The Sunlight Foundation's Real Time Investigations blog looked up the Republican National Committee's most recent FEC filing and found that they spent $1.4 million web sites and services over the past six months, the period during which Steele was blueskying names for his new "What Up" blog on the snazzy new site, which went live earlier this month.

How much does it cost to host a site for six months that is visited almost exclusively by stoned Wonkette readers who just want to see Steele walk onto their computer again? It costs $1,039,155. The Democratic National Committee, on the other hand, which gets roughly the same amount of traffic as GOP.com on its site, spent $203,000 on hosting during the same period.

That $1,039,155 went to Smartech Corp., a web company that services a lot of conservative clients. We're off to go find out which one of Michael Steele's brothers-in-law works there.

[Via Politico.]

You really must check out the brand-new GOP.com, which was unveiled today. It doesn't work, of course. (It's actually called "GOP beta," which is a rich metaphorical truth.) But if you keep clicking "reload," and if you're lucky, you'll actually bring up the page and be shocked to find a tiny, adorable little Michael Steele walking across your screen and addressing you directly, in the fashion of a Princess Leia hologram, to beg for "Republican coders" to help make the site actually work, which it doesn't.

"GOP beta" will provide fodder for many days to come, but Greg Sargent at the Washington Post Company's Plumline blog has found a delightful nugget: The site's "Heroes" page features a lot of black faces, probably in order to counter the (accurate) impression that the GOP is actively courting the energy and activism of people who really don't like black presidents (we'd provide a link, but right now it says "PHP has encountered an Access Violation at 7C82A01A"). There's Frederick Douglass, for instance, who famously supported the GOP's affirmation of states' rights and opposition to the involvement of the federal government in local affairs. And there's also Jackie Robinson, baseball hero and famous Republican.

Yes, Jackie Robinson campaigned for Richard Nixon in 1960, and for Nelson Rockefeller in 1964. But Sargent points out that he was a registered independent, and dug up these telling quotes from his autobiography, recounting his experience at the 1964 Republican National Convention:

That convention was one of the most unforgettable and frightening experiences of my life. The hatred I saw was unique to me because it was hatred directed against a white man. It embodied a revulsion for all he stood for, including his enlightened attitude towards black people.

A new breed of Republicans had taken over the GOP. As I watched this steamroller operation in San Francisco, I had a better understanding of how it must have felt to be a Jew in Hitler's Germany.

This Robinson fellow seems like he'd be right at home at a tea party, where he would no doubt be welcomed with open arms as long as he can prove that he was born in America.

While the GOP is busy rewriting the past, it hasn't had much time to look to the future: Politico's Ben Smith went to see who was featured on its "future leaders" page, and found another rich metaphorical truth: a blank page.

First, according to an entertaining Salon report, a white lady stood up and said her mom had died because she couldn't afford chemo. Michael Steele put her in her place! Then the police escorted the lady away. Here's a video of it! The conflict starts about two and a half minutes in.

With the rude "my mom died" lady under control, Steele was free to bring this inspirational message to the crowd:

"It's important to be here, to show you that from 8th Street NW to this moment, it happens," he said. "It can happen." Which was true enough. But since nearly everyone he called on said they wanted to go to law school — the talk was, after all, co-sponsored by Howard's Political Science Society — the message flirted with condescension.

With hard work and a role model like Michael Steele, you too can one day break out of the ghetto of Howard University, future law students! The man is a master communicator. Give him that.

RELATED TRUE STORY: Hillary Clinton Laura Bush once went and gave a speech at the Howard student center which is right over the cafeteria on Soul Food night and was ROUNDLY CONDEMNED not for her speech, but for messing up Soul Food night, which was the best food night.

Shout out to Drew Hall.

"What do you mean by an individual requirement?" Michael Steele asked.

The argument for an individual mandate is that when young and healthy people pay into the system, it pools risk and helps reduce the cost of caring for the elderly and infirm, which is what the young and healthy will eventually become, and then they'll certainly want the kids to subsidize them. That is a pretty simple concept, right? Not to the head of the Republican National Committee, apparently! Once it was explained to him, he would not actually say anything about it.

