Day By Day

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Maryland Politics --Liddy and Steele

The Baltimore Reporter, citing the Sun's David Nitkin, tells us that Liddy Dole has had three meetings with Lt. Gov. Michael Steele hoping to convince him to run for the Senate in 06. Karl Rove has checked in, too. The Republicans are really serious about this. Steele is their only chance to capture Sarbanes' seat.

Steele is an impressive guy and has a great career ahead of him. The Democrats are at each others' throats, trying to knock off Kweisi Mfume. Nitkin thinks that Steele will run and that both parties will pour lots of money into the race.

I hope Steele does run -- if he does I'll support him. I also hope the kill Kweisi movement fails, setting up a Steele/Mfume contest. That would be something to see.

The projections on campaign spending, though, are dismaying. I'm not looking forward to the barrage of campaign commercials that are sure to blanket the state.

Read Nitkin's article here.

The assumption being made by political observers regarding this race is that Republicans are too racist to vote for a conservative black candidate unless he is opposed by a liberal black man tainted by radicalism like Mfume. Therefor all the Democrats need to do is to run a white man against Steele and racism will deliver them a victory. This, to say the least, is insulting, not to say absurd, but it is the rationale being given for the determined effort on the part of Democrat leaders to sabotage Mfume's candidacy.

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