Steele is Deep Throat!

The Washington Post reports that Michael Steele is the anonymous Republican Senate candidate who has been bitching about his party and his president. I remember that former Illinois Rep. Rostenkowski, once the powerful chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said something along the lines of being able to take money from lobbyists in the evening and then gig them in the morning (at least that's what he said before he was indicted for corruption). Steele puts Rostenkowski to shame despite Rostenkowski's decades of congressional experience.

Steele has certainly shown he can run with the big boys. Or at least take the money and run. After raking in the dough at fundraisers hosted by Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, Steele is done with the Bush Administration. The war in Iraq is a mess and the response to Katrina was miserable. I wouldn't be surprised if Steele was endorsed by the DailyKos in the next few days.

Leaving aside the hypocrisy of having praised the Bush Administration to the stars and then taking their money before kicking them to the curb, this is an excellent political move. Steele is in general election mode even though the primary, a cakewalk for him, is over a month away. He probably won't lose many Republican votes by stating the obvious and he may attract independents who will think he is some sort of courageous centrist.

Democrats may be hard pressed to succeed in winning points with voters through attacks on Steele for agreeing with them. However, an excellent question for future Senate debates would be whether Steele was being insincere and acting out of political expediency when he wholeheartedly endorsed Bush in 2004 or when he bashed him in 2006. Or was he simply playing politics on both occasions? Perhaps he was for Bush before he was against him.