{"id":3083,"date":"2010-01-08T18:09:06","date_gmt":"2010-01-08T23:09:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=3083"},"modified":"2010-01-08T19:50:33","modified_gmt":"2010-01-09T00:50:33","slug":"the-gop-power-vacuum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/3083\/the-gop-power-vacuum\/","title":{"rendered":"The GOP Power Vacuum"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Who says the Republican Party is a staid, top-down organization that values order over creativity? With the announcement of his book on how to regain majority status, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele has something for everyone in the GOP to be <a href=\"http:\/\/voices.washingtonpost.com\/44\/2010\/01\/steeles-book-caught-gop-leader.html?hpid=topnews \" target=\"_blank\">shocked<\/a> about. For congressional leaders it\u2019s that Steele <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2010\/POLITICS\/01\/08\/steele.gop.clash\/ \" target=\"_blank\">didn\u2019t consult them<\/a> before publishing it. And for conservative activists the most surprising thing about Steele\u2019s book is that it indicates that at least one person in the party\u2019s establishment has actually committed a plan to paper.<\/p>\n<p>So why is Steele now claiming that he \u201cwrote the book <a href=\"http:\/\/tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com\/2010\/01\/steele-i-wrote-this-book-before-i-became-chairman-um-really.php?ref=mp\" target=\"_blank\">before<\/a> he became chairman?\u201d Granted, most chairmen keep a low profile while raising huge sums of money in order to let the politicians grab all the headlines. But come on. It\u2019s not like the current congressional leadership has shown a knack for implementing winning campaign strategies the last two cycles. In fact, so far the most consequential decision made by the National Republican Senatorial Committee was <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.abcnews.com\/thenote\/2009\/11\/cornyn-we-will-not-spend-money-in-a-contested-primary.html \" target=\"_blank\"><em>not<\/em> to spend money<\/a> in contested Republican primaries because of the backlash from conservative activists and Tea Party members.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe Steele shouldn\u2019t be so public about pushing one specific plan for winning elections. Maybe he should sit back, collect checks, and let minority leaders Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and John Boehner (R-OH) find a path back to power.<\/p>\n<p>Then again, maybe not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Who says the Republican Party is a staid, top-down organization that values order over creativity? With the announcement of his book on how to regain majority status, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele has something for everyone in the GOP to be shocked about. For congressional leaders it\u2019s that Steele didn\u2019t consult them before publishing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[58,713,57],"class_list":["post-3083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-michael-steele","tag-nrsc","tag-rnc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3083"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3088,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3083\/revisions\/3088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}