I honestly don’t even know what in the hell that even means.  It’s obviously a racist reference to Native Americans, but it’s a slur I’ve never even heard before.

Michael Steele so desperately wants to appear hip, and fails epically everytime he tries.  Dude reminds me of a giant version of Carlton from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

I think the slurs and bs are intentional.  These are all they have left!

In my childhood the phrase was accompanied by right forearm uplifted, palm out (also the cliche “How!” gesture.)

“1812, spelling representing Amer.Eng. colloquial pronunciation of Indian (q.v.). Honest Injun as an asseveration of truthfuless first recorded 1876 (in “Tom Sawyer”), perhaps from the notion of assurance extracted from Indians of their lack of duplicity. The term honest Indian is attested from 1676.”

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Injun

The nice thing about Steele’s foot-in-mouth disease is that it’s equal opportunity, it also infuriates the Republicans.  Who can’t dump him, because he’s their Uncle Tom:

“Steele said he doesn’t know if the GOP is ready to take back the reins of power.

“I don’t know. And that’s what I’m assessing and evaluating right now. Those candidates who are looking to run have to be anchored in these principles,” he said, referring to 5 conservative ideals he lays out in his new tome. “If they don’t [anchor themselves], then they’ll get to Washington, and they’ll start drinking that Potomac River water, and they’ll get drunk with power and throw the steps out the window.”

It is the latest in a series of comments Steele has made that have GOP strategists on Capitol Hill privately fuming. In Sept., GOP leaders told Steele to stay out of the policy arena during a heated confrontation in House Min. Leader John Boehner’s office.

Members of Congress and top GOP aides are livid with Steele’s latest comments.”
http://hotlineoncall.nationaljournal.com/archives/2010/01/steele_doesnt_k.php

But, their Uncle Tom handles the household budget:

“Buzz early Tuesday surrounded just how aggressive Congressional aides and political strategists should push back, a delicate task when Steele controls the RNC’s purse strings.”

For more fun, check out the wingnut comments:

Michael Steele would like Republicans to conduct themselves more like cool superfly Motown Record Producers, and he’s just the guy to teach us the moves.
Ugh.
Won’t some head hunter in the rap music business please hire Steele away from the poor, cursed Republicans? Maybe then we could start getting ourselves right.

Not Uncle Tom, but Shaft, the Musical.

I don’t understand how that analogy in the slightest, but you gotta give the wingnut credit for imagination.

http://hotlineoncall.nationaljournal.com/archives/2010/01/steele_doesnt_k.php

Olivia @5: He’s a black Conservative. You think those are easy to find?

It’s interesting how his attempts at “stupid shit white people say” is stuck in the 1950’s (or possibly modern day parts of the deep south).
I have no idea if that says something deeper.

I’ve never heard that slur, either, I was going to say maybe it’s a western thing but Steele is from the east coast like me. WTF?

It’s the sort of thing you’d make fun of your grandparents for saying if you ever heard them talk as kids.  Michael Steele must get his cliches from Leave it to Beaver or Happy Days reruns.  That’s the only thing that would make sense.

Of course, in all fairness, I don’t think he was reading that off a teleprompter.

Yeah, Dan, I’ve only heard “honest Injun” in old Warner Bros. cartoons.  Cartoons that are either edited or outright banned today.  Maybe on “Leave it to Beaver”.

It was the counterpart to “White Man speaks with forked tongue”.  B/c while Eskimos have 300 words for snow*, Injuns don’t have even one for “lying”.

Snark.  “Eskimo” isn’t a legitimate term and the snow story is just that.

You can’t even make someone like him up. What a clueless bastard. I almost feel sorry for him.

Yeah, Dan, I’ve only heard “honest Injun” in old Warner Bros. cartoons.  Cartoons that are either edited or outright banned today.

The united states doesn’t ban cartoons.  You’re confusing the FCC politely asking and networks fearing offense with a ban.  Growing up on Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies cartoons I was exposed to these stereotypes and yet somehow I became an upright human being.  The honest injun remark is silly, out of date, and in come circles offensive.  But to jump on him as if he called for the lynching of Native Americans is a bit much.  Then again, this blog site is really about creating general outrage about the conservatives, so never mind!