"Again, that is one of those areas where there is different opinions...I don't do policy," he said. "My point in coming here today was to begin to set a tone, and a theme if you will."

Well, no, it is not Michael Steele's job to "do policy," but it should probably be his job to understand his party's position on policy, because he is in charge of selling it?

In truth, it's really sort of hard to decipher what exactly sets off O'Donnell's fit of laughter here. After all, the rollicking clown car that is the modern Republican party is always good for a few belly laughs on its own, and people farting in public is ALWAYS funny, so we pulled this clip and we swear that we heard audible flatulence, just before they cut away from Steele and rejoined O'Donnell and her roundtable.

Help us solve this mystery!

Also he's going to quit, apparently. Some members of the RNC are concerned about handing over the party's purse strings to an obviously incompetent hip-hop enthusiast whom they only hired to be a black Republican on TV, so a move is afoot to restrict Steele's ability to spend money. The state parties are scheduled to vote on it tomorrow, and Steele got all "I Will Survive" and told Fox today that "they can contemplate all they want to, but the reality is if they want a figurehead chairman you can have a figurehead chairman, but it won't be Michael Steele." Um, they actually did want a figurehead chairman. So sorry for the misunderstanding, Mike. We're sure they'll be a great reference and wish you luck in all your future endeavors.

But if he doesn't make good on his threat to walk right out that door, Steele has an excellent solution to his party's troubles: Stop making apologies. "The era of apologizing for Republican mistakes of the past is now officially over," he says according to an advance text. "It is done." You go, girl! So when Steele said in February, "we know the past, we know we did wrong—my bad," that was OK, because it was during the Era of Republican Apologies, which Steele just officially ended. So listen up Republicans: Next time one of you refers to Chuck Schumer as "that Jew," do not back down! Stand up for your beliefs! You are fierce women who deserve only the best!

But the best line in this hilarious speech? The instant classic: "This change, my friends, is being delivered in a teabag, and that's a wonderful thing."

Reports Politico's Roger Simon...

A member of the Republican National Committee told me Tuesday that when the RNC meets in an extraordinary special session next week, it will approve a resolution rebranding Democrats as the "Democrat Socialist Party."

When I asked if such a resolution would force RNC Chairman Michael Steele to use that label when talking about Democrats in all his speeches and press releases, the RNC member replied: "Who cares?"

Yep, that sounds about right. Just keep driving yourselves further and further into irrelevancy fellas. Enjoy life in the regressive minority.

Michele Bachmann clown-face photo via Flickr.

As you recall: "Rush Limbaugh with a chained Princess Leia (Sarah Palin) and Michael Steele as C3P0." Winning idea by commenter saythatscool, congratulations! Your prize is a feeling of artistic and cultural satisfaction.

At left you see the early stages of the Rush-as-Jabba-the-Hut painting in progress, which the intrepid artist went ahead and started even before voting had concluded. This vivid tableau narrowly edged out "Rahm Emanuel, riding either a white Siberian tiger or an oversized grey wolf, leaping across a mountain of giant pancakes." Coming in third, with 26% of the vote, was "Rachel Maddow riding a be-saddled Keith Olbermann into battle with a lance and pancake shield against a comparably-though-perhaps-differently-armored Limbaugh riding Hannity."


The good news is that Dan Lacey has vowed to paint all of your finalist suggestions. We'll keep you appraised. Below, an earlier (scrapped) version of the winning Rush painting, which was also nice:

See, first of all, there are basically no other candidates for the job. No one serious wanted it before, and no one serious wants it now. That's just one of the reasons Steele will probably stay that Chris Cillizza highlights.

Another problem, hah, is that they picked Steele so that they wouldn't look like "the party of old white men" (which they still are!), so firing him for running his mouth would be basically the worst message possible to send, right now.

