CPAC Blames It On the 'Black Guy'

American Conservative Union communications
director Ian B. Walters speaking at CPAC

Well another year has come and gone for the annual gathering of conservative activists and politicians known as the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

Co-founded in 1973 by the American Conservative Union, CPAC basically serves as a kind of think-tank platform for a range of conservative issues.

It offers leading conservative thinkers and politicians an opportunity to sound out their policy positions and political views in front of a crowd that embraces a decidedly right-wingy view of America.

It's a multi-day conference that helps to shape the overall message of the Republican Party and influence the legislative agenda of GOP politicians all across America.

For Republican presidential hopefuls, the road to the White House runs through CPAC.

If some of the comments heard there last week are any indication, the Republican Party really doesn't seem too concerned about the broader public perception that it's an organization which is openly unwelcoming to people of color - or even remotely interested in expanding it's membership beyond it's overwhelmingly white voter base.

As Jeffrey Mays reported on Sunday in an article in the New York Times, Ian B. Walters (pictured above), the communications director for the American Conservative Union that hosts CPAC, raised eyebrows at a CPAC dinner on Friday evening while reflecting back on the disillusionment of the Republican Party in 2008 after President Obama's election victory when he observed:

"We elected Mike Steele to be the R.N.C. chair because he's a black guy. That was the wrong thing to do."

According to Mays a number of conservatives, including R.N.C. spokesman Michael Ahrens, quickly distanced themselves from Walters' comments.

Former RNC chair Michael Steele

Comments which can be seen as a not-so-subtle endorsement of the racism and xenophobia of Trump, and his tolerance of white supremacist views evidenced by senior White House advisor Stephen Miller.

The comment also seems to crudely parrot the basis of  Trump's political views - which is to engage in "other-ism" and essentially place blame for the country's problems at the feet of immigrants and non-white Americans.

Steele, the popular ex-Republican lieutenant governor of Maryland from 2003 to 2007, was tapped to lead the R.N.C. after President Obama's 2008 election victory as Republicans tried to come to grips with a brutal election loss.

Bolstered by George W. Bush's unpopularity and anger over the Iraq War, Obama won the African-American vote 95% to Senator John McCain's 5%, the Hispanic vote 67% to 31%, the Asian vote 62% to 35% and the Jewish vote 78% to 21%.

The Republican Party was forced to face the uncomfortable political reality that it had to find a way to expand it's membership and appeal among non-white American voters.

In 2009, Michael Steele represented something of a rarity in an increasingly conservative GOP, a progressive Republican voice who was African-American - one could arguably call him a unicorn.

Pat Buchanan after winning the New Hampshire
primary in 1996

In 1993, he was one of the founding members of the Republican Leadership Council, a political action committee (PAC) that embraced a "fiscally conservative, socially inclusive" political agenda.

The other RLC co-founders included former New Jersey Republican Governor Christine Todd Whitman, former Missouri Republican Senator John Danforth and former Massachusetts Republican Governor William Weld.

The RLC PAC was formed after the backlash from right-wing writer Pat Buchanan's divisive speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention in the wake of his failed bid for the presidency in which he claimed, in part: "There is a religious war going on in this country. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we shall be as was the Cold War itself, for this war is for the soul of America."  

I can still recall listening to that speech on TV and getting an uncomfortable chill when he exalted the R.N.C. crowd to "take back America's cities."

The RLC was an effort to strengthen the voices of moderate Republicans in the mold of former Congressman and HUD Secretary Jack Kemp, and reject the rise of the extremist religious zealotry which has now taken root within the GOP.

Now I say all that, in part, because I think Ian B. Walter's comment that the R.N.C. selected Michael Steele as chair in 2009 "because he was a black guy" is a simplistic and incomplete summary of why he was tapped for the position.

It's also an overt attempt to pander to the overt tone of bigotry and dog-whistle racism which Trump has openly cultivated since announcing his candidacy. 

Now I might not personally agree with everything Michael Steele says in the political sense, but he's a pretty shrewd political operator who is not afraid to stand up for what he believes is right - including his criticism of Donald Trump, or his dust-ups with Rush Limbaugh back in 2009.

Michael Steele as R.N.C. chair during the 2011
Winter meeting in National Harbor, Maryland

As a conservative political commentator on MSNBC his comments and insight are always interesting and substantive.

Is it possible that his selection as R.N.C. chair in 1992 was, in part, influenced by a desire on the part of the Republican establishment to change the stiff "country club" perception of their party as an organization for old white Christian guys?

Sure it is, in fact selecting Steele as R.N.C. chair was a pretty savvy move on the part of Republicans in 2009.

When they knew they would run the risk of reinforcing the perception of the party as racist simply for attacking Obama politically as president.

But there's no question that Steele was more than qualified for the position based on his track record as a lawyer in the private sector, and for his extensive work both behind and in front of the scenes on behalf of the Republican Party.

This is a guy who earned his B.A. from Johns Hopkins and his law degree from Georgetown.

He was the first African-American elected to statewide office in Maryland when he became lieutenant governor in 2003 and he made an unsuccessful run for U.S. Senate in 2006, eventually loosing to current Democratic Senator Ben Cardin.

So in my view, Steele is the kind of person that Republicans should embrace, rather than try and vilify as if he was some kind of mistake as Ian B. Walters suggested at the CPAC dinner on Friday night.

But given Trump's views on race, and the Republican Party's acceptance of the de facto head of their party being a philandering bigot, maybe this current iteration of the R.N.C. does see a man like Michael Steele as a mistake - rather than an asset who reflected positively on the GOP.

After all, the CPAC crowd enthusiastically cheered Trump's rambling speech on Friday, even though it clearly contained lies and half-truths that have been fact-checked and he read a story about a snake.

And later that evening at the CPAC dinner, ACU communications director Ian B. Walter looked back nine years ago to cast blame on "the black guy." 

So much for those talked-about but never seen Republican Party "outreach efforts".