Michael Steele, chairman of GOPAC, on the heels of his announcement yesterday that he is running for RNC Chairman, held a conference call with bloggers this afternoon.
Steele stated that he is “sick and tired” of the “whining” in the Republican Party and that the party should quit pretending to be “Democrat-lite”.
“If I wanted to be a Democrat, having grown up in Washington DC and living for twenty years in the bluest of blue states of Maryland, I would have been,” said Steele. “We are the conservative party.”
Steele stated that being honest and open about the value of life and enterprise and entrepreneurship, while not being nasty, scowling, or pejorative, but relating to real life experiences, is key.
“Have fun, stop scowling, speak to the people, and be honest with how we’ll get there,” he said.
Steele was very critical of the last campaign, stating that the party had no message with a lack of direction. He stated the election was more a repudiation of the Republican Party, than it was support for liberalism.
He stated it was very important to hold President-elect Obama accountable and not allow him to have a free pass because of his race. He felt McCain did give Obama a “free pass” by not putting Obama’s judgment up to scrutiny for his twenty-year relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
“Bad policies don’t have color,” said Steele. “They’re just bad policies.”
Steele feels that while he is an African-American, that does not make him a better spokesperson to oppose Obama. He said he’d oppose Obama’s policies “because I’m an American.”
Steele praised Obama’s communication strategy, citing how Obama was able to connect people together in a way never seen before. He said that he will implement a new communications strategy at the GOP, which includes engaging bloggers regularly (such as today), having an open exchange of ideas from all parts of the GOP, and reaching out to new voters.
Jim Riley also posted at Virginia Virtucon and Leslie Carbone at her site.
Here is the entire conference call.
