Team Steele promised something akin to a prize fight at the recent RNC Chairmanship debate.

A Steele insider tells Power Play that the embattled chairman will “name names” and “make it personal” when he faces off with the four candidates looking to replace him as RNC chairman at today’s debate hosted by The Daily Caller and Americans for Tax Reform.

That it didn’t happen causes me to wonder if the pre-debate statement wasn’t simply stage craft, perhaps designed to get the others taking shots at him. I think Steele handled himself very well, in fact, but he has shown a tendency to enjoy playing the victim a bit too much during his term. If he wanted a me against them debate, he didn’t get it and he certainly didn’t start any fights. And while I continue to like Steele, that he lost so many PR and narrative battles, some of which he didn’t deserve, it’s that, almost as much as anything, that convinces me the RNC needs to turn the page. In prize fight terms, I ranked him fourth of the five RNC Chair contenders that took to the ATR/DailyCaller stage yesterday.

In lieu of judging it as a fight against one another, I’ve been thinking in terms of ranking them based upon how well they would likely perform as fighters for Republican candidates and the party going into 2012, especially given the unique demands of the job.

I liked Maria Cino more than I thought I would. Still, she struck me as someone who may very well need to be working for the next RNC Chair in an important role, as opposed to leading the team. She can spin it however she wants, but lobbying for Pfizer, which supported Obamacare, even to improve it on their behalf, means she was doing precisely what she now claims to have not been doing. Given that, plus the fact that even NRO didn’t buy her explanation of her supposedly Pro-Life stance, while acting contrary to it, she gets a DQ for disqualified. Frankly, after hearing her out, I’m glad we have someone like Maria Cino in the GOP. I’m just not convinced she’s the right person to be one of the leaders of it as RNC Chair right now.

I came away seeing Saul Anuzis as an able fighter, but ultimately second best in this particular case. He’s a favorite in some corners of the grassroots and I can see why. However, even as a member of the grassroots, my sense is, we need more than that. If Saul does come up short, it’ll be on the high-end fund raising side. We need a Chairperson who can work both with the base and high-end donors. It’s a fact of politics today, one to be taken seriously. For now, that ring is one in which I’m unconvinced Saul would truly shine.

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At 1pm EST today, Americans for Tax Reform and The Daily Caller will host a debate of all announced candidates for Chair of the RNC. The 168 members of the GOP Committee will vote January 14th to select a Chair for a new two-year term, which, of course, includes the period of redistricting and the critical 2012 election.

The race for RNC Chair won’t get a lot of attention from either the media or, sadly, the grass roots, but it is an important campaign. It seems counter-intuitive, but the national GOP actually underperformed this past November. Yes, they won the House and picked up an historic 60+ seats, but it could-and should-have been 75-80 seats. They left 3-4 Senate seats on the table.  Worse, the GOP came up short in Governor’s races, which are critically important with redistricting on the agenda this year. (They lost to Jerry Brown (!), Rod Blagojevich’s Lt. Gov, and a retread who supports socialized medicine, for example.) Don’t get me wrong, it was a great victory, but, watching from the front-lines, it hurts to realize it could have been even greater, but for the disfunction of the national party.

As I have written before, the first job of the RNC Chair is to ‘do no harm.’ Don’t make gaffes on the Sunday shows or in speeches, raise lots of money and execute a robust ground game for election day. In the closing days of the midterms, the RNC pulled out of most of its election-day GOTV operations…because they didn’t have any money…because the current Chair and organization had alienated the grassroots, which cost them lots of donations. (You can see a theme, right?) Who knows how many more races the GOP could have won with a normally functioning party?

But, enough with the past. This isn’t about the RNC we had, but about the RNC we want to have. And that election is in less than two weeks.

So, let’s recap where we are on this race. Because, while most of us were gorging on College Bowl games or ignoring the world because we gorged on things that weren’t College Bowl games, several interesting things happened. So, let’s have a roundup.

