Black Republican Chief Michael Steele Explains Plan to Attract Black Voters
 Photos by Steed Media Service |
Michael
Steele, the first African American chairman of the Republican Party,
said his visit to Tavis Smiley’s 10th annual “State of the Black Union”
— where he spoke before a multitude of African Americans — was not
adversarial at all, though he did withstand some sideswipes from some
of the panelists, including Dr. Cornel West and Dr. Michael Eric Dyson.
The blizzard of criticism Steele had to, well, steel himself against,
came from fellow conservative Rush Limbaugh, who vilified Steele for
trying to be a “media star” and misrepresenting Republicans’
intentions. Nevertheless, Steele is on a single-minded campaign to
serve up a more digestible form of the Republican agenda for mass
consumption that he hopes will lead blacks to the party of Lincoln.
“For
far too long, and I have said this for the long years I’ve been with
this party, we have sat on the sidelines and had others define our
agenda for the black community,” he says. “Well, I’m here to do that.
I’m here to lay that out [to] the best extent possible and have people
chew on that themselves and decide: that makes sense or that doesn’t
make sense.”
Steele says he will
translate the message of his mother, a laundry worker, who “never made
more that minimum wage in her life. But through her hard work she was
able to position our family, my sister and I, to be successful. She
said, ‘It may not come to me but it will be with our kids,’ ” he says.
“And that resonated with me because it is the core of what the party
was founded on.”
Lincoln talked about empowering the black community, moving them out of
slavery into opportunity, Steele says. But “in the ‘60s we walked away
from that as a party. As a young man I studied both parties. I said
‘[the Republicans] [identify] more with my philosophy than what I saw
in the ‘Big Society’ of the Johnson Administration. So I think there’s
some relevancy when you talk about ownership and empowerment and
opportunity.”
Steele says blacks are more adversely affected by the wretched economy.
“So now this is the chance to not just to talk but to put some strategy
behind it that we will be able to move from sitting at the lunch
counter to owning the diner,” Steele adds. “And that’s where I’m coming
from as the chair of the Republican Party.”
This
message, Steele hopes, will hopefully ignite a migration of blacks from
the Democratic Party to the Republican Party in the years to come. –terry shropshire
