If I was a gambling man, I would bet that Michael Steele is going to make it.
I realize that he’s not popular, that a lot of people in the Republican Party would like to see him go and as Josh Marshall pointed out he doesn’t have a single, solid constituency like the conservative Christian activists or state party chairs united behind him.
But look at Roland Burris. I point to him not because of race, although surely the forcible removal of the first African-American chairman of the Republican National Committee would have racial overtones. Burris is arguably much less popular among his peers than Steele is with the Republican National Committee members who elected him RNC Chairman in January. Burris seems like a goner just a few weeks ago. Now, he’s a Senate regular and his ouster seems unlikely in the extreme.
Still it’s worth examining just what the party rules say about removing a chairman if it comes to that. If you look at Rule 5 of the RNC rules it says explicitly: “The chairman or co- chairman may be removed from office only by a two- thirds (2/3) vote of the entire Republican National Committee.” The ballot has to be open under Roberts Rules of Order which is the playbook for RNC rules–which is kind of amusing given the opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act. That is a pretty high bar.
And the vote could only come–as best I can tell; I have a call into the RNC– at one of the two semiannual meetings of the RNC. Thus, you couldn’t have a phone coup d’etat or the Executive Committee of the RNC lead the fight.
Can Steele hold a third of RNC members? My bet is yes although the fact that it’s even a question is pretty amazing.
By the way, the shortest chairmanship of the RNC ever was C. Wesley Roberts of Kansas who served four months as chair in 1953. According to Wikipedia, Alvin Scott of The Kansas City Star won a Pulitzer Prize in 1954 for local reporting for a series of articles that drove Roberts to resign. Roberts was accused of collecting a $10,000 commission on the sale of a hospital to the State of Kansas which the state already owned. His son, interestingly, is U.S. Senator Pat Roberts.