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This ought to go over well with the conservative base…

If you thought the fact that RNC Chair candidate, Maria Cino, was an Obamacare lobbyist was outrageous wait until you hear the latest…

The leading candidate in the race – Reince Priebus’s law firm supports Obamacare and says its constitutional!

Yes, you read that correctly.

Reince Priebus’s law firm supports Obamacare and says its constitutional.

Unbelievable.

The far left Think Progress website reported this today:

On January 14, 168 standing members of the Republican National Committee (RNC) will hold an election to select the next national chairman of the party. Current RNC Chairman Michael Steele is running for a second term against a number of challengers, including Saul Anuzis, Ann Wagner, Maria Cino, Gentry Collins, and Reince Priebus.

Priebus, the current state chairman of the Wisconsin GOP, is positioning himself as the true conservative alternative to Steele…

Despite his heated anti-Obama attacks, Priebus makes a living at a law firm far more comfortable with the policies of President Obama. Priebus works as a partner at the Milwaukee law firm Michael Best and Friedrich LLP. Over the summer, the firm created a series of presentations to explain health reform to its clients and to pitch the firm’s services for employers looking to comply with new health reform regulations. In one presentation, John Barlament, a colleague to Priebus at the firm, said that a health reform repeal is not only unlikely, but that the lawsuits brought by Republican Party allies to declare the law unconstitutional probably have no merit. Referring to the controversy over the individual mandate, Barlament explained that the commerce clause of the constitution “gives Congress authority to act on his legislation.”

It will be interesting to hear what GOP Leader John Boehner, GOP Whip Eric Cantor and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell have to say about this.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Alex Pappas, a writer and reporter at the Daily Caller, to discuss the race for RNC Chair including, who’s running, and how the Tea Party may impact the race.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

RNC chairman race narrows; Conn. chairman, Chris Healy, says he will not run
Dick Cheney hosts fundraiser for potential challenger to RNC chairman Michael Steele
Hotline Whip Count: The RNC Chairman’s Race
Alex Pappas’ articles at the Daily Caller

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With Obamacare likely to remain front and center in the political debate going into 2012, the GOP could find itself in a real bind attacking it if a former Pfizer lobbyist who helped push Obamacare, Maria Cino, ends up heading up the RNC after the January elections.

Unfortunately, the establishment-backed candidate to presumably replace current RNC Chair Michael Steele, Maria Cino, opted out of a recent grassroots-focused political event for the candidates. The FreedomWorks and conservative caucus sponsored event was reported on at Big Government on November 2nd. Chris Stirewalt pointed out her absence as well, via FoxNews.

Worse, Stirewalt’s item is primarily focused on how establishment money is driving the race behind the scenes and Cino’s Mary Matalin-hosted fund raiser tonight is only one of Cino’s links to it. Her lobbying for Obamacare on behalf of Pfizer and a $1,000 donation to Mike Castle during Delaware’s contentious GOP primary may prove to be deal breakers for members of the GOP grassroots hoping that the GOP might turn the page on the same old, same old way of doing business in Washington that brought us Obamacare and has left America with staggering debt.

Maria Cino, former RNC deputy chairwoman, Bush administration official and executive director of the GOP’s House campaign arm, didn’t show for the debate. But she was able to tout the support of former Vice President Dick Cheney and others who will host a fundraiser for Cino’s bid at the home of Mary Matalin next week.

But why bother raising big bucks for an election where there are only 168 voters?

“This is a decision that rests with the party chairmen and national committeemen, and they’re not going to be swayed by any campaign,” said one influential Cino backer. “It’s not about the spending, it’s about the fundraising. This is a way to show what Maria brings to the table: fundraising ability and organizational skills. Those happen to be the things that the committee is most in need of right now.”

In fact, Cino was recently noted as one of the old GOP’s resurgent up and comers when it comes to corporate money driving political decisions in Washington.

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