Poor Michael Steele

Sometimes, I feel sorry for the guy – I really do. Yesterday was one of those times.

As the RNC chair, Michael Steele had to release a statement denouncing Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan. That’s politics today – if the nomination had come from a Republican president instead of a Democratic one, the statement from the RNC chair would have been a supportive one. But in his statement, Steele had to take a shot a Kagan, one that has ricocheted right back at him.

This is the sentence (emphasis mine):

Given Kagan’s opposition to allowing military recruiters access to her law school’s campus, her endorsement of the liberal agenda and her support for statements suggesting that the Constitution “as originally drafted and conceived, was ‘defective,’” you can expect Senate Republicans to respectfully raise serious and tough questions to ensure the American people can thoroughly and thoughtfully examine Kagan’s qualifications and legal philosophy before she is confirmed to a lifetime appointment.

As others have written, the reference there is to a speech (pdf) Kagan gave in 1993, in tribute to the recently deceased Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. In her speech, Kagan quoted from a 1987 Marshall speech in which he made that statement.

Surely Steele doesn’t believe that the original Constitution was OK. Without the 13th Amendment, Steele and the rest of us black folk would be slaves, not just looking at copies of the bills of sale on our ancestors.

This is the conundrum for Steele and other black Republicans – and why blacks and other minorities remain a small percentage of the party. The nod to an earlier time often carries with it a tinge of racism, sometimes subtle, other times overt. I watched Chuck Smith, the Republican candidate for the 3rd Congressional District, at the recent Shad Planking. At one point, someone had plastered a Confederate Flag sticker to his chest, which he quickly removed.

So yes, I felt sorry for Steele yesterday, as he had to embrace the Strict Constitutionalist perspective shared by many members of his party.

Either that or he didn’t read the memo before it went out, in which case I feel sorry for him because it shows he’s simply inept.