The RNC elects its new chairman today at its winter meeting in DC (where the theme is “Republican For A Reason” — seriously). That and the day’s other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

Labor-backed group runs new ads hitting new GOP party leader Rush Limbaugh.

President Obama is hiring Samantha Power to be senior director of multilateral affairs at the NSC.

No one captured a majority of the vote on the first ballot for RNC chairman. This should get fun.

Late Update: But on to more important business: the box lunches!

According to Rudy Giuliani, it’s shortsighted not to let state-supported Wall Street firms give out massive bonuses since those bonuses help float the economy through all the luxury goods and services the Wall Street sharpies buy. (And believe me, I’ve got no beef with Wall Street sharpies. A lot of them are friends of mine. Indeed, now I feel even closer to them since a chunk of my tax dollars is going to their salaries. Sort of makes me feel like a Wall Street player.) As a resident of New York City, I think it’s probably true that those dollars do do a decent amount for New York City economy, in the form of tax dollars and supporting local businesses — though I would question its relative efficiency in stimulus terms. (And that’s in large part because it’s a lot of money in a fairly restricted geographic area.) But the government support that keeps these firms afloat doesn’t just come from New York City, does it?

This is the definition of trickle down — give huge amounts of money to a small number of individuals, most of which will be socked away but a relatively small percentage of which will be spent on luxury goods.

Amazing that this goof was once the GOP frontrunner for president.

It’s seems like the RNC chair contest is shaping up more or less like everything I’ve seen from the GOP for the last few months. After a lot of talk about rebranding the party, how they always hated President Bush and generally are going to become the party of the 21st century, on the first ballot the plurality of votes went to the marginally competent semi-neanderthal installed by President Bush.

So we’ve just had a third vote in the RNC chairmanship race. It’s still pretty scattered. But Michael Steele has moved

into a clearer lead. There’s also been movement in the direction of South Carolina party chair Katon Dawson. In other words, we might be moving more clearly toward a black candidate vs. racial backlash candidate race in the race to steer the Republican party out of the 19th century.

Needless to say, Dawson’s move may be gaining from the withdrawal of former Tennessee GOP chair Chip Saltsman, whose main selling point was sending out racist parody songs as party gifts.

So current RNC Chair Duncan just dropped out. After his announcement, the people controlling the gavel tried several times to push for a brief recess. But there were repeated calls of ‘no’ from the floor. So the proceeded immediately to a vote. It looked liked someone’s supporters thought that a win was within their reach on an immediate vote and they didn’t want any delays that would allow something to shift or some group to jumble the numbers to put it out of their reach.

The few, the proud … the TPM interns.

TPM brings on a new class of interns each season. And we’re now taking applications for our Spring 2009 cycle. TPM interns are probably as intimately and rapidly involved in the preparation and production of news coverage as interns at any other news organization. And that ranges from work on the news section of the front page to research for our news blogs to video editing to bylined articles. Spring cycle interns will work closely on stories relating to the start of the new Administration and the new Congress. To find out details for how to apply, click here.