An Open Letter to Michael Steele

...not from me. I'm not the only one who thinks Steele is a good choice to lead the GOP back to its roots, something I've been arguing for for a long time.

The GOP has increasingly been focused on the wrong things, and while it has been and should continue to be a big-tent party, it has made a mistake in sacrificing American economic growth and technical competitiveness in order to shut up the extremists that have camped out inside that big-tent. This is why the open letter to Chairman Steele from David Silverman jumped out at me. An atheist, Silverman could not in good conscience vote for a party that told him he wasn't a real American. This is partly why I just voted for Obama as well.

"Good riddance" you say? You're already getting your wish. That seems to be what happened to a number of GOP politicians in Kansas the past couple years who are now back in business with a D next to their names. "[Mark] Parkinson chaired the state GOP from 1999 to 2003 but is now running as the Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor. 'They were fixated on ideological issues that really don't matter to people's everyday lives,' he told the London Observer in June. 'What matters is improving schools and creating jobs. I got tired of the theological debate over whether Charles Darwin was right.'" This isn't some wacko with a blog; this was the chairman of the Kansas GOP. By the way, the article was written in 2006; he now is the Lieutenant Governor. With a D next to his name.

Going forward, the GOP has to decide whether it's going to keep losing my vote - and David Silverman's - and Mark Parkinson's (and Buckley Jr., and Kathleen Parker, etc. etc. etc.) and indeed those of millions of Americans who it's been pushing away. I hope Steele is the man for that job, otherwise the electoral blue invasion of the Heartland is going to continue.