Norm Coleman starts the RNC’s game of musical chairs early. 

As 2009 begin, one of the two major political parties in the U.S. handed over its reins of control to an underqualified but charismatic African-American politican who subsequentially torpedoed the party in a series of public gaffes and highly publicized scandals.  Barack Obama was also inaugurated.

For a post that typically attracts little attention outside of the Beltway, Michael Steele’s RNC chairmanship has been disasterously high-profile.  In the last year-and-a-half of his two-year term, Steele has surfed one mistake after another into a building tsunami of political pressure to oust the chairman early.  From his public criticism of Rush Limbaugh, to his speaking fees, and sudden anti-Afghan War comments, Steele has taken the largely managerial role of RNC chair and tried to turn it into a psuedo-legislative office.

If Steele’s effect on the RNC were limited to his apparently incurable foot-in-mouth disease, talk of removing him or even talk of the next election for chair in 2011 would seem incredibly premature.  But the RNC’s mechanics appear to have suffered as well.  The party’s primary role as a fundraising vehicle has been easily usurped by the Republican Governors Association – headed by former RNC chair Haley Barbour.  While the RNC holds only $10 million in cash on hand, with more than $2 million in uncollected debts, the RGA is breaking fundraising records.  At $28 million in the bank, the RGA has already doubled it’s largest yearly take – ever.  And those numbers don’t even take into account charges that Steele is hiding more than $7 million in debt.

But is the solution to replace a politician as chair with another politician? 

Chatter about Norm Coleman assuming the RNC post isn’t exactly new.  While Politico threw some gas on long-dead embers of Coleman’s RNC ambitions, stories of the former St. Paul mayor leading the Grand Old Party first started floating only weeks after his recount battle began in 2008. 

Yet as a politican who only months ago declined a widely expected bid for governor, is Coleman making a similar mistake to Steele in eyeing the job as a national political soapbox?  So far, Coleman and his allies are hitting the right notes:

“He sees tremendous longing for donors who want to invest in an organization that will be critical to the 2012 cycle,” said the Coleman confidante. “And he has a proven track record of being able to raise money from the party’s traditional key constituencies and constituencies the party doesn’t always have.”…

“He understands it’s a fundraising job,” said one senior Republican, who has talked to Coleman about the RNC post.

If anything, Coleman appears to be trying to position himself – as Newsweek puts it – as the “anti-Michael Steele.”  Where Steele viewed his role as making public pronouncements about Republican policy, Coleman at least rhetorically understands that the role of RNC chair has little to do with grand strategy.  It’s a distinction even Newsweek has trouble understanding in suggesting that a Coleman selection might be an attempt to target swing states:

Coleman hails from Minnesota, which is a bluish-purple state, with populist and environmentalist streaks. So, would Coleman, who defeated high-profile Democrat Walter Mondale and came within a few hundred votes of doing the same to Al Franken in a Democratic wave election, unlock the secret to helping Republicans break out of their old/white/Southern cage? Probably not. Steele, after all, was chosen to attempt that, and the Democrats chose then–Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine to chair their party to do the inverse for them. Neither can be said to have accomplished that.

Party chairman are ideally much like the Victorian view of children – better seen then heard.  They aren’t policy wonks nor are they press secretaries.  As the last year has shown, average activists have far greater impact on the political process than party apparatchiks.   That’s how it should be.

Steele can be endured until his tenure ends and should not be re-elected.  And while Norm Coleman will undoubtably not make the sames mistakes as Steele, he remains a political – not managerial – figure.  The GOP needs a functional, competent manager, not another high-profile politician who will be granted greater attention due in part to his elected past.

This entry was posted by by First Ringer on Sunday, July 25th, 2010 at 11:00 pm and is filed under Conservatism, First Ringer, Republicans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.