Iraq: History will prove Steele and all the other doubters wrong. Bush said on Sept 12 2001 that this fight would last many years and unfortunately involve many casualties. When Iraq is secured, Iran and Syria will be sealed off each with Democracies on both sides of their borders.

Katrina: Let's face it, John Kerry would not have done any better responding to the worst natural disaster in US history.

However, the man is entitled to his opinion and dissent. All of this aside, I still trust Steele and he will have my vote. Does anyone think Cardin or Mfume will cross party lines to vote for what THEY think is right?

If Mike Steele wanted to run as a true Independent he should have done what Robin Ficker did and collect the signatures to go on the ballot as an Independent. If Joe Lieberman wanted to run as an Independent he should have collected the signatures and run that way. These guys want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to have the Party money and to say they are independent of that money at the same time.

I don't like Ehrlich/Steele and I doubt that I would like Steele flying solo. I don't care if the Maryland Democratic party runs Bozo the Clown; he'd have my vote over Steele, though I would prefer someone more electable and with better hair.

To me the Senate is a matter of numbers, (R) vs. (D). If the Senate is going to be a rubber stamp for this President, I want it to be a "No" stamp.

Cannick youre a dip----.

I wonder if the Rales campaign would have to count on votes from drug-treatment facilities to win over Steele.

Odd that the bloggers haven't covered that topic!

Hmmm, well yes that is a response, and we both have a vote. Though I will likely not miss my election day duties because I spend that morning huffing day-glow orange paint in my basement.

My earlier comments stand.

Tom

PS Please either spell my name correctly or find a more interesting mispelling (e.g., drop the second "c" or begin the word with a "K").

Who is Rales? Is he a Democrat?

BG from PG says, "unfortunately involves many casualties," too easily for me. It's doubtfull he knows the horrors of war. I attended West Point for 2 years, 8 months with the class of l964 and then served in the active reserves for 3 years and 4 months, receiving an Honorable Discharge from the U.S. Army in l966. Everyone who graduated from our class went to Vietnam and we lost about thirty guys. My best friend from Montgomery Blair. Akos Szekely, who finished fifth in the class overall and first in military tactics and David Ramsay, my track teammate from the Academy's mile and two mile relays, died. My father-in-law who rose from enlisted man to a three star General served as Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics for the U.S. Army on William Westmoreland's staff. He had some stories. Recently, I met a young man of about twenty who had served in Iraq on the sidewalk in front of my law office on Wisconsin Ave. in Bethesda.. He had a bright, beaming face, but stood on one leg, a metal leg, because his, "good" leg was not healed well enough to bear weight. I said on the Mark Plotkin radio show on WTOP in February, 2004, that we were entering the war in Iraq way too casually and without real purpose. Mike Steele would have had more credibility if he had made his above anti-Iraq War remarks before he was a Senate candidate, as Lt. Governor. BG is correct that the others he mentions may not cross party lines to do what is right. But he leaves out Josh Rales. He thinks for himself. I like his TV ads.

Rales sounds like a Socialist, which means he's a Democrat.

I'm not sure what the story is here. Steele's comments are completely in line. Even most Republicans will admit Iraq is a mess, the government screwed up during Hurricane Katrina, the Congressional GOP has lost its way, and that Bush would only hurt Steele by campaigning for him.

Steele has consistently shown he's an independent Republican who will criticize his party when he disagrees with it. That's what makes him so dangerous to the Democrats in Maryland. They are running scared of his candidacy and news stories like this illustrate that perfectly.

DANA MILBANK IS A TOOL. Clearly, if Rice-A-Roni calls tomorrow with some big scoop about "a San Francisco treat," Dana will dutifully and breathlessly report it as though he is actually breaking news, when in fact he has simply become the Washington Post-based representatives for somebody's else's PR campaign. "Anonymous criticism" (for 5 minutes)...gimme a break. How bored must everyone be to have gone along with this?

Thank you, Mr. Rufus. I don't watch enough TV to see the political ads.

I look forward to reading your future posts, as I have your past ones.

The story is that Steele will refuse to state his views on the record as a candidate for US Senate, BUT will hide behind a ridiculous cover to express himself. That's the worst kind of candidate.

Actually there's nothing new about Steele's remarks, he made very similar statements to Robert Novak in a column <
"The Democrats' Worst Nightmare", 2 months ago.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/05/democrats_worst_nightmare.html

Michael Steele's comments about the GOP are nothing new. He's made the same statements before without much fanfare. What's disturbing to me is the cheap political stunt ("Anonymous" candidate wearing the scarlet "R" meeting with reporters) that undermines his credibility. What was he thinking? And if he does't truly support the GOP, why is he taking their money?

