Why Toppling Steele is Harder Than It Looks

A new PPP poll has 47% of Republicans wanting RNC chair Michael Steele replaced. But beating him might not be as easy as his opponents think.

An interesting poll out by Public Policy Polling this morning has 47% of Republicans preferring the replacement of Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, with only 23% supporting the continuation of his tenure.

Notably, Chairman Steele's highest levels of support by far came from those who prefer Mitch Daniels for the presidential nomination in 2012.

About 2% of the poll's respondents, all Republican primary voters, support Mitch Daniels. If I had to guess, I'd say that due to Daniels' poor grassroots name identification, Daniels supporters are your 'establishment types'. Remember, 'establishment types' have an extremely disproportionate say in who becomes RNC Chair - there are only 168 votes.

Undoubtedly, this poll can be used as an argument against a Steele bid for reelection - of course the opinions of rank and file Republicans should be considered by RNC members.

But in fact, there are other things that are more important to RNC members: whether the Chair can appeal to big donors and can run a tight ship at the RNC building in Washington, D.C. Say what you will about how Steele has performed on those metrics, but this poll doesn't speak to that.

For what really matters to RNC members when they're casting their ballots, see GOP strategist Liz Mair's CNN piece here about the five things every RNC member will be thinking about.

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