Michael Steele had an amazing interview with Matt Lauer this morning. Steele turned out to be totally unable to say he disagreed with Rush Limbaugh on wanting President Obama to fail:
Steele said his job is to balance the various opinions on whether people want the president o fail — and conceded he hasn’t been doing a good job so far as chairman:
Lauer: Rush Limbaugh says it very bluntly: “I want him to fail,” referring to Barack Obama. Do you agree with that?
Steele: I — look, my job is to build my party after– after a tough two election cycles. My job is to try to craft a message for our party. There are a lot of opinions out there. Some come from people who are notable, some from people who are not so notable. And my job is try to balance that. I wasn’t that effective at it this week, but you know I’ve been 30 days in the job, and we’ll — you know, we’ll move forward.
Lauer kept asking the question — and Steele persisted to not answer it, saying his own opinion doesn’t matter:
Lauer: Do you agree with Rush Limbaugh when he says it’s common sense that as a conservative, he wants the policies of Barack Obama to fail?
Steele: Well, my personal opinion doesn’t matter in this. My personal — my job as the RNC chairman is to take into account all the various views out there within our party, and try to put together a strategy and a team that’s gonna help us win elections.
So Steele appears to acknowledge that the opinion exists within his party that conservatives should want President Obama’s policies to fail — and it’s his job to take views like these into account, among others, in forming the party’s strategy.
