QOTD: Michael Steele
by digby
Former RNC chair Michael Steele on Friday refused an apology from Conservative Political Action Conference communications director Ian Walters, who said during a dinner earlier in the evening that Steele had only been elected chairman “because he was a Black guy.”
WATCH: At the Ronald Reagan Dinner at CPAC, ACU Communications Director Ian Walters said the RNC hired Michael Steele as chairman in 2009 "because he’s a black guy." pic.twitter.com/g6YcyLET5w— NBC News (@NBCNews) February 24, 2018
“He did call and tried to explain himself,” Steele told MSNBC’s Joy Reid. “And he related it back to Barack Obama’s election. And he said at one point, I apologize. And I said, that’s not acceptable, that’s not enough.”
Walters was speaking at CPAC’s Ronald Reagan Dinner on Friday night when he told the crowd, “We elected Mike Steele as chairman because he was a black guy, that was the wrong thing to do.” According to those in the room at the time, the comment was met with audible gasps.
“Do you think that the Republican Party has a racism problem?” Reid asked.
Steele responded bluntly, “Yes, they do. I think we need to be honest and acknowledge it. I think the fact that people sit here now and say, ‘Well, this has nothing to do with race”… yeah, it does, when you stand on a podium and blatantly speak to race the way Ian did.”
Let’s face it. They’ve always felt this way. It’s just that now that they have a blatant racist in the White House they’re not even trying to hide it anymore.
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