The XX Factor: What women really think.

Michael Steele's a Symptom of a Bigger GOP Disorder

Marjorie, I'm glad you came out against Michael Steele's dorky grasp at urban cred. Sprinkling "off the hook," "friggin' awesome," and "slum love" into his discourse and then prancing around acting like he's started the business of redeeming the Republican Party suggests an insultingly superficial, cynical view of how voters make their choices and why they've chosen Democrats of late—that Americans are no better than magpies, drawn to whatever's flashiest, and that Obama won because he acted cool. It's not just Steele who takes this view, either. It's a widespread idea throughout the GOP that Obama outcooled Republicans, and what the Republicans really need is to double their number of Facebook friends, get hip to Twitter, and start dressing in Baby Phat instead of Brooks Bros.

The afternoon Steele was elected GOP chairman, I stood at the back of the Capital Hilton ballroom with a cluster of young African-American Republicans there to support—unexpectedly—Katon Dawson, the RNC chair candidate notorious for formerly belonging to an all-white country club. This group of Katon junkies argued that yeah, electing the South Carolinian would trigger a brief period of bad PR, but they actually liked him because he was the candidate the least enamored with reanimating the GOP with a superficial makeover. Steele, on the other hand, came in for special derision: He talked the outreach (er, inclusion?) talk but didn't walk the walk. As Steele walked toward the podium to accept his party's nomination after the fifth ballot, one black Republican whispered to me he never could forgive Steele for shamelessly busing in homeless Philadelphians to campaign for him in black neighborhoods during his '06 Maryland Senate campaign.