Steele Fires Up Faithful

When Michael Steele assumed the post of Republican National Committee chairman on Feb. 1, he saw a party rife with internal finger-pointing and blaming.

It was the party that just lost a sea-change election to President Barack Obama, while Congressional minority ranks shrank further.

"I looked around and saw a country that had just drunk the Kool-aid of 'change,'" Steele said, noting Obama's campaign mantra.

But, Steele said, he also saw an opportunity -- a chance for to recast the party, the beginnings of a Republican renaissance.

"What I saw on Feb. 1 is a party that stopped telling its story," Steele said.

Steele preached the party's message to a tent full of some 500 loyalists Saturday, at a GOP Fall Fest celebration at Brightonwoods Orchard in Kenosha County.

His visit was something he had long planned with Republican Party of Wisconsin Chairman Reince Priebus, a Somers resident who directed Steele's RNC chairmanship campaign and his subsequent transition team. Priebus is now also general counsel of the RNC.

Organizers said it was far and away the largest Fall Fest turnout since the annual event began several years ago.

Burlington resident Bob Geason, 1st Congressional District GOP vice chairman, said he believed the boost was due to Steele's high-profile stature, as well as a national backlash against the current administration and Congress.

"It looks like, with the dissatisfaction, people are tired of having one party in charge of everything," Geason said.

In addition to Steele, the event showcased many of the Republicans seeking statewide office next year, when the party will seek to reclaim Assembly and Senate majorities and -- most significantly -- the first wide-open governor's race since 1982.

Steele said Wisconsin is lucky to have a batch of qualified contenders.

"Don't get lazy about it, though," he warned. "Don't take it for granted. Because the one thing you learn in this sport is that it is fleeting, these opportunities."

An unsuccessful candidate for a Maryland U.S. Senate seat in 2006 and previously that state's lieutenant governor, Steele said he chose to align himself with the GOP for the last 33 years because he sees it as the party that has always stood for the empowerment of the individual.

The party's first African-American national chairman, Steele noted the irony of a black Roman Catholic from Washington, D.C., deciding at 17 that he would be a conservative.

"How ugly is that?" he joked. "It doesn't get any tougher than that."

Steele said the party must now see to it that Obama's health care reform and pollution cap-and-trade bills never see the light of day. The "Europeanization" of America must be sent back to Europe, and card check proposals for organized labor must be sent back to the unions, he said.

Southeastern Wisconsin is lucky to have Rep. Paul Ryan as one of its representatives in Congress, Steele said.

Earlier Saturday afternoon, Ryan addressed an enthusiastic crowd with his warning that America's free-enterprise system is facing a test from the Obama administration.

"It is not about defeating Democrats," Ryan said. "It's about reclaiming America."

On the state level, former U.S. Rep. Mark Neumann and Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker are at the forefront of the effort to reclaim the GOP's hold on