Nice.
Steele Allies Point Fingers At Rove -- Say Former RNC Team Fanning FlamesTalking Points Memo
Seems like just about everyone is irritated with Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele these days, but both friends and foes of the embattled party leader think allies of Karl Rove and former Bush-era RNC staffers are fanning the flames to make Steele's problems worse. Republicans told me in interviews that Rove's team got cozy at the RNC during the eight years of the Bush presidency, and feathers were ruffled when Steele was elected and cleaned house. They admitted Steele has dug himself into a deep hole, but the spate of recent death watch stories on national television and gracing the nation's front pages seemed like a calculated effort to trash the chairman as revenge.
The GOP universe isn't huge -- consultants who worked with the RNC decades ago are bound to pop up again and hop from campaign to campaign. But some people tied to Rove, George W. Bush's right-hand man, were "badly, badly hurt when Michael came in," an RNC member told me in an interview. "It's no surprise he's got a collection of enemies."
Republicans said that when taking over in 2009, Steele "emptied out the building" of about 100 consultants and top aides who closely coordinated with Rove at the White House from 2001 until President Obama took office. A Republican familiar with the inner-workings of the RNC told me that Steele made a mistake asking for resignations from the old guard so quickly. Had Steele gone "more cautiously" and kept one or two members of the Rove team on board it might have avoided the bad blood, the source said. "We built in some pretty vocal critics right from the start. It would have been easy to overcome had the chairman not been hit with a gaffe a minute," the Republican said.
It's worth a reminder that Rove put the brakes on an effort to elect Steele chairman in 2006. Steele told The Washington Times last year that when elected, Rove did not send congratulations like other former top Bush White House and campaign officials.
The aides who left under Steele's takeover aren't household names, and many quickly found work on campaigns across the country or within the other party committees in Washington. The intra-party spat is even more relevant as Rove and former RNC officials Mike Duncan and Ed Gillespie have formed a new 527 group they say has received pledges worth $30 million from big donors to help with the 2010 elections. Top Republicans annoyed with Steele's leadership have said groups like the "American Crossroads" 527 might fill a void left during this troublesome period at the RNC.
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