Michael Steele: Accountability For Thee But Not for Me

If you are unfamiliar with the media's New Rules, the magical journey of imagination that Michael Steele is about to take you on will sound sound nearly incomprehensible -- absurdist theater being played for laughs.

But if you have rewired your mind and your memory to accept the New Rules -- rules that state that all political history began in 2015/6 and that if you are a Teevee Never Trumper you are allowed to make up whatever bullshit backstory you please about your past and it cannot be challenged or questioned in any way because it happened during the Before Time -- then everything Michael Steele said on MSNBC last week is righteous and true and what sort of whiny, petty counterrevolutionary would say otherwise?

First, of course, Nicolle Wallace had to ritually reinforce the terms under under which all future media discussions of redemption and accountability are to be conduction: terms I've already laid out in great detail here, "Boom Times Are Coming to the Indulgence Factory".  Put simply, history prior to 2015/6 is now officially off-limits and all discussions of accountability and redemption must be confined to the Trump era:

Nicole Wallace: Michael Steele there is something happening on the right that is I think is the byproduct of five years of trump's disinformation... There can be no unity without accountability. as Heather Heyer's mother says in The New York Times today...

With that out of the way, Michael Steele was free to get his righteous indignation freak on:

Michael Steele:   ...the [offensive strategy] by the Republicans is to... uh... as exactly as as Elizabeth just laid out very well.  Um... to go out and say, "Well we're going to do Unity but we're going to do Unity on our terms.  And anything that's not Unity on our terms well that ain't Unity."

I am at pains to remind you that this is exactly the same condescending rejection that Never Trumpers threw back in the faces of us dirty, disreputable Libtards when we asked that, as a condition of joining our team, they take some responsibility for the decades of institutionally approved Republican racism, rage and paranoia that led to their party to nominate and elect Donald Trump.  

I am at further pains to mention that a whole lot of my allies took the Never Trumper's side and told me in no uncertain terms that making their absolution contingent on some whatchacall "mea culpa" gesture in the general direction of acknowledging their part in building the GOP monster machine was simply too much to ask and would I please shaddap about it.

Michael Steel continues:

Steele: So what Joe Biden has to do now is go, "No that's not how we do this. You need to come to the table prepared to do the "mea culpa" because we are here because this is where you led us.

See what I did there?  

And now that all political history prior to 2015/6 has officially been erased and we have clearly established who the Sinners are, Michael Steele can once again to use his position at MSNBC to continue elevating himself to political Sainthood by rewriting his years as RNC chair any way he pleases:

Steele:  One important point.  When I took over the party in 2009 it was very very important for me to approach where we were based on where we had come from.  We had come from a place where the party had lost uh in 2008 lost in 2006 and we had to understand why the par... why the party was being rejected.  So you have to begin with the "mea culpa".  You have to begin with owning the losses. Owning the carnage that you've left behind, because if you don't do that you can't begin to take the steps forward.  Besides no one will believe you.  You have no credibility.  I can't go to the country and say hey vote for us when they go, "Wait a minute, you got all this stuff, all this baggage..."

As those of us who were there and taking notes during Steele's Reign of Error know, Mr. Steele's fanciful Remembrance of Chairmanships Past bears no resemblance to actual history.  And so I must once again beg your indulgence while I give Clio the Muse of History her due by repeating that these are exactly the same very reasonable terms that some of us dirty, disreputable Libtards insisted that men like Michael Steele should be required to live up to before they could be trusted to join our team.  Because (as some of us dirty, disreputable Libtards warned) if we didn't draw that line, the day would come sooner that you would believe possible when men like Michael Steele would have completely colonized the media and there would be no one to say otherwise as they advanced their careers by lying and lying and lying about their own past and their complicity in building the GOP monster machine that produced Donald Trump.

So, for those of you who weren't paying attention at the time,  this is what actually happened during Mr. Steele's tenure as RNC chair.

After the Democrats nominated and elected of Barack Obama, the GOP found itself suddenly in urgent needed of a black man who was morally flexible enough to front for the deeply racist Republican Party, and Michael Steele was just the man for that job.  The party's recovery from its losses in 2006 and 2008 had nothing whatsoever to do with understanding "why the party was being rejected".  I had everything to do with leaning all the way in on the deeply racist Republican Party's rebranding scam called the "Tea Party" and their rallying cries of Birtherism and Death Panels.

Steele's tenure was a bumbling failure, and I can't help but laugh (albeit bitterly) when I hear Steele now saying shit like this with all the courage and conviction of a man with a steady media gig and no fear of being called out in public --

You CANNOT SLAP ME out in front of MILLIONS of people AND expect me to apologize TO YOU! Michael Steele on MSNBC. Millions agree. The Greedy Old Pirates BETTER RECOGNIZE!

— Hollis Key Jr (@JrHollis60) January 21, 2021

-- when getting slapped in the face and then being forced to apologize to the slapper was literally what happened the one time he dared to venture out of his role as the GOP's front man to mildly rebuke the real head of the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh.  Limbaugh dropped a house on him and Steele obligingly ran to him and groveled for his forgiveness.  From Politico in 2009:

Steele to Rush: I'm sorry

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele says he has reached out to Rush Limbaugh to tell him he meant no offense when he referred to the popular conservative radio host as an “entertainer” whose show can be “incendiary.”

“My intent was not to go after Rush – I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh,” Steele said in a telephone interview. “I was maybe a little bit inarticulate. … There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership."...

In the interview with Politico, Steele called Limbaugh “a very valuable conservative voice for our party.”

“He brings a very important message to the American people to wake up and pay attention to what the administration is doing," Steele said. "Number two, there are those out there who want to look at what he’s saying as incendiary and divisive and ugly. That’s what I was trying to say. It didn’t come out that way. … He does what he does best, which is provoke: He provokes thought, he provokes the left. And they’re clearly the ones who are most excited about him.”...

But since all this happened during the Before Time, and it is the Beltway media's official policy that the Before Time never happened, Michael Steele is now free to use all that free free air time MSNBC gives him to manufacture whatever flattering fiction about himself and his years of triumph as the chair of the RNC that he pleases.

And now (as certain disreputable Liberal bloggers predicted) that Never Trumpers have finished completely displacing actual Liberals as the media-authorized critics of the GOP, their version of history is now the official media version of history.

Because no one is allowed on same stage who might dare to say otherwise.  

No Half Measures