You're welcome, Daily Show.

Since his earliest plans to resituate the Republican Party within “urban-suburban hip hop settings,” Michael Steele has been a gift to commenters. The chairman of the Republican National Committee has proven himself to have a tin ear for what the American people might want to hear, alienating independents and grassroots conservatives alike with a series of public statements that seem, well, stupid. But could Michael Steele be stupid like a fox? His clown reasoning has made him a punchline, but it’s also made him famous. I mean, who was the last Republican National Committee chairman? Can you name any of them? Steele has turned an obscure post as a party apparatchik into a bona fide public presence; he appears on Fox and Friends just as often as he appears on the Daily Show (pretty much a 1:1 ratio, come to think of it) and his book is selling like lukewarm hotcakes. Few would argue that Steele has made himself reckoned in national politics, but at least he’s made himself recognizable. If recent news reports are any indication, he’s also made himself rich.

The discovery that Steele, whose job is basically to amass as much money as possible for the Republican war chest, has the RNC operating at a net loss is somewhat surprising, particularly at a moment when the conservative base is lit up like a kindergartener who’s been taken to Chuck E. Cheese after his parents’ divorce. That he’s done it by straight-up spending too much money—on air travel, on hotels, on a national convention held in Hawaii for some reason—is baffling. I’m ready to accept the idea that Steele is not a Machiavellian political mastermind, but surely the man elected to run the Republican National Committee can make a budget. That at least two thousand of the dollars Steele meant to spend on re-electing Sam Brownback got spent watching strippers get after at each other with strap-ons is just precious.

Obviously, this thing is going to generate some political fallout. John Boehner, who was never a big Steele fan to begin with, has moved to publicly declaring the man useless. Unsurprisingly, other congressional Republicans have followed suit. What’s telling, though, is the way in which they’ve done it. “Obviously, I have said that I disagree with his statement that we can’t take back the House,” said Eric Cantor (R–VA.) It’s not just that the Minority Whip is slagging his national party chairman to the press; it’s that he’s doing it using language that reminds people of a specific gaffe Steele made three months ago. Maybe Cantor just happened to have that example in mind right then, just as Mitch McConnell just happened to evoke the party’s main criticism when he said that “Chairman Steele will be judged on the basis of how much money did he raise and how many candidates did he elect.” Or maybe somebody sent around a memo.

Let us assume, for the sake of further speculation, that Michael Steele is not a congenital idiot whose incompetence remained hidden—during his stint as lieutenant governor of Maryland, for example—until he became the RNC chair. Let us instead consider the possibility that Steele is a reasonably intelligent person who does things primarily on purpose. If that’s the case, and if we therefore conclude that Steele tried to convince the Republican Party to buy him a private jet for reasons not related to electoral strategy, it’s hard not to see this saga as a consequence of conservative ideology.

The Republican Party has long made a deity of rational self-interest. Whether openly in their economic and social welfare policy, or practically in their approach to the intersection of corporate donors, personal ambition and electoral politics, the conservative system works on the idea that what’s good for every one is good for everyone. Obviously, Michael Steele’s absurd behavior cannot rightly be construed as an indictment of Republican political philosophy. Here, though,was a man selected for his post on the basis of his ability to get money and win elections. Is it surprising that, since he was voted into the job, he’s been spending a lot of money on himself?

Any regular reader of this blog knows that I consider A) the difference between conservatism and liberalism a philosophical issue and B) the difference between the Republican and Democratic parties a moral one. The policy of the contemporary Republican party does not reflect the interests of its constituents. It is a party of rich people who seek to govern poor people, like the Democratic party, but unlike the Democrats the Republicans are willing to mislead the American people. It’s why they’re the more effective political machine, but it’s also why they wind up with guys like Michael Steele.

Since he was elected chair, Steele has been looking out for himself. He also appears to have been looking out for the people who sat him there; one man alone does not expense his way through fourteen million dollars. The idea that a cabal of smooth operators is doing to the RNC what the Republican Party is doing to the USA is too symmetrical to pass up, even if it is base conjecture. One thing is certain: Michael Steele has had the Republican National Committee losing money for the past year, at a time when party leaders might reasonably have expected a bonanza. Between explanation by stupidity or avarice I choose avarice, in part because it’s usually dangerous to assume accident, ignorance, error. Michael Steele’s incompetence appears to have benefited him significantly, just as Bush’s and Cheney’s and Palin’s benefited them. Perhaps such people lead charmed lives, or perhaps they are a little smarter than we think.

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