Norm Coleman starts the RNC’s game of musical chairs early.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 Barack Obama was also inaugurated.<\/p>\n
For a post that typically attracts little attention outside of the Beltway, Michael Steele’s RNC chairmanship has been disasterously high-profile.\u00a0 In the last year-and-a-half of his two-year term, Steele has surfed one mistake after another<\/a> into a building tsunami of political pressure to oust the chairman early.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 But the RNC’s mechanics appear to have suffered as well.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 While the RNC holds only $10 million in cash on hand<\/a>, with more than $2 million in uncollected debts, the RGA is breaking fundraising records.\u00a0 At $28 million in the bank<\/a>, the RGA has already doubled it’s largest yearly take – ever.\u00a0 And those numbers don’t even take into account charges that Steele is hiding more than $7 million in debt<\/a>.<\/p>\n But is the solution to replace a politician as chair with another politician?\u00a0<\/p>\n Chatter about Norm Coleman assuming the RNC post isn’t exactly new.\u00a0 While Politico<\/em> threw some gas on long-dead embers of Coleman’s RNC ambitions<\/a>, stories of the former St. Paul mayor leading the Grand Old Party first started floating only weeks after his recount battle began in 2008<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Yet\u00a0as 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?\u00a0 So far, Coleman and his allies are\u00a0hitting the right\u00a0notes:<\/p>\n \u201cHe sees tremendous longing for donors who want to invest in an organization that will be critical to the 2012 cycle,\u201d said the Coleman confidante. \u201cAnd he has a proven track record of being able to raise money from the party\u2019s traditional key constituencies and constituencies the party doesn\u2019t always have.\u201d…<\/p>\n \u201cHe understands it\u2019s a fundraising job,\u201d said one senior Republican, who has talked to Coleman about the RNC post.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n