Uphill Battle to Fix GOP and Build Diversity Awaits Michael Steele

John Mashek

There is good news and bad news for the Republican Party in its surprise election of former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele as its national chairman.

The good news is that Steele is the first African-American to hold that position as party chair. It demonstrates the GOP is finally willing to part company with an image of white-only country clubbers on its national committee.

Steele may be called a moderate if only because he was willing to step out in criticism on the aftermaths of the war in Iraq and Hurricane Katrina, the biggest twin disasters of the Bush years.

After taking six long ballots on January 30 to elect Steele, the party elders finally chose him over two Southerners. The GOP has been a decidedly Dixie red in recent presidential elections that can be traced to the passage of the Voting Rights Act in Lyndon Johnson's administration. Johnson himself predicted a monumental shift from Democrats to Republicans when he signed the legislation in 1964.

Steele is to be applauded for his vow to work on the GOP's "image problem." That is not even a subtle reference to the party's inability to reach out more to blacks and Latinos.

The same could be said for young voters who flocked to the polls in record-shattering numbers for Barack Obama on November 4.

Steele is a native of the largely all-black District of Columbia and was raised in the D.C. area, hardly a bastion of loyalty to anything Republican. He's witnessed discrimination up close and ugly.

However, the bad news for Steele is that he's got a staggering task ahead. He must recognize it.

He even indicated he was willing to knock heads to change things. In his acceptance speech, he said: "For those [Republicans] who wish to obstruct, get ready to get knocked over."

How will entrenched right-wing Republicans in office and on the sidelines react to that challenge? The comfortable may not take kindly to the sting in those fighting words.

Another reminder of the job ahead: There are 41 African-American members of the congressional black caucus in the House of Representatives. No Republicans. Steele will have to work overtime to find blacks willing to run for office at the state or congressional levels.

J.C. Watts, the former University of Oklahoma football star and former GOP House member, left the scene long ago.

In the U.S. Senate, neither party can brag about diversity. The only African-American Democrat is Sen. Roland Burris of Illinois, and he was appointed only recently by the disgraced and now ousted Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

It is assumed that Steele will be an active traveler for his party with trips to the Northeast, where the GOP is hurting more than any other region. That won't be easy. In the Middle West, too, there has been a clear move to the Democrats and President Obama last November. The Mountain states, once a reliable area for the party, saw New Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada go for Obama. The Far West has been another dry well for many GOP candidates.

One of the party faithful exulted to the Washington Post after Steele's election in the capital: "He is very truly the representative of the party of Lincoln."

If so, the country will be the benefactor. But it will be a daunting job for a party mired in talking up  tax cuts in Congress and previously unwilling to really open its door wide to minorities and even differing opinions.

That was the true legacy of the George W. Bush years and Michael Steele has to convince the party and outsiders that things will be different.