Then again we could throw the same thing back at some of the commentators who have called him an “Uncle Tom.”  If you’re going to be critical, don’t be hypocritical.  The man thinks on his own, even if poorly, but hasn’t his actions proved he isn’t a puppet of some white constituency?  He genuinely believes in the crud he spews day-in-day-out on fox news.

Me wannum black white man go back across big water.

Honest Injun? That was mighty white of him to say that. But I still don’t think the GOP has a Chinaman’s chance this year.

You would think they would just a hire a liberal to proofread their prepared remarks so they could just say to them “hey, we may disagree on policy but can you check through this and tell us is there anything outlandishly crazy in there, cause in fairness sometimes we just can’t tell the difference between crazy and policy and sometimes we have to focus on the policy”, or something with less self awareness to the same effect. Then they would know so there would be less time spent denying and being quoted out of context which would leave more time for, illicit gay sex, gun polishing, jesus and howling at the moon.

“Honest Injun?”  Seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone over the age of 10 EVER say that, and certainly not in the last 20 or so years.  Good grief.

They most certainly are banned or edited.  They aren’t censored, which would mean the government forbid them, but they most certainly are not allowed by the management of Cartoon Network/Boomerang or other mainstream media sources.

That’s because they are racist as hell sometimes.  Not “in some circles”.  Plain and simply racist.

Ted Turner had “Mammy Two Legs” of the earliest “Tom & Jerry” cartoons dubbed and took out references such as “O-W-T Out!”  All images of a character who has a bomb/firecracker go off in his face that result in a blackface/minstrel joke are cut out.  If the character ends up looking like a daisy, it’s left in.

Good grief, how did this guy ever get elected for anything?

In a word… “Tokenism”.

The Republican National Committee voting in February cme down to two candidates… Michael Steele and Katon Dawson.  Dawson is a middle-aged white guy from South Carolina who has a huge amount of racial baggage in his history… including his own quote that it was school integration and bussing that led him to become a Republican in the 1970s.

Knowing just how bad the optics would be if they elected a guy with that much racist baggage in his history, they chose Steele instead.

But much the same as they did with Sarah Palin, they got caught up with style over substance.  Just as they believed putting Sarah Palin on the Republican presidential ticket in 2008 would bring a ton of women voters to the GOP, they also (stupidly) believed that making Steele head of the RNC would improve their chances with people of color.

It was pandering of the worst kind.

Hector B. wins the thread.

The man thinks on his own, even if poorly, but hasn’t his actions proved he isn’t a puppet of some white constituency?

Actually, I’d say the opposite is true.  SNL did a good skit pointing this out with Kenan Thompson playing the part of Chairman Steele.

Remember early on when Steele said that Rush Limbaugh was “just an entertainer, not to be taken seriously”?

Well, a day after that Rush Limbaugh went on the air and told Steele to watch himself, and by the end of the show, Steele was calling into Limbaugh’s show to kiss his white massah’s ass and apologize for not treating him in the proper reverential way that Limpballs commands.

Steele goes off message a lot, and everytime he does, he comes back a few days later to apologize for going off message.

The guy is a total puppet.  And a token.

Honest Injun? That was mighty white of him to say that. But I still don’t think the GOP has a Chinaman’s chance this year.

I don’t think the GOP can win, but I most certainly think the Democrats can lose.

One number will probably have more influence on this election than any other number… unemployment.

Right now, according to R2K (a poll run by Daily Kos, so no conservative bias there), only 45% of Democrats say they are likely or definitely going to vote this November… compared to 86% of Republicans.

People are frustrated because things haven’t improved in a lot of people’s lives.  And most people aren’t as wonkish and high information as those of us posting here and elsewhere on the blogosphere.  If you are a low informationswing voter and your day to day reality is shitty in November, there’s a good chance you are going to vote agains the party that has been running the country the past 2 years, or not bother voting at all.  It doesn’t matter if WE know that our current economic situation is mostly due to shitty Republican governance for the past 30 years, people care about the here and now.

If U3 is over 10% on November 2nd, the Democrats are going to get steamrolled.  John Boehner will become the Speaker of the House in January 2011 if unemployment is still in the double digits in November.  If it’s between 9%-10%, we’re going to lose a good number of seats still, but probably still retain both houses of Congress.  If it’s been 8-9%, there will only be small losses… 10-20 House seats and 1-3 Senate seats.  If it’s under 8%, we may actually make a few modest gains.  If it’s under 7%, we could actually bump our Senate total up to 62-64 seats.

