3/4: Melting Steele

Michael Steele's stock has plummeted in the conservative blogosphere in the wake of his dust-up with Rush Limbaugh. While righty bloggers aren't calling for Steele's resignation (yet), it's clear that they're unhappy about his tenure as RNC Chair thus far. The most common complaint in the conservative blogosphere is that Steele's "biggest asset" was supposed to be his communication skills, yet his TV appearances are precisely what have gotten him in trouble.

To make matters worse for Steele, his criticism of Limbaugh isn't the only thing that happened during his interview with CNN's D.L. Hughley that angered the rightroots. A number of conservative bloggers are criticizing Steele for failing to dispute Hughley's claim that the GOP convention "looked like Nazi Germany." Ed Morrissey complains: "Republicans get enough lunatics on the Left equating us with Nazis; we don't need it from our party chairman." Will Steele have to offer another apology?

What else is happening in the blogosphere?

• Liberal bloggers (Dworkin, Benen, Willis, Singer) are buzzing about the new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll indicating that "Pres. Obama's favorability rating is at an all-time high" while the GOP "finds its favorability at an all-time low."
• Conservative bloggers (Hawkins, Hinderaker), on the other hand, are buzzing about the new Rasmussen poll indicating that GOPers "have pulled to within two points of [Dems]" in the generic Congressional ballot.
• Liberal bloggers (Moulitsas, Cole, Drum) are accusing GOPers of hypocrisy in light of reports that 6 of the 10 Senators receiving the most earmarks in the omnibus budget bill are GOPers.
• Liberal bloggers (Chait, Marshall, Black, Drum, Aravosis) are blasting an ABC News article which they believe gives a false impression of Obama's tax plan.

STEELE: Losing Control Of His Image?

Steele is taking a lot of heat from conservative bloggers following his dust-up with Limbaugh:

• Power Line's John Hinderaker: "It's probably too early to give up on Steele, but I hope he understands that if he doesn't start sticking up for his fellow Republicans when he has the opportunity, his tenure at the RNC will be brief."
• AmSpec Blog's W. James Antle: "It's still very early in Steele's tenure, but the Limbaugh brouhaha doesn't bode well for his chairmanship. Steele's biggest asset was that he was an effective television spokesman for the Republican Party, not any turnaround at the Maryland Republican Party or GOPAC while he was running those party institutions. This was the area where he was really supposed to shine. I still maintain that Steele is more conservative than his critics allege, but he definitely has the apologetic blue-state Republican mentality. If this means a few years of vacillating between sucking up to D.L. Hughey and apologizing to Rush Limbaugh, it will be more of the same for the GOP."
• Hot Air's Allahpundit: "The RNC chair ideally needs to be good on TV and good at ingratiating himself with grassroots conservatives and their pocketbooks, and so far he's been terrible at both. [...] The party's not going to scramble to oust its first black chairman, but if Steele goes on embarrassing himself he'll become very easy to ignore, which will destroy his 'change' mandate."
• RedState's E Pluribus Unum: "Monday Michael Steele got taken behind the woodshed by Limbaugh, de-trousered and birched but good. To put it mildly, he had it coming, and I personally enjoyed it. However, if you heard Steele's 'apology' it's clear he didn't learn his lesson, and if he does not figure it out very quickly, he will set new records for 'Least Noticed Person In America'."
• Right Wing News' John Hawkins: "Just in case you're wondering -- yes, I do still support [Steele]. However, his recent performance has been worrisome for a number of reasons. Any Republican politico should know that you don't trash Rush Limbaugh. He's very popular with conservatives, he's a tremendous ally of the Republican Party, and in Steele's case, he has been one of his supporters. [...] Personally, I think Steele's biggest problem so far is that he seems to have caught that 'whipped dog syndrome' that so many Republicans in D.C. have been infected with. His first impulse always seems to be to apologize for things."

Meanwhile, The Washington Examiner's Byron York reports that "a number of Republican politicos around Washington...are worried that key jobs at the RNC are unfilled and the party's mission is unfocused, while Steele makes appearance after appearance on television, with sometimes controversial results."

