Michael Steele Offers to be the Teabaggers b....

[Clio the Leo]

.... best friend! :)

Steele appeases Tea Party activists in lengthy meeting
Posted: February 16th, 2010 09:58 PM ET

Washington (CNN) – An uneasy truce may have been reached between the Tea Party movement and the Republican Party after Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele spent nearly four hours Tuesday trying to calm the fears of Tea Party leaders who worry that the GOP is out to co-opt their grassroots energy ahead of the 2010 midterm elections.

<snip>

"We believe in this meeting that we were heard," said Karin Hoffman of D.C. Works For Us, a Tea Party organization in South Florida. "It's the beginning of a relationship."

But Hoffman, who initiated the sit-down, cautioned that the Tea Party movement is an autonomous grassroots movement and will not "be absorbed into the RNC."

Indeed, when a group of participants were asked after the meeting if they consider themselves Republicans, nearly all shook their heads and boasted that they were "American citizens." Others said they knew of fellow Tea Party activists who refused to come to the meeting because they do not trust the Republican leadership.


Steele, however, won over many in the group when he pledged that the Republican Party will not to meddle in local races - especially GOP primaries featuring candidates backed by Tea Party activists. At one point in the meeting, the divisive Senate primary battle in Florida between Marco Rubio and Charlie Crist was mentioned. The chairman said the role of the national party is to back whoever becomes the Republican nominee.

"He is leaving it up to the people, and that's what we want," said Cheryl Couture, a member of the 9.12 Project from Naples, Florida. "We don't want people interfering with the process, because that's not American."

<snip>

Fettig said he asked the chairman if national Republicans had recruited former Sen. Dan Coats into the Indiana Senate race, which already featured several Republican candidates before Coats declared his candidacy earlier this month. Steele, he said, assured him that was not the case. Fettig said Tea Party activists in Indiana are "adamantly against" Coats' candidacy.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/02/16/steele-appeases-tea-party-activists-in-lengthy-meeting/?fbid=FIK4gPKmci8

Related:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/16/AR2010021605516.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns">"Michael Steele treated tea party leaders like an ugly date: They were good enough to take upstairs, but not good enough to be seen with in public."

[KingFlorez]

1. They just love their good little you-know-what

Looks like the tea party is going to run amok, goody.

[LiberalFighter]

2. When he says the Republican Party will leave them alone he means the RNC

Nothing about State or local parties.

[Cha]

3. When you lie down with teabags..you get up

with maggots.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

4. Steele just sat down with the KKK look-a-likes

bizarre - well I hope the teabaggies put up a candidate against each sitting and to be elected in 2010 GOP congressman or woman. I love how they will split the RW vote!

[tanyev]

5. Teabag freepers want to treat the RNC the same way the GOP is treating Democrats.

Looks to me like they need to adopt the tea party values and principles, then we can talk.
That is the NUMBER ONE caveat.


http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2452757/posts