So gay-loving abortionist hiphop star gaffe machine Michael Steele's job is probably safe, for the time being! Which is great news for everyone (even Republicans, because, as embarrassing and dumb as he is, he's a better face for the party than the segregationist dude who really wants to replace him).

There is no denying that the following exchange did occur, betwixt a presumably non-intoxicated Michael Steele and a member of the gay metrosexual media:

GQ Magazine: Are you saying you think women have the right to choose abortion?
Michael Steele: Yeah. I mean, again, I think that's an individual choice.
GQ Magazine, once again: You do?
Michael Steele, supporter of a woman's right to choose: Yeah. Absolutely.

The idea that a "woman" (rather than Satan) could "choose" abortion upset the wingnuts so now Michael Steele is all "I'm pro-life people, God, shutup please." Michael Steele is totally a Democrat.

[Additional real Michael Steele quote from the same interview: "I like Chuck D. And I always thought Snoop Dogg was-he just reminded me of the fellas back home. So I've always thoroughly enjoyed him."]

See, new RNC chairman Michael Steele masked a reasonable and quite necessary strategy—attracting youths and minorities to the GOP—in the stupidest language possible. But while people like us make fun of him for the language (and for being, generally, a buffoon), people like Joe "The Plumber" The Plumber are actually offended and frightened by the idea of a Republican party that isn't solely controlled by and for "regular people" or "real Americans" which means "aging white men." Like Joe the Plumber.

"Unfortunately we have a chairman up there who wants to redefine conservatism; he wants to make it hip hop, put it in a new package and sell it."

"You can't sell principles; either you have them or you don't," he added, to applause from the audience of 800 people.

Yeah! Your statement almost makes sense but doesn't really! Whoo! You can't put conservative principles in a new package and sell them, you have to have them, or not! Dammit! No colored music!

Later this month, Bristol Pail will criticize Jonathan Krohn for being a total dweeb, and then Ann Coulter will actually shoot David Brooks in the face, for the same reason.

It's understandable that the Republicans want to get hip to this Internet thing. It's universally acknowledged that Barack Obama's social-network-savvy Web effort first steamrollered Hillary Clinton's formidable but old-school political operation, then sledgehammered late Twitter adopter John McCain in the general election. Even now, anyone even tangentially involved in the campaign is claiming to be the Web guru who got Obama elected.

The GOP's web aspirations are as ludicrously ambitious as they are maddeningly vague.

Chairman Steele made his tech priorities clear... "bottom line is if we haven't done it — let's do it. If we haven't thought of it — think of it. If it hasn't been tried — why not? If it's going to be 'outside the box' — then not only keep it outside the box, but take it to someplace the box hasn't even reached yet.

In fairness, someone probably once told Steele that people who live in urban-surburban hip-hop settings talk crap like that. But if Steele wants to catch up to the Democrats' online efforts, he'll have to do better than the risible request for proposal he sent out. Some highlights from the document's hopelessly vague and self-contradictory requirements:

Integrate outside products through common API's, widgets, or iframes (examples: Kimbia fundraising, Voter Vault, Widgetbox, Ning).

Flash interfaces can often make mundane tasks exciting, and having Flash developers who understand user behavior will make the site more user-friendly.

No limitations on design; the RNC will be in on the entire process and will ensure everything is to our exact specifications.

Oh, and did the RNC mention they want the website within 45 days, on a fixed budget? Dale Franks at The Next Right calls the GOP operatives who put the proposal out "clueless losers." That's being kind. The last thing any designer wants is a client who's "in on the entire process," throwing out buzzwords they read in some two-year-old article about the Web clipped from a newspaper. The full proposal:

RNC Website RFP

Jo Jensen will save the GOP with arena rock!


Christopher Hall PROVES that voting for Barack Obama causes murder. He's also from Georgia. HIRE HIM.

Heather Kydd knows the key to building a broad-based diverse coalition to transform the Republican party for the 21st century: White Nevadans.

Patrick Maloney is standing before a bust of Lincoln and a painting of Lincoln. Let him help the GOP save Lincoln from Obama comparisons!