STEELE II: How Could He Let That Charge Go Unanswered?

A number of righty bloggers are complaining about another moment from Steele's interview with Hughley, when he failed to dispute Hughley's claim that the GOP convention "looked like Nazi Germany":

• NRO's Andy McCarthy: "That Steele interview on CNN is really bad. [...] I wouldn't have thought it possible, but the video is much worse than described by Newsbusters' Michael Balan. He quotes a lot of what was said by the host, D.L. Hughley, about Republicans being like Nazis, but Balan goes on to report, incorrectly, that 'Steele did not verbally react to Hughley's Nazi characterization.' Steele not only did react but did so in a way that accepted Hughley's slanderous claim -- Steele's infuriating come-back was to suggest that this description of Republicans as racists was valid, but now he, Michael Steele, was here to set things right."
• Hawkins: "[I]t's worth noting that [Steele's criticism of Limbaugh] may have been his biggest flub, but it wasn't his only one. On the same show with D.L. Hughley, he let Hughley's comment that the Republican National Convention looked like Nazi Germany pass without comment. [...] If the Chair of a Republican Party isn't going to stand up and disagree when someone calls his side Nazis, then who is?"
• RedState's Erick Erickson: "A lot of readers sent me a link to Michelle's post on Steele, Hughley, and the Nazis. Good Lord did Steele really botch this interview. I thought he was an articulate spokesman. Hughley tells Steele the Republican Convention looked like a Nazi party gathering in Germany. Steele's response? [...] EPIC. FAIL."
• NRO's Kathryn Jean Lopez: "It is difficult not to get the impression that the man is in over his head. [...I]f his judgment is as poor as recent history suggests, it's going to take a miracle of a communications team to fix this problem. Nazis? That's not a communications issue, that's a judgment issue."
• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "Republicans get enough lunatics on the Left equating us with Nazis; we don't need it from our party chairman. The fact that Steele couldn't even stand up to Hughley and Chuck D doesn't bode well for Steele's ability to stand up to Democrats."

OBAMA: More Popular Than The Beatles?

Liberal bloggers are buzzing about the new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll indicating that "President Obama's favorability rating is at an all-time high" while the GOP "finds its favorability at an all-time low":

• Daily Kos' DemFromCT: "The new NBC/WSJ poll is out...and it ain't pretty if you're a Republican. 60% approve of Obama's performance [...], including the economy [56%]. 84% of the public thinks Barack Obama inherited the economic mess. And conservative attempts at linking Obama with yesterday's Dow aren't working."
• The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen: "Congressional Republicans are apparently under the impression that they're doing everything right. They're sticking to their far-right principles, refusing to cooperate with President Obama, embracing message discipline, and taking orders from right-wing radio hosts. [...] As it turns out, they've impressed themselves far more than they've impressed the country."
• Oliver Willis: "I'll gladly take America and the Democratic party under Barack Obama's leadership under the shrinking GOP run by a radio host. And America agrees."
• MyDD's Jonathan Singer: "[A]t this point, with President Obama seemingly benefiting from his ambitious actions and the Republicans sinking further and further as a result of their knee-jerked opposition to that agenda, there appears to be no reason not to push forward on anything from universal healthcare to energy reform to ending the war in Iraq."

Think Progress' Matthew Yglesias sounds a note of caution: "I think this confirms the basic point that the Democrats have a golden opportunity on their hands, but no kind of sure thing. Support for the Republicans has completely collapsed and people are generally supportive of the new administration. But even in the midst of whatever kind of honeymoon Obama's going to get, these numbers aren't going above fifty percent. If the Obama administration actually produces a return to prosperity they'll have a lock on re-election. But if their efforts don't work, then I bet these numbers will turn around fast. And while I've been very pleased with the social policy aspects -- health care, energy, education, etc. -- of the administration thus far I'm not at all sure that we can see recovery unless we get better finance policy and more effective international coordination of anti-recession efforts."

