Newt On Michael

The Washington Times had an article yesterday linking poor RNC fund-raising and discontent with Steele among big contributors. Steele, on ABC radio, told his critics to “get with the program or get out of the way.”

Newt Gingrich has been a defender of Steele, and Thursday was no different. He said that the RNC chairman was wrong to say that Republicans had no chance of taking the House in ‘10, and had corrected himself.

But Gingrich said continued criticism of Steele amounted to “inside-the-party cannibalism.” Said the former congressman:

“Michael Steele makes a number of old-time Republicans very nervous. He was the [GOP] chairman of a blue state, Maryland. He was the lieutenant governor of that state.

“He comes out of a very different background – he spent six years at seminary. He is an African-American. He is a physically big guy who’s noisy, and I think there are a number of Republicans who wish they could just find a good, boring, old-time Republican to be in that job so he wouldn’t make them nervous.

“On the other hand, I think he’s pretty close to what we need. He’s different, he’s gutsy, his book is tough, his book is honest. His book’s going to make a number of Republicans mad, because it says we deserved to lose in ‘06 and ‘08, and we better learn some lessons from it.

“We have a lot of Republicans who don’t want to learn, don’t want to change, and don’t want to be told it was our fault. They’d like to think it was somebody else’s far. I’m a fan of Steele. I think he is learning, I think he is smart, and I think he ultimately will be a very important part of where we’re going

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“I think people ought to relax. There’s a group who are so mad at him, that they are feeding the news media, and trying to start a fight over Steele. Steele is the chairman. The purpose of the Republican National Committee is to create a majority. They’ve done a very good job with finances. He’s raised a lot of money. We won the governorship of Virginia, we won the governorship of New Jersey. That strikes me as a pretty good starting year for him.”
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