Before He Compared Obama To Nixon, Michael Steele Compared Himself To Watergate Crook G. Gordon Liddy
Before He Compared Obama To Nixon, Michael Steele Compared Himself To Watergate Crook G. Gordon Liddy
Earlier today, Huffington Post’s Sam Stein noted that as the guest host of Bill Bennett’s radio show on March 6, RNC Chairman Michael Steele compared President Obama to Richard Nixon. “What you are seeing here, folks, unfold is nothing short of the Nixon administration played out in a different era and a different style,” declared Steele:
“I’m going to tell you something,” Steele replied. “You make such an important point, because I had a conversation earlier this week about the very point you just made about the Nixon administration. What you are seeing here, folks, unfold is nothing short of the Nixon administration played out in a different era and a different style. But the results and the effects are the same. You have H.R. Haldeman and Rahm Emanuel, these guys, the master manipulators, the master controllers in the background, moving and shaking the pieces, creating an enemies list, putting together the targets on our side. The whole strategy of demonizing Rush Limbaugh, which has been exposed now…”
Steele’s comparison of Obama to Nixon is ironic given the fact that just a month earlier Steele enthusiastically compared himself to one of Nixon’s most prominent henchmen, G. Gordon Liddy. During a February 5, 2009 appearance on Liddy’s radio show, Steele told the former political dirty trickster, “I follow the footsteps of guys like you”:
STEELE: So, I, you know, I follow the footsteps of guys like you who, you know, who, you know, set the bar and pushed and pushed and pushed and made sure that we could obtain the results that would benefit people in communities, fighting for the rights of individuals and making sure that, you know, we don’t back down. Our opponents don’t back down. Why do we?
Listen here:
As the Chicago Tribune’s Steve Chapman noted last year, Liddy is truly radical:
Which principles would those be? The ones that told Liddy it was fine to break into the office of the Democratic National Committee to plant bugs and photograph documents? The ones that made him propose to kidnap anti-war activists so they couldn’t disrupt the 1972 Republican National Convention? The ones that inspired him to plan the murder (never carried out) of an unfriendly newspaper columnist?
Carl Bernstein, who along with Bob Woodward uncovered much of the Watergate scandal, pointed out last year that as one of Nixon’s “plumbers,” Liddy once planned “to firebomb a Washington think tank.”
Transcript:
LIDDY: Yeah, folks, I want to give you a little background on my guest, Michael Steele, the new chairman of the Republican Party. After joining the Republican Party, Mr. Steele became the chairman of the Prince George’s County Republican Central Committee. Now, Prince George’s County is where I live. And in 1995, the Maryland Republican Party selected him as Maryland state Republican man of the year and he worked on several political campaigns. He was an alternate delegate to the 1996 Republican National Convention in San Diego and a delegate to the 2000 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia that ultimately chose George W. Bush’s candidacy. And so, if I may so, you are a very very good rhetoritician and you speak up and you are aggressive and you are not apologetic. And that’s what we need in my view sir.STEELE: Well, we’ve apologized enough, you know. And you scratch your head sometimes and you say for what? What did — you know, why would we apologize for arguing for the creation of wealth as opposed to acquiescing to the distribution of wealth. Why would we apologize for making sure that parents, particularly in a city like the District of Colombia where I was born and raised, have a choice in educating their kids. Our president went to some of the finest schools that Hawaii had to offer. So I think that it’s an opportunity now for us to provide that same choice, if you will, for kids today to go to some of the finest schools that a city, a state, a nation has to offer. Why do we limit that capacity and that ability. So, I, you know, I follow the footsteps of guys like you who, you know, who, you know, set the bar and pushed and pushed and pushed and made sure that we could obtain the results that would benefit people in communities, fighting for the rights of individuals and making sure that we don’t back down. Our opponents don’t back down. Why do we?
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“The whole strategy of demonizing Rush Limbaugh, which has been exposed now…”
This reminded me of a great Tom Tomorrow cartoon from a few years ago. When it comes to nailing Republicans for what they are, this cartoon did it best.
March 16th, 2009 at 6:16 pmNever to be forgotten: Liddy’s advice to Koresh’s Branch Davidians when facing the ATF: “Aim for their heads! They wear body armor. You can stop’em if you aim for their heads…”
I wish somebody’d actually shanked that prick liddy in jail…
March 16th, 2009 at 6:16 pmAnd I thought he said he was going to shut up and quit saying stupid things.
March 16th, 2009 at 6:19 pmHey..the puppet is back. I guess the 2 weeks of Limbaugh’s school of brain washing worked.
March 16th, 2009 at 6:19 pmSo wait a minute. Is G Gordon Liddy the GOP’s skipper? Damn am I confused…
March 16th, 2009 at 6:20 pm.
You know, Bill Cosby has lot’s to say about emulating CONVICTS!
http://video.yahoo.com/watch/1523432/5181425
.
March 16th, 2009 at 6:22 pm.
… But, but, but, weren’t Cheney and Rumsfeld NIXON’s?