On the right side of the blogosphere, Allahpundit concedes that Obama is popular but thinks that "clouds are gathering": "So far [Americans are] willing to give him plenty of time to right the ship...I wonder what another six months of disintegrating Dow and rising unemployment would do to those numbers. Would the timeline be further extended or would people get impatient?"

Hawkins, on the other hand, thinks the NBC/WSJ pollsters "so heavily oversampled Democrats that their results are meaningless" and instead points to the new Rasmussen poll indicating that GOPers "have pulled to within two points of [Dems]" in the generic Congressional ballot. Hinderaker also points to this Rasmussen poll, which he sees as evidence that "voters have deep-seated reservations about the Democrats' current spending spree." Meanwhile, Glenn Reynolds sees several examples of "buyer's remorse" among Obama voters.

EARMARKS: Do As I Say, Not As I Do

Liberal bloggers are buzzing about the fact that 6 of the 10 Senators receiving the most earmarks in the omnibus budget bill are GOPers. These bloggers are concluding that GOPers are hypocrites for railing against earmark spending:

• Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas: "As we know from the last presidential election and the conservative punditry, there are few greater evils than 'earmarks' -- the practice of elected officials explicitly directing, via legislation, spending to projects in their districts and states. So who are the worst offenders of this scourge of humanity? [...W]e see that six of the top 10 earmarkers (by dollar amount) are Republicans, including the top two being our good wingnutty friends in Mississippi. We also see that six of the top 10, and 11 of the top 20, come from red states. (And remember, there are far fewer Republicans in the Senate this year.) So yeah, hypocrisy and all that crap. But what's also interesting is that several of the Democrats on that list will undoubtedly flex their 'moderate' and 'centrist' muscles during the budget debate, crying about the size size of Obama's budget while seeking to slash it in the name of deficit reduction. The two Arkansas Democrats and [LA Sen. Mary] Landrieu, in particular, will likely fall in this category."
• Balloon Juice's John Cole: "What is the word I am looking for? Hypocrite, I think it is. [...] I guess it is not quite time for the Republicans to break out those dusty 'Fiscal Conservatism' foam fingers. Not only are earmarks less than 2% of the total omnibus bill, but Republicans are responsible for half of them (and this does not even take into account how much those states pay in taxes as compared to how much they receive nor does it note the fact that the minority party -- Republicans -- has a higher percentage of earmark per Senator). No doubt [RNC Chair] Michael Steele and [LA Gov.] Bobby Jindal will take to the airwaves to point out that Republicans have still 'lost their way.'"
• Mother Jones' Kevin Drum: "As it happens, I think all the hyperventilating over earmarks is kind of silly. Getting rid of them wouldn't reduce the federal budget by a dime (the earmarked money would just go elsewhere), and in any case I don't have a huge issue with senators having some say in where money is spent in their states. Still, there's plenty of hyperventilation on the subject, and you can certainly make a good case that it's gotten out of hand. So as a public service, Taxpayers for Common Sense has itemized all the earmarks in the current budget and tallied them up by senator. [...] The top ten earmarkers [include] six Republicans and four Democrats. Keep their names (and party affiliations!) in mind the next time the hyperventilating starts to reach fever pitch on your TV."

MEDIA CRITICISM: ABC News Steps In It

Liberal bloggers are unloading on ABC reporter Emily Friedman for writing an article explaining how people in the top income tax bracket are trying to reduce their income in an effort to save money under Obama's plan (which reflects a misunderstanding of how the tax system works):