When's the Wash Post going to report about Cardin's illegal use of campaign funds for the website that the MDP claims they put up? Can we say campaign finance law together now?

Anyway, to the subject at hand--this whole discussion is ridiculously stupid. The media has framed this as Steele changing positions when he's said his thinking was independent all along. This is only a confirmation of what he has been saying.

Listening to Leirman makes me want to puke. The man helped Jim Moran illegally obtain a loan. The man calls himself an attack dog. Quite frankly he represents political scum as far as im concerned....but hey if wants to help me with a no interest loan with no repayment frame..... ;)

This column was the worst of both possible worlds: a candidate who didn't have the character to stand behind his views, as all leadership requires, and a newspaper that didn't have the judgment to either insist that the candidate be publicly identified or refuse to publish the story.

I have always looked a Steele's Republican affiliation with a raised eyebrow and Ehrlich as well for that matter. Ehrlich is a Republican but from deep Libertarian roots. None the less I have alwyas been able to respect any politition who stands for what is obviously right and not what the party makes them stand for. The bottom line is this......unfortunatly he will loose his bid for the Senete and in my opinion within a year of that we will hear grumblings of his possible change of parties.......

How lovely, Michael Steele will gladly take money that the president raises for him, but you know, won't be seen with him. That's gratitude for you!

If he's oh-so-independent of Bush and company, it doesn't seem right to me to take their money.

I don't believe his talk about being independent any more than I did his explanation/apology for equating stem cell research to research the nazis did on Jews.

I feel the need having read other responses to the article to comment again.............

Regarding the Katrina response..... FEMA has been allowed to decay for sometime and numerous 4 year terms have ignored it. Couple that with the constant battering in recent years of the East coast it may be safe to say it just might be too small to keep up with demand. It was not 'the government' and was not 'FEMA' that failed. Both did the best with what was in place to work with. You have not heard too much about FEMA dropping the ball in the other less catastrophic storms. They were in their scope of effective response. And if anyone REALLY has to blame someone for something please point the fingers at the state and local efforts during the whole disaster. Secondly, I think we as a species have started to believe our own rhetoric....by that I mean we really think that with 'all this technology' we can absorb anything and come out smelling like a rose. Stupidity trumps technology every time. Realistically nature has not shown its hand yet. We have seen the forces of nature recently and it will get worse and no government, administration or political party can stop it from happening.
ng. Obviously this is off of the beaten path but I really dont think all the criticisms are justified.

Rales is a Republican until he ran for Senate as a Dem this year. And oh. Lierman. The biggest crook in DC next to Jack Abramoff.

And then there is that D v R comment again. You polarized losers make me sick. Do what is better for America you self-loathing lexus and H2 driving petrol greedy liberals

And you guessed it. MATT MOSK IS BEHIND IT. That ever so fair non-partisan reporter who claims he is fair. What about the time when he was a Democratic Precinct Captain? Fair political reporter for the Washington comPOST?

JAW-You've hit the nail on the head, you're not off the beaten path at all. It's easy to go for the low hanging fruit and to criticize the Federal government response to a disaster of epic proportions. Steele is only attempting to fall in line and connect with fence sitters by using the Democrat's rhetoric which unfortunately is the only language that many people in this state understand.

To take your comments a step further, it's very ignorant to think that the US, as a superpower, is somehow immune to a natural disaster. Or that by somehow waving a magic wand from the Oval Office, errors in leadership at the state and (most importantly) local levels could have been corrected that would have prevented or at least mitigated the suffering of many who stayed behind because of no clear evacuation strategy. One that should have been in place a year following the hypothetical "Hurricane" Pam. Even if the Feds didn't act on warnings from Pam, the fact is that all politics are local and therefore Mayor Nagin (D) and Kathleen Blanco (D) failed their constituents by failing to secure funding/resources needed in the event of a real hurricane. Which came a year later. But the Dem's rhetoric machine churned out another victory for Nagin-amazing. Democrats are so devoid of facts. I'm happy that I live in the real world.

Tyrone in Maryland, counting D's and R's is what you need to do as an astute citizen. If anyone knows anything about how American legislatures work, they know that the most important vote any legislator makes in any session is always that for the leadership. Majority Leaders, Senate Presidents, Speakers of the House and Committee Chairmen have enormous power to decide when, how and and how many admendments are taken up as a bill is debated. If you're not thinking about leadership votes when deciding who to vote for, then you're not exericing your civic duty to the fullest as you should.

