Who's afraid of Michael Steele? No one?

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There are two ways of reading the latest mess for Republican chairman, the Daily Caller saying that Michael Steel spends oodles on chartered planes, fancy hotels and, worst of all, the bondage nightclub Voyeur West Hollywood. The Republican National Committee says that last expense was actually filed by a staffer and that Steele never went to the club or knew about the spending on it.

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First, you can understand why a certain set of Republicans would want a new chairman. The current one, Michael Steele, has used his job to rake in speaking fees, called for an "off the hook" makeover to reach the hip-hop crowd and everyone "including one-armed midgets," and suggested his critics should "shut up" and either fire him or "get out of the way" -- and those are just a few of the headlines from the Republican-centric Washington Times. When a Newsweek blog posts the headline "Is It Time for Michael Steele to Go?" the anti-Steele campaign has gotten just what it hoped for.

For a more nuanced view, try Marc Ambinder's Atlantic post "Michael Steele's Enemies Within." Ambinder writes that it's amazing Steele has survived so many embarrassments:

The sad truth for the RNC chairman is that he escapes censure because his party isn't organized enough to censure him, because Steele wields too little power to be considered a threat, and because the locus of Republican energy these days can be found in the House. These last two errors have been made by staffers, but they point to a culture of casualty at the RNC. No one, it seems, is afraid of enough the boss to go out of their to avoid embarrassing him or the party.

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