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Steele isolated at his own committee, harshly rebuked by former staffers
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele's already rocky tenure got even more turbulent on Tuesday after the committee's political director quit his post and then penned and leaked a stinging letter rebuking his former boss.
The five-page letter, authored by longtime GOP operative Gentry Collins, accused Steele of gross mismanagement of RNC finances, failure to manage Republican Party operations, and misfiring on key elections during the 2010 cycle. The RNC responded in due course with a statement touting the major -- indeed, historic -- advances that the party made during the just-completed cycle.
But by the time that response was put out for public consumption, the bruises were hard to cover up. Cindy Costa, an RNC member who has long been a Steele critic, called the Collins memo both "disconcerting" and an affirmation of her position that a new chairman is needed.
"When we go up to the RNC we expect to get the facts and the truth and I'm disappointed because we were led to think everything was going along fine," Costa told the Huffington Post. "I personally feel like Michael Steele would do himself a big favor to just step back, look at his tenure as RNC chairman, realize he had a fairly successful tenure but realize that now is the time to turn over the reigns to someone who can raise the funds necessary to win in 2012."