The Steele Door Shuts

Among other storylines, 2006 was supposed to be the year of the black Republican. Former Steeler wide receiver Lynn Swann pushed aside Pennsylavnia's former lieutenant governor (and GOP gubernatorial candidate) Bill Scranton to capture the Republican nomination against Ed Rendell. In Ohio, Secretary of State Ken Blackwell sailed to victory in what started out as a closely contested primary. In Michigan, state party leaders were excited about the candidacy of evangelical minister Keith Butler. And, in the party's greatest coup, Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele, who played a key role in Bob Ehrlich's 2002 upset win in the Maryland governor race, was persuaded to jump into the race to succeed retiring Dem Paul Sarbanes.

A few months down the road, things don't look so bright for the GOP diversity movement. The joke about Swann's campaign is the candidate peaked the day that he announced; a disastrous interview with George Stephanopolous confirmed what anyone who ever heard him as a football commentator knew: Swann isn't exactly ready for primetime. In Ohio, Blackwell, whose sole issue appears to be anti-gay backlash, has run around 20 points behind Dem candidate Ted Strickland; the latest from the Ohio GOP was an email suggesting that both Strickland and his wife are gay. In Michigan, Butler currently is running around 10 points behind in the GOP primary.

But of the quartet, Steele takes the cake, partly because his chances for victory were by far the best: the Dems are in a nasty primary, which is potentially racially charged, and the September primary date all but ensures that whoever wins will suffer from intra-party divisions. But as John Dickerson points out in today's Slate, Steele's responses to his latest problem (his background lunch where he lambasted the national GOP anonymously, and then struggled to explain why he said the things he did) have"been so bad as to constitute a kind of minitutorial on what a candidate shouldn't do when caught telling a truth." Looks like 0 for 4 for the GOP. Can JC Watts be planning a comeback?