Michael Steele’s Epic Fail

Somewhat lost in all the who loves and doesn’t love Rush business was Steele’s biggest blunder with D.L. Hughley on CNN. Steele let Hughley’s casual slur comparing the Republican convention to Nazis pass by unremarked upon.

Laura Ingram took Steele to task on that today and Hot Air has the exchange.

I get Steele’s point that you don’t engage every slur or else you will never focus on your message. Let’s be honest, if you get into a fight about whether or not you are a Nazi, you’ve kind of already lost. Here’s the thing though, a good communicator (or even a simply competent one) takes on those slurs and reframes them to their advantage.

For example, Steele might have said something along these lines, “Comparing Republicans to Nazis is grotesque on many levels. Aside from it being a slur of the worst kind, it’s simply ridiculous. Those Republicans are the ones who want allow poor families, many of them black, to have a choice about where their kids go to schools so they have the same have the same chance for a quality education as rich families do. Those Republicans you so flippantly insult want to allow poor and working families to keep a lot more of what they earn, not the measly $13/week, a portion of which will have to be paid back next year in taxes. And those same Republicans want Americans of all colors and financial means to live in safety, free from the fear of another terrorist attack on our soil. I think you need to retract that slur and apologize.”

See what I did there? I refuted the slur while promoting conservative values and policy positions. As an added bonus, the host is on the defensive. Now you may say that it’s easy to that a few days later on a blog and not so easy in the heat of the moment. Well, that’s Steele’s job and trust me, I can do it in the heat of the moment. Why didn’t he?

I supported Steele because I thought we needed a media savvy guy as the face of the party while there’s a Republican leadership vacuum in Congress. Looks like I backed the wrong guy.

posted by DrewM. at 03:06 PM

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