But I’m telling you… if unemployment is still really high - over 9% - it won’t be good for Democrats, because turnout among Democrats will be severely depressed.  People will feel like, “we voted these guys in with huge majorities in the hope of big changes… but nothing seems to have really changed.”  This is the kitchen table caucus.  Healthcare reform that doesn’t get implemented until 2014 isn’t going to drive tons of people out to the polls… if you were uninsured before it passed and you are still uninsured in November, you just aren’t that excited by it.

Not everybody is a wonk.  As a matter of fact, most people aren’t wonks.  I think most of us posting here live under the false impression that the average voter is as keenly tuned to politics as we are… they aren’t.  They care about bread and butter issues.  And if the home situation still sucks in November, they aren’t gonna feel too excited about getting out to vote.

I’m going with Nate Silver’s prognoses.  He seems to be the best predictor and the best analyst of the polls, based on his 2008 forecasts.  He’s not seeing a super rosy picture for Democrats in 2010 at this point.  Nobody really is, not even the liberal leaning pollsters.

I’m not ready to call it a done deal this early, but unless the economic reality for average citizens makes a noticeable turnaround between now and this fall, it’s not going to be good for the Democrats.  Average working class people don’t give a leaping shit about Wall Street’s improvement, they’ll only care when that translates into improved conditions on Main Street.

It’s the economy, stupid.  And it’s always been the economy.  And most people are going to be either blaming or praising the party in power for the state of the economy in November 2010, depending on how life is doing on Main Street.

...and we just lost a fairly progressive U.S. Senator, as Byron Dorgan (D-ND) just announced this afternoon that he won’t be seeking re-election this year.  Dorgan could have been a key player in healthcare reform, as he was the one who wrote a very progressive amendment that would have allowed drug re-importation from Canada to reduce prescription costs for everyone.  Unfortunately, PhRMA paid off enough of Dorgan’s fellow Democrats that the amendment got shot down.

That seat is all but guaranteed to be flipped to the GOP from everything I’ve read… it’s in North Dakota.

Wish it would have been his colleague Kent Conrad stepping down.

Michael Steele or Michael Scott?

DTG @ 23 -

You’re right, of course.  On every point.  And while I’m not seeing a rosy picture for the Democrats either - it almost never good for the party in power when it’s an off-year and the economy is bad - but I’m less worried than I otherwise might be for two reasons:

1) I really do think employment - usually one of the last aspects of the economy to recover - will have started to do so in earnest by November.  Call it optimism, but - slowly, fitfully, but definitely - that does seem to be the way that we’re moving.

1a) Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t there a significant amount of Stimulus money left to be spent, much of it on “Shovel-Ready” projects, almost as if Obama and the Democrats were insuring against this very problem?

2) The Repubs have been machine-gunning themselves in the foot lately.  They seem honestly determined to piss away what should be significant advantages.  I still dare to hope that NY-23 is their future.

First time I heard “Honest Injun” was on a Warners Brother cartoon and some reruns of old ‘50s era sitcoms.  Any kid dumb enough to use that back when I was a kid would be teased for sounding like a stereotypical clueless old-fashioned grandparent….and this was back in the early 1980’s….

sounds like he’s going off the reservation to me

Preznit #28 hee hee hee!

I’m with Ms Kate though - I think a lot of this stuff is intentional. Nothing Michael Steele says makes any sense in terms of policy, or politics in the normal sense of appealing to a majority. He’s all about rallying the hardcore wingnuts, the ones who don’t mind hearing incredibly stupid shit as long as it either (a) reminds them they’re in a Special Awesome Hero Club or (b) is likely to piss off a liberal. So here’s a racial slur that’s old enough for most young people not to get it, but fresh enough to give the Archie Bunkers a nostalgic thrill - and they can simultaneously gloss it over as just an innocent mistake by their goofy plain-spoken mascot, and grouse about how it *should* be OK to say those things anyway, if it weren’t for the damn PC liberal thought police, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc. It’s entertainment, and it reinforces the tribe.

...and now less than 12 hours later, another Democrat whose last name begins with a “D” is going to announce that he’s dropping out of his re-election bid.

