"His Biggest Gaffe Ever"

Photo from the RNC

The "Gaffe King" himself may just have uttered his biggest gaffe ever today. And that is an amazing accomplishment:

I noted below that Republicans were likely to be mighty ticked off at Michael Steele for acknowledging that the GOP has employed a “southern strategy” for upwards of four decades.

Now conservative writer Bruce Bartlett is pushing back hard on Steele’s interpretation of history and claiming it’s his biggest gaffe yet. Bartlett tells Dave Weigel that while the GOP certainly reached out to southern whites, it wasn’t a racial strategy:

Of course, the national party reached out to them, but the idea that they used racial code words like “law and order” is nonsense. Crime was a legitimate problem. Moreover, Nixon did more to desegregate the schools than any other president.

I think it’s too bad that Steele gave Democrats reason to believe that their distorted vision of how Republicans came to dominate the South is correct. It may be his biggest gaffe so far.

I’m told Steele’s “southern strategy” acknowledgment is currently generating heated chatter on some conservative listservs.

Barlett can say all that he wants here to slam Steele and try to show to the hapless that the GOP never implemented a "Southern strategy". But the writing is for anyone with enough candor to see what the "Southern Strategy" was all about.

The only gaffe that could be bigger for Steele to make is saying, "The Republican Party has a number of people who hate the poor, no matter the color.

Someone needs to make sure if he has a microphone or recorder on him so he can say that very thing that I know is in his mind.

And if he does, no one in human history before or after him will be able to take the title of "Greatest Gaffer Of All Time" from Mr.Steele.