Michael Steele, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, has explained why he is still a card-carrying Republican — despite fierce criticism of the party from the far right under former President Donald Trump.
“One, because I know they’re bothering other people. Two, because I like to claim I was here first,” Steele said at a conservative roundtable hosted by the New Republic.
“I was in this party when it wasn’t easy, especially as a Black Republican, to bring water to the party, even back then in the mid-’70s,” Steele recalled. “To willfully decide to join that party is a big deal. And here I sit watching this shit show, this horrible train wreck… in fact, the train wreck looks better than this.”
Steele said that “what pisses me off more than anything” is that GOP leaders like House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) are “hands-on” to “how bad this is” and admits action is needed but won’t do anything about it. .
Steele describes himself as a “Republican Motel 6 type.”
“Somebody’s got to keep the lights on,” he said. “And I was standing on my front porch, and I kept changing the light bulb because this bastard kept coming, taking it out.”
The GOP in its current form cannot be saved and “needs a political enema,” he said. Steele compared the party to “a cancer that has outgrown the organ” but said Republicans are not ready to eliminate it now, meaning “this thing is just metastasizing and getting harder down the road.”