business--and Steele acts like this campaign is about him and his fabulous personality. Excuse me while I gag.

[snip]

Punch the button on the screen for Steele in November (if they're working at the time), and what are you getting in Washington? A vote to bring an end to the waste of American lives that is the war in Iraq? Not likely. A vote against torture and the redefining of the Geneva Conventions that is making the United States a pariah in the civilized world and a model for dictators everywhere who might want to do the same? Hardly. A vote for the return to real science instead of politicized pseudo-intellectual garbage like "intelligent design?" How will we know--Steele won't talk about it. But he'll tell you he's all about his "style" of "leadership," whatever the hell that means.

Two things I would add: 1) Steele is so inept as a candidate that even when he tries to make the election about his "personality," he falls flat on his face; and 2) as the Post has documented, Steele is going to face a serious shortage in campaign funds as the national GOP scrambles to protect their more endangered incumbents, such as Conrad Burns and George "Deer Hunter" Allen. This might not be so bad for Steele, if he had an independent base of support in Maryland. As it is, he is almost entirely a creature of the Republican Party, and therefore cannot credibly reach out to the state's Democratic majority -- black, brown, or white -- without making himself as bland and issue-free as possible. So in a sense, the much-derided puppy ad was inevitable.