As for Steele and his comments, what does it matter other than to show what a non-straight talker he is. Does anyone really believe that Steele (if he wins) would be all that independent when he's having to rely on building up a huge warchest from the RNC financiers to hopefully outspend the Democratic nominee in this 2 to 1 Dems to Repub state. Absolutely not, Steele will be so beholden to the very ultra right-wingers that he's criticizing now, because he'll easily be the most vunerable Senator 6 years from now, if he wins. You can see this in the responses from Bush and the RNC, they're not worried, because they know with every fundraiser they have for Steele, the more of his soul he mortgages away, that's if Ehrlich didn't already have the receipt!

I think it's amusing that the uber-lefties on this blog like to paint Steele as beholden to right wing interests. Or that he's dishonest, untrue to his party, etc, if he doesn't parrot Bush or the GOP platform in his positions.

Do you feel the same about your beloved leader, Harry Reid? To paraphrase a newspaper I sometimes read: the Dems are pro-choice. He's pro-life.

They're against the war, and want the troops out now. He voted for the war, and refuses to sign on to a timetable for withdrawal, although he has criticized the way the administration has handled the occupation of Iraq.

They're against the Patriot Act. Reid voted for it.

They're irreligious. Reid's a devout Mormon.

They're free-speech purists. Reid votes for amendments to ban flag burning.

They're gay-friendly. Reid believes marriage should be between heterosexual couples only.

So howcome it's OK for him to go against so many of the positions of the party he leads, yet when Michael Steele does it, somehow he's the GOP's beyotch?

Talk about the hypocracy of the left, my Lord.

The GOP is more than willing to pour $ into Steele's campaign no matter how much he differs from the views of the far right-and deservedly so. He has a chance to break the Dem's monopoly in Maryland. The GOP knows this.

As far as I'm concerned, even one vote per session that doesn't follow the Dem's agenda is a change for the better in Maryland.

The issue here isn't the government's response to Katrina or the president's stem-cell bill veto or even Iraq. The real point of concern here is Michael Steele's willingness to snipe at his own party's policies and leaders while comfortably hiding behind a veil of anonymity. Steele is, simply put, a coward. If he's that disgusted with the miserable failures of Bush and his toadies in Congress, then why run as a Republican in the first place? If he truly believes everything he told Milbank and the other eight reporters that afternoon, then why not be a man about it and agree to be quoted by name? Steele did a disservice not only to himself and Maryland by his actions, but he also dissed his party and its candidates by stirring up unfounded doubts about their respective loyalty and integrity. Until Steele was finally identified as the gutless wonder, speculation swirled around such figures as Mike DeWine as to whether they were the sniveling critic sniping from the shadows. Nobody wants to vote for a coward, so at least Steele's outing now rather than later might help them a bit.

The last thing America needs--and Steele's own comments would tend to support this sentiment--is another two years of GOP misgovernance, yet his election to the Senate would only serve to perpetuate just such a condition. It's a miracle his head doesn't explode from the accumulated contradictions.

Am I the only one who thinks this "revelation" that Steele made comments distancing him from Bush stinks to high heaven of Karl Rove? This is the most obvious fake leak I have ever seen written about, and the Washington Post has just eaten it up--hook, line and sinker.

It's amazing that people think that Steele has only made these comments while off-the-record. Steele has always made it clear that he's independent of Bush and that he disagrees with him. Anyone who thinks differently is either not paying attention or is purposely obtuse.

What Steele says and what he does are two different things. I've heard time and again that he's independent of the Republican lock-step machine, but when asked point blank about a specific topic he's agreed with them completely in their policies. Stem cell research and gay marriage are two recent examples. I don't know how anyone can give this man any credit for independence. Actions speak louder than words.

He doesn't seem to be in agreement with the Iraq war, does he, Mr. K? That's the big issue for all the liberals and Steele's more on your side than he is on Bush's.

I'll agree that Steele has not laid out his position on a lot of issues. So what? It's still early in the campaign. He doesn't even know who he'll be facing in the general election. Once we get that sorted out, we can start figuring out where someone like Cardin is on the war -- he votes against it and then votes to fund it.

so mr. steele, man of character & integrity, won't state his stance on issues because he doesn't know who he'll be running against. does that mean that his stance on the issues depends on who his opponent is? where's the character in that?