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March 16th, 2009 at 6:23 pmMichael Steele must be sore with Rush Limbaugh’s hand up his back side.
March 16th, 2009 at 6:24 pm.
Liddy is to (R)epublicans as Aires is to terrorists…
… Fair to say?
I mean, who else plots and plans to bomb D.C.?
.
March 16th, 2009 at 6:27 pmSteele is back on message, baby! Of course the Bush White House, staffed with a rogue’s list of actual Nixon era operatives, was nothing like the Nixon White House.
March 16th, 2009 at 6:29 pmAll of Michael “The Magic Republican” Steele’s boogey men are RePugniScums! Funny dat…
March 16th, 2009 at 6:29 pmOops…
March 16th, 2009 at 6:29 pm… Aires = Ayers
WTF is this moron saying now? This clinches it – Michael Steele is certifiable nuts. Another GOP “Whack Job”.
March 16th, 2009 at 6:29 pmI just knew that this tool couldn’t stay away from the media. It’s just like the ad men say, ” any publicity, however bad, is good publicity.” Keep talking Mikey. Every time you open your pie hole, Obama’s popularity goes up.
March 16th, 2009 at 6:32 pmThe whole strategy of demonizing Rush Limbaugh…
I haven’t heard anyone call Limbaugh a demon. It’s not even necessary to jerkize him, since most of us have known he was a jerk for lo, these 15 years or more!
March 16th, 2009 at 6:33 pmThis guy Steele is becoming a bigger idiot day by day! If he wants so badly to follow in the footsteps of Liddy…find him a jail cell
March 16th, 2009 at 6:35 pmWell, criminal minds think alike…
…hence the “Hive Mentality” of the Reichwingers…
…one with the borg…resistance is futile…
…Archie Blowsgoats…
March 16th, 2009 at 6:41 pmooohhhh, lemmie in on the steele comparison game: Michael steele’s like “rerun” from “what’s happening” since both of their careers are over
March 16th, 2009 at 6:42 pmhttp://www.whatonearthcatalog.com/graphics/products/regular/AT6072T.jpg
Who knew that President Obama’s cool demeanor was masking Nixonian paranoia?
March 16th, 2009 at 6:44 pm“The whole strategy of demonizing Rush Limbaugh, which has been exposed now…”
So all those folks at CPAC (and others such as Michael Steele) who criticized Rush are part of the libral conspiracy ?
Who’d a thunk it.
March 16th, 2009 at 6:48 pmdbadass Says:
So wait a minute. Is G Gordon Liddy the GOP’s skipper? Damn am I confused…
March 16th, 2009 at 6:50 pmHe may be the Chief Engineer, down there in the engine room with all those valves and pipes.
Though Gibbs is making some hay and Democrats in general are enjoying some justifiable schadenfreude, it’s the GOP that has been criticizing Steele the most.
Steele just provided the opening for Democrats to score some rhetorical points, and then made that opening wider.
Republicans are trying to claim their own mistake in picking Steele is actually an eeeevil Obama strategy!
Instead the choice of Steele was a GOP tactic to provide the impression of diversity (see also Palin and Jindal) and paid no regard to either his political or organizational skills, let alone his leadership skills.
Hence an increasing insistence from Republicans that they don’t need a leader (at the moment) because dammit, things are too serious right now to messing around with leadership and stuff!
March 16th, 2009 at 6:51 pmWhat really matters is undermining the nationally elected leadership of President Obama!
The RepubliCon liars and thieves have become a sideshow of clowns, starring Rush Bimbo.
March 16th, 2009 at 7:00 pmTonight, on Lifetime -“In the Footsteps of Felons: The Michael Steele Story”
March 16th, 2009 at 7:02 pmWell 5th,
March 16th, 2009 at 7:10 pmI’ll take Steele’s lost in translation over Blackwell’s or Keye’s lunacy.
As I like to remind my friends from time to time, there’s nothing like free entertainment. Michael Steele should keep on talking like the Eveready Battery Bunny, on and on and on. He’s doing more the Democratic Party than anyone could ever dream of.
March 16th, 2009 at 7:18 pmA match made in Hades, these clowns. Steele talks out of the side of his mouth so often its impossible to tell witch words are new and witch are a rank echo. He embarrasses the people he lies for.
Libby is a Republican hero because he did not roll over on his fellow political criminals. Unfortunately for Nixon he is incompetent to the point of being absurd. Watergate was just the end a of a string of idiotic hi jinx Gordon had running and it was just a matter of time before disaster struck. Here is a man who started the ball rolling that led to the resignation of a President, went to prison for his part, and walked into radio land as a hero! He is the Inspector Clouseau of the political dirty tricksters.
March 16th, 2009 at 7:21 pmMichael Steele DOES represent the [current incarnation]of the Republican party:
Fact challenged to the point they heap renown on a proven criminal just because he says “I’m on your side”.
Did you hear Cheney’s latest spew…?
Steele will be sitting next to that consummate liar with his head all rolling about on “daddy’s” shoulder any time now…. well, I like that picture better than where Mr. Steele HAS been putting his head!
