GOP to Steele: Give Back the Credit Card
Capitulating to critics on the Republican National Committee, embattled Republican Party Chairman Michael S. Steele has signed a secret pact agreeing to controls and restraints on how he spends hundreds of millions of dollars in party funds and contracts.
Apparently they were unhappy that Steele had fired long-time RNC financial officer Jay Banning and was reluctant to adopt “good governance” rules for entering into contracts and maintaining oversight of other expenditures. (The rules had been in place since 2004 but abandoned after the 2008 primaries.) As part of the agreement Banning will again exercise oversight by serving as an adviser to the Treasurer.
This is apparently the first time that “rebel members of the Republican Party’s national governing body have successfully taken on the party’s historically powerful national chairman and his loyalists. ” Sounds like a power grab and undoubtedly it is. In fact there is a special meeting scheduled for May 20 at which a “no-confidence” vote in Steele’s leadership may have taken place without the agreement.
But is this really about lack of confidence in his fiscal leadership or more about this:
Unhappy RNC conservatives secured the signatures needed to force the committee to convene next month’s special meeting to vote on a resolution labeling Democrats as “socialists,” despite the chairman’s reservations about the political wisdom of the move.
So I guess you just gotta admire the forward thinking of Those Darn Republicans once again.
Posted by marindenver on 05/06/09 at 10:40 AM • Permalink