• The New Republic's Jon Chait: "I've seen a lot of dumb news reports in my life, but I'm not sure anything can quite match this one from ABC News. The premise of the report is this: Barack Obama plans to raise taxes on people who make more than $250,000, so the reporter has gone and found people who earn a little more than that sum who plan to decrease their income so that they come in underneath the magic line. Now, the obvious objection here is that the tax code doesn't work that way. A tax increase affects the marginal dollar that a person gains. That's means only every dollar over $250,000 is taxed at a higher rate. Obama is not proposing a tax system whereby somebody who goes from $249,999 to $250,000 suddenly becomes poorer. Nobody has ever enacted a tax hike like that in the history of the United States."
• Atrios: "I guess I'm actually curious if the people working for ABC have any idea how the income tax works or not. Some times I can't tell if media outlets are playing stupid or if they are stupid."
• TPM's Josh Marshall: "[This is] both sad and funny. ABC reporter who doesn't understand how income taxes work finds rich people who don't know either and makes a story out of it."
• Drum: "Friedman's piece is a train wreck. What happened to ABC News' editors on this one?"
• AMERICAblog's John Aravosis: "Look, it's fair for someone not to know how the tax system works. For the longest time, I honestly didn't know how it works (still don't get a lot of it). But reporters usually have editors. And in this story, you also had sources explaining how it actually works. You'd think the reporter would have said 'uh oh' and canned the story."
• digby: "Apparently, even people who make over a quarter of a million dollars a year and are respected professionals don't know the most rudimentary things about their own finances. [...] This is a teachable moment, but the media gasbags are so stunningly uninformed themselves that they are incapable of doing it."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: It's A Trap!

While most conservative bloggers loved Limbaugh's CPAC speech, The Atlantic's Ross Douthat feels differently:

"Just imagine, for a moment, how conservatives would react if four months after the worst defeat liberalism had suffered in a generation, a [Keith] Olbermann (or a [Bill] Moyers or a Michael Moore or a Bill Maher or whomever) showed up to deliver the keynote address at a liberal equivalent of CPAC, and during the course of his speech he blasted every Democrat who disagrees with him as a miserable sell-out, suggested that conservatives are fascists and conservatism a psychosis, lectured the crowd on the irrelevance of policy ideas to liberalism's political prospects, and insisted that the only blueprint liberals need to win elections is the one that Lyndon Johnson used to rout Barry Goldwater. And then further imagine that both before and after this speech, a series of left-of-center politicians ventured criticisms of Olbermann, only to beat a hasty and apologetic retreat as soon as he turned his fire on them. Conservatives would be chortling -- and rightly so! Not because liberalism needs to purge or marginalize its Keith Olbermanns, or because impassioned liberal entertainers don't have a place in left-of-center discourse -- but because when your political persuasion faces a leadership vacuum, you don't want to have it filled by someone who appeals to an impassioned but narrow range of voters, and whose central incentive is to maximize his own ratings.

Remember when National Review ran a cover story about Howard Dean, entitled 'Please, Nominate This Man!'? That's how liberals feel about Rush Limbaugh at the moment: They can't get enough of him. I don't see any reason why conservatives should be playing into their hands."

LEST WE FORGET: Steele Loses His Street Cred

Last week The Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates took Steele to task for his "unwarranted, unprovoked attack on Ebonics." Now Coates is criticizing Steele for backing down to Limbaugh:

"I'm not offended that Steele is kow-towing to Rush. I'm offended that Steele would wrap himself in the garb on hip-hop, and then apologize to Rush. Man listen: The first rule for establishing 'Off The Hook Urban-Suburban Hip-Hop Strategies' is if you gonna dis a mofo, then dis him. Don't come out the box quoting 'How You Like Me Now,' and then go and apologize to the guy who you just dissed. Could you imagine Moe Dee apologizing to LL? Kris apologizing to Shan? Shante apologizing to the Real Roxanne? Hillary Duff apologizing to Lindsay Lohan? Come on man. You ain't no wiling-out-for-the-night-fist-thrower:

'Mr. Steele called Mr. Limbaugh after the radio host belittled Mr. Steele on his show, questioning his authority and saying the new Republican leader was off "to a shaky start." [...]

"Mr. Steele: You are head of the R.N.C.," Mr. Limbaugh said. "You are not head of the Republican Party. Tens of millions of conservatives and Republicans have nothing to do with the R.N.C. and right now they want nothing to do with it."'

Shorter Rush Limbaugh -- 'Don't make me have to call your name out\Your crew is featherweight\My talk-show will make you levitate...'"