Will NY-20 Election Undo Michael Steele?

The race in New York's 20th congressional district, which includes Glens Falls, Saratoga Springs and much of the Hudson Valley, should tell us something about the future of the national Republican Party under the management of new chairman Michael Steele. At this rate, it doesn't have one.

Governor David Paterson was constitutionally tasked with appointing someone to fill the seat vacated by new Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Many observers thought his pick of Representative Kirsten Gillibrand, well, shortsighted.

Why shortsighted? Because Gillibrand was sitting on a district that is not easy for Democrats to carry. She had managed this neat trick by staking out conservative positions on a few key issues, including gun rights. Without her incumbency, selective conservatism, and hot-to-trot looks to hold it, the seat was likely to swing Republican.

Sensing an easy win, Steele cast the race as a proxy war between President Barack Obama and the whole Republican congressional leadership, and lost. Steele committed considerable resources to the race and to its aftermath. And he watched Republican assemblyman Jim Tedisco blow an initial double digit lead -- as high as 21 points -- to Democratic venture capitalist Scott Murphy.

Steele then helped to drag the canvassing and recount out in the desperate search for a win. Granted, close races tend to fire up partisan passions, and they simply don't get closer than New York 20. At one point, after 155,000 plus ballots had been counted, the candidates were still dead even. (Now wouldn't that have been a fun one to settle.) Murphy finally won by only 399 votes.

However, Steele's job as chairman of the Republican National Committee is not to get caught up in the passions of the moment. He should not have staked so much on the race in the first place and, once he saw likely defeat he should not have been so grudging to admit it. At one point, in the effort to chip away at Murphy's slight lead, Republicans actually challenged Gillibrand's ballot.

If there was a lot riding on the seat, perhaps the stubbornness could be justified. The fight-all-the-way spirit arguably is just what's needed in the drawnout filibuster-proof majority deciding contest between Norm Coleman and Al Franken in Minnesota.

Yet nothing momentous hung in the balance in the New York 20 special election. Either way, the U.S. House of Representatives would be controlled by a sizable Democratic majority. The only thing that really was put to the test was Steele's effectiveness.

The post-election recriminations are making Steele's other failings harder to ignore. He fired practically everybody at the RNC. A housecleaning was needed but junior staff and decision makers alike were tossed onto the street at a time when it is particularly hard for Republicans in D.C. to find work. The remaining skeleton crew may be doing many things right, but fundraising isn't among them.

And let's not forget the gaffes. Steele attacked and then groveled before Rush Limbaugh. He seemed to agree with CNN's D.L. Hugley when Hugley compared the Republican National Convention to "Nazi Germany." Abortion is a divisive issue and a perennial headache for the head of the RNC but few have managed to make as much of a hash of it as Steele did in an interview with GQ.

Steele, who was adopted, told that interviewer that he saw in that biographical fact both the power of life and the power of choice! Pressed about whether that meant he believed women have the right to choose abortion, he replied, Yeah, I mean, again, I think that's an individual choice.

He then said that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided and, well, let's just quote the man: The states should make that choice: that's what the choice is. The individual choice rests in the states. Let them decide.

Before too long, the Republican National committeemen are going to have to have to decide whether they want Steele not just representing the Republican Party in the press but also making decisions that will have real ramifications on elections two or four years out. A no confidence vote is widely rumored. At this point the odds are about the same as they were in New York 20 that he'd survive.

Jeremy Lott is author of The Warm Bucket Brigade: The Story of the American Vice Presidency.