It is things like this that make me realize it might be time to leave the Republican party. You put your hope in a leader who looks like he get’s it and then he does something so boneheaded that you realize that there is no hope of ever finding a Republican who gets it, Lincoln and Reagan must have been flukes. Why in the world would Steele even try to take on Rush? But what’s worse, his explanation doesn’t even make sense.

“My intent was not to go after Rush – I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh,” Steele said in a telephone interview. “I was maybe a little bit inarticulate. … There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership.”
[…]
“I went back at that tape and I realized words that I said weren’t what I was thinking,” Steele said. “It was one of those things where I thinking I was saying one thing, and it came out differently. What I was trying to say was a lot of people … want to make Rush the scapegoat, the bogeyman, and he’s not.”
“I’m not going to engage these guys and sit back and provide them the popcorn for a fight between me and Rush Limbaugh,” Steele added. “No such thing is going to happen. … I wasn’t trying to slam him or anything.”

If you didn’t want to provide the lefties with a fight, why call Rush’s show incendiary and ugly. Not exactly demonstrating the savvy needed to take on the Dems there, guy. Why tick off the conservatives who’ve given up on contributing to the RNC (I’ve heard many people say that they hang up when the RNC calls for donations)? Why not court them by defending Rush instead of piling on?
Ugh! I think I’m going to change my registration to independent.