March 16th, 2009 at 7:41 pmI just read this at Kos and literaly lol. T.P., YOU LEFT OUT THE BEST PART. Steele’s opinion on climate change. The warming we’re experiencing is actually an indication of global COOLING.
Doesn’t everyone know why Greenland was named ? Well ,because it must have once been green, right ? No ? Oh never mind.
March 16th, 2009 at 8:04 pmNow it’s pretty damn clear why the Man? of Steele went undercover.
March 16th, 2009 at 8:13 pmHe’s nucking futz, and it’s out in the open now.
Max-1: Well 5th, I’ll take Steele’s lost in translation over Blackwell’s or Keye’s lunacy.
In that regard, I concur. Teh GOP ois lucky to have Steele.
March 16th, 2009 at 8:26 pmKeen observation, Max.
I think it is safe to say that over the past 2 months steele has demonstrated indisputably without a doubt that he is a complete loon. That’s all well and good for republicans because they deserve pathetic miserable failing that is republicanism, but can the rest of us stop hearing about his idiocy and stop seeing his ugly mug all the time.
March 16th, 2009 at 8:32 pm29. Mathazar
Considering the anti-education laws and theme parks showing cavemen riding dinosaurs, ………
Did you know Russia is named Russia because they’re always in a hurry ?
March 16th, 2009 at 9:18 pmI’d like to take this opportunity to compare
March 16th, 2009 at 9:22 pmG. Gordon Liddy and Michael Steele.
The resemblance is uncanny….
All of this is a good reason why we should consider capital punishment for GOP convicted felons. Think of how much trouble we’d have avoided all these years if these guys could never have reared their hoary heads again!
March 16th, 2009 at 9:23 pmBeyond that, I must say, Streele is a gift from Heaven to the progressive Left. Watching him take out a Right Wing Hero, Nixon, in a really screwy attempt to smear Obama is actually like watching a Keystone Cops movie or a Laurel and Hardy short. He doth shooted himself in the foot despite his face….
STEELE: So, I, you know, I follow the footsteps of guys like you who, you know, who, you know, set the bar and pushed and pushed and pushed and made sure that we could obtain the results…
Steele, that was a bad analogy BABY!
March 16th, 2009 at 9:30 pmIf you put a rug on Liddy do you bet Bolton?
March 16th, 2009 at 9:43 pmLiddy, Nixon, Bush, Cheney, Rove…all Republican criminals who have gotten by with their crimes. “Law and order” Republicans mean law and order for us, wide spread criminality without accountability for themselves.
March 16th, 2009 at 10:04 pmRepublican Party leader = Steele
Foot in mouth, clown, unfocused, not engaged with Americia’s state of affairs
Democratic Party leader = President Obama
Articulate, devoloped sense of purpose, very bright and pragmatic
The Dittoheads who picked this wing nut Steele need to have their heads examined. To hold up to the country and the world that this is the best and brightest African American representive they could find is inexcuseable. I hope and they deserve to be the minority party for many years to come because they well deserve to be and have earned it!!!
March 16th, 2009 at 10:29 pm“The whole strategy of demonizing Rush Limbaugh, which has been exposed now…”
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Waitaminnit — President Obama’s strategy has been to demonize Rush? Um…how has he been doing that? Let’s see — Rush “hopes” Obama fails. He also “wants” Obama to fail. And what are progressives doing? They’re QUOTING Rush verbatim! How unfair is that? I can just see the Situation Room in the White House now:
Rahm Emanuel: What should we do about Rush Limbaugh?
President Obama: We need to demonize him. Let’s do this by accurately quoting him.
Rahm Emanuel: Brilliant, Mr. President!
But even more than pointing out how Rush wants the President to fail, we find that any Republican who dares speak out against Limbaugh is backtracking furiously within 48 hours. Does Steele REALLY think this kowtowing to Rush is part of Obama’s strategy? Especially since Steele himself is one of the kowtowing backpedalers?
March 16th, 2009 at 11:01 pmOut of everything that Liddy’s done, why would you cite this?
Well to be fair, who hasn’t wanted to.
March 17th, 2009 at 6:31 amApart from sleeping, that’s pretty much the 2nd least objectionable thing Liddy’s been involved in.
Liddy was actually going to murder Washington Post reporter Jack Anderson because he misunderstood something Nixon said and thought he wanted him murdered! One of Nixon’s aides found out and stopped him.
Then, a few years back, Liddy was awarded the Freedom of Speech Award! How Orwellian!
March 17th, 2009 at 2:45 pmS3N
Well to be fair, who hasn’t wanted to.
Apart from sleeping, that’s pretty much the 2nd least objectionable thing Liddy’s been involved in.
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I would say the entire civilized world outside of moronic, punkass wingnuts. You know the ignorant brainwashed fools who hate any newsmedia that doesnt slavishly repeat exclusively rightwing propagand you know. Morons like you.
March 18th, 2009 at 6:18 am