Adam J. Schmidt wears an American flag lapel pin.

Limbaugh is the spiritual leader of a Republican party that has basically resigned itself to representing only aging white males. There are enough aging white males to make Rush still a very, very successful broadcast, but there are not enough of them to win the presidency. Michael Steele grasps this, sort of, but he is not smart enough to do anything about it besides make claims about "urban/suburban hip-hop settings" and then pick a fight with a man who is much brighter and more beloved by his party's base than he, Mr. Limbaugh.

Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said in an interview with CNN that he, rather than Limbaugh, is "the de facto leader of the Republican Party."

And Steele described Limbaugh as a performer.

"Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer. Rush Limbaugh's whole thing is entertainment," Steele said. "Yes, it is incendiary. Yes, it is ugly."

And the obvious response came quickly:

"I'm not in charge of the Republican Party, and I don't want to be," Rush said. "I would be embarrassed to say that I'm in charge of the Republican Party in a sad-sack state that it's in. If I were chairman of the Republican Party, given the state that it's in, I would quit."
[...]
"So send those fundraising requests out," Rush said in a sneering tone, in an apparent reference to Steele, adding: "Make sure you say, `We want Obama to succeed.' So people understand your compassion."

"Republicans and conservatives are sick and tired of being talked down to, they're sick and tired of being lectured to," Rush continued. "And until you show some understanding and respect for who they are, you're gonna have a tough time rebuilding your party."

Yaaay! It's like Christmas! Now either this will escalate further (we're sure noted hip-hop aficionado Michael Steele is studying up on his Jay-Z and Nas) or Steele will be forced to grovel for forgiveness. And that's win-win. (Update: Steele went for Door No. 2: "There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership.")

In an amazing and hilarious interview with noted urban-suburban hip-hop publication the Washington Times (XXL is next week)—whose reporter presumably kept a straight face while transcribing the words of the 50-year-old former Lt. Governor of Maryland who participated in the Glee Club at his catholic high school and was eventually elected student council president and who spent three years as a seminarian in the Order of St. Augustine in the hopes of becoming a priest—Steele told critics to "stuff it."

"We need messengers to really capture that region - young, Hispanic, black, a cross section ... We want to convey that the modern-day GOP looks like the conservative party that stands on principles. But we want to apply them to urban-surburban hip-hop settings."

But, he elaborated with a laugh, "we need to uptick our image with everyone, including one-armed midgets."

And:

"It will be avant garde, technically," he said. "It will come to table with things that will surprise everyone - off the hook."

Does that mean cutting-edge?

"I don't do 'cutting-edge,' " he said. "That's what Democrats are doing. We're going beyond cutting-edge."

Then Chairman Steele introduced the new GOP Mascot, Poochie.

The only people who've used the term "bling-bling"—or even simply "bling"—in the last five years are old white people. And now the head of the RNC, Michael Steele, who, like Barack Obama, is black! And, unlike Barack Obama, he's old and uncool.

The Obama-backed stimulus, he said, "is just a wish list from a lot of people who have been on the sidelines for years.. to get a little bling, bling."

(Odd comma placement courtesy Politico reporter Glenn Thrush. Cringing courtesy America.)

Steele went on to do a hilarious comedy "rap" involving the phrase "and I'm here to say," and then he fell in a swimming pool. At press time Queen Latifah was throwing a raging party at the RNC headquarters that was really getting out of hand.

Michael Steele won on the sixth ballot, because some elements of the Republican National Committee really, really didn't want to vote for a black guy. Not that Steele is particularly smart or accomplished, but the other candidates were some crazy racist from South Carolina, a guy named Saul, and Ohio loser Ken Blackwell.

Steele represents a "new face" for the Republican party, because even though his "brain" is full of the same old doctrinaire conservative nonsense as the rest of the Republican party, his "face" is black.

Here, in this video, Mr. Steele says "those of you who wish to obstruct, get read to get knocked over." So watch out, South Carolina.