So long, Senator Chris Dodd… too bad it couldn’t have been your fellow senator from Connecticut, Mr. Lieberman.

Although this is possibly a good thing for the Democrats… Dodd was mired in scandal (got a little too sweet of a deal on a home loan through Fannie Mae), and whether you think it was bullshit or not, he was getting killed in the polls in approval ratings in his own state.  Nate Silver rated Dodd’s seat as the most likely loss for the Democrats this year, but now that Dodd is out, we may actually be able to retain the seat.

But much the same as they did with Sarah Palin, they got caught up with style over substance.  Just as they believed putting Sarah Palin on the Republican presidential ticket in 2008 would bring a ton of women voters to the GOP, they also (stupidly) believed that making Steele head of the RNC would improve their chances with people of color.
It was pandering of the worst kind.

It’s a bit worse, b/c the heads of the GOP are actually racist and sexist.  They truly believe no minority or woman is as qualified as any white man.  It’s why John McCain was totally befuddled when questioned why he didn’t pick a “more qualified” Republican woman.  Women by definition are unqualified and must have a man actually pulling their strings.  They’re window dressing.  So why would it matter which one he picked?

Same thing here.  Democrats elected a black man, but Obama isn’t actually qualified.  He got his Ivy League degrees through affirmative action, and he’s good at reading off a teleprompter.  He did NOT write those books (b/c being black, he simply isn’t qualified to do that alone) and he is the most inexperienced candidate EVER, since he’s never done anything.  Don’t bother listing his acccomplishments, b/c someone else controlled him.  This is the basis of most of the lies about him.

Steele was elected to counteract Obama, in much the same way Alan Keyes was brought in to run against him for Senator.  The GOP seems to get that being called a racist is bad, so you should have at least one or two people of color to show off to make sure no one can call you a racist.

OK, so I looked at Sen. Dorgan’s record, and he actually wasn’t all that progressive (70% voting rate with party), but he was probably the most progressive we could get in a state like North Dakota.

He was the one who famously predicted in 1999 that we would all look back ten years later and seriously regret repealing the Glass-Steagal Act.  Damn was he ever right on that one.  He was one of only eight U.S. Senators to vote against Gramm-Leach-Bliley that year.  He was great with a lot of working class bread-and-butter issues, and I think he really felt betrayed when so many of his fellow Democrats opted to side with Big Pharma over the people and kill his drug re-importation amendment in the Senate HCR Bill a few weeks ago.

He was just not so great on environmental issues.  To be fair, ND relies heavily on the coal industry, and it’s hard to be too progressive on that front and keep your job as a senator in that state when the coal industry literally has the fundraising power to end your Senate career if you piss them off.

2) The Repubs have been machine-gunning themselves in the foot lately.  They seem honestly determined to piss away what should be significant advantages.  I still dare to hope that NY-23 is their future.

That may be one of our best hopes.

Take Florida, for instance.  Charlie Crist is extremely popular there in a statewide race… so popular that if he manages to get the GOP nomination, he’s pretty much guaranteed to become the next U.S. Senator from that state and spare the GOP from a loss.

But Crist’s problem is that he’s not very popular in a closed Republican primary.  So much so that all of the polls are now showing his teabagger-backed opponent, Marco Rubio, beating him in the primary.  And while general election polls still show Rubio beating the likely Democrat (Kendrick Meek) in the general election, the race gets a hell of a lot closer if it’s Rubio on the GOP ticket instead of Crist.

So the Republicans have a choice - go with Crist, and they’re basically guaranteed to win that seat in November.  Go with the teabagger, and suddenly the race becomes a lot more competitive.

And scenarios like this are playing out all over the country.  Apparantly Carly Fiorina just ain’t quite conservative enough for the teabaggers either, so Sen. Jim DeMint is trying to get her primaried by a radical wingnut to face Barbara Boxer for the U.S. Senate in California.  I think Boxer could beat either GOP candidate, but the GOP’s odds are a lot better if they go with the more moderate Fiorina than if they choose the raving loon DeVore.

Hopefully these tools go all out and find the most conservative candidates possible to run in purple to blue-leaning races, because they’ll face a bunch of serious reality checks in general elections when they realize that their brand of wingnuttery just ain’t that popular in open elections.  They may despise less wingnutty Republicans like Schwarzenegger and Crist, but the fact is, in many districts, those are the most conservative Republicans that can win.

This is shaping up like a prime election for GOP gains, but if they way overplay their hand, they may just wind up losing a bunch of seriously winnable races.  Republican Dede Scozzafava would have easily won NY-23 if the teabaggers didn’t meddle with it by trotting out that asshat Hoffman… they literally handed an easy GOP win to the Democrats up there.

The biggest mistake the teabaggers are making is in assuming that the electorate’s exasperation and disappointment with the Democrats will automatically translate into a great love for the far-right conservatives.  If they actually want to win this fall, their best strategy would be to run moderate candidates in swing districts all over the country… but it’s not looking like that’s where they are heading.

Hey DTG - what say you on the Andy Martin- Mark Kirk crap in Illinois then
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/01/us/01cncwarren.html
(Chicago Trib ran this too, but this take is more lib flavor.)

MY fear is that for the real low-info crowd they’ll confuse Andy Martin with Andy McKenna- you know, same first name,same initials - <headdesk>

The biggest mistake the teabaggers are making is in assuming that the electorate’s exasperation and disappointment with the Democrats will automatically translate into a great love for the far-right conservatives.

To be fair, the MSM and Villagers all make the same mistake.  If Obama’s numbers are down, well that’s good for John McCain.

Only one poll that I know of actually asked a follow-up question to why people were increasingly dissatisfied with HCR—*surprise* a big chunk of those folks were upset because it had been watered down so much. 

Center-left and lefty types are completely ignored, but their satisfaction or dissatisfaction will effect elections.  Nominating a whackaloon wingnut will get them out to vote when the Blue Dog alone wouldn’t.

Damnit.  That’s “affect” not “effect”.  Or “will have an effect”.  Either.

There’s no milk for the coffee today.

phylosopher @ #35:

I think in general, the Democrats have reason to be concerned in Illinois, after all the shit with Blagojevich and the shady Burris seating - the party brand is damaged there.

That said, the greatest gift the GOP could give them would be to act like homobigoted idiots and take out their most electable candidate in Mark Kirk.

If somehow or other the teabaggers knock Kirk out in the primary, they’ll have probably just ensured that the seat remains in Democratic hands.

I’ll be doing some volunteer work in my own state’s U.S. Senate race for Robin Carnahan… she’s a dynasty candidate, but has experience as MO Sec. of State.  Her father was governor and defeated future AG John Ashcroft in 2000 for the U.S. Senate - even though he had been killed three weeks earlier in a plane crash.  Robin’s mother, Jean Carnahan, was appointed to his seat for 2 years, and then she lost the special election in 2002 to Jim Talent, who then lost re-election to Claire McCaskill in 2006, who currently holds the seat.  Robin’s brother Russ Carnahan is my Congressman (MO-03) in St. Louis - Dick Gephardt’s old seat.

Carnahan’s opponent will be former House Minority Whip Roy Blunt, father of miserable failure and ex-governor boy wonder Matt Blunt, who didn’t even run for re-election in 2008 after one term, because he knew he would get decimated.  Roy Blunt is a birther douchebag who will play well in the boonies of southern Missouri, but Carnahan should mop the floor with him in the two metropolitan cores of STL and KC.

It will be really cool if she wins… Missouri will become only the third state in U.S. history to have two female Democratic U.S. Senators serving simultaneously (California and Washington being the other two).

I think in general, the Democrats have reason to be concerned in Illinois, after all the shit with Blagojevich and the shady Burris seating - the party brand is damaged there.
That said, the greatest gift the GOP could give them would be to act like homobigoted idiots and take out their most electable candidate in Mark Kirk.

The party brand isn’t damaged more than the GOP brand.  The last Republican Gov, George Ryan, is currently in jail for being a crook.  Burris’s “taint” is all on Rod b/c he’s not running. 

Mark Kirk isn’t looking so hot now, the teabaggers still hate him, and he’s trending as hard to the right as he can in order to please them. 

Which means the average Republican Illinoisan is not going to be happy.  Even the GOP candidates in IL tend to be socially liberal.

I keep hoping Jim Oberweis, racist homophobic dairyman will run.  Illinois hates him.

I might vote republican if it’s the only way to get rid of Toddler Stroger.  He’s got to go.