If Michael Steele still has a job by the end of the week, he’ll ironically have some of his toughest critics to thank. On Sunday, two of the GOP’s most hawkish members stopped short of demanding Steele’s resignation, after video footage surfaced late last week of the embattled RNC Chairman telling several Republican funders that America will likely lose the war in Afghanistan, and blaming President Obama for starting it.
That’s not to say they went easy on Steele. “I think those statements are wildly inaccurate and there is no excuse for them,” Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), ranking member on the Armed Services Committee, said on ABC’s This Week. “I think that Mr. Steele is going to have to assess as to whether he can still lead the Republican Party as chairman of the Republican National Committee.”
On CBS’s Face the Nation, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) claimed, “It’s not the Republican Party’s position, my Republican Party’s position,” calling Steele’s comments “uninformed, unnecessary, unwise [and] untimely.”
Both McCain and Graham spoke from Afghanistan.
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), perhaps the most conservative member of the Senate, called on Steele to more fully address the controversy. “Chairman Steele needs to apologize to our military, all the men and women who’ve been fighting in Afghanistan,” DeMint said on Fox News Sunday. “This is America’s war. It’s not Obama’s war.”
Significantly, though, no elected Republican in Washington called on Steele to step down. Steele has been the target of a fusillade of demands that he resign, including from one-time supporters: Bill Kristol and Liz Cheney each threw him under the bus after his comments surfaced. But if what he said truly amounted to a firing offense, it would be difficult for GOP Senators to leave the decision in his hands. Ironically, by not taking their criticisms as far as possible, Mcain and his fellow Republicans provided the first sign that Steele could survive his latest gaffe.
We’ll have our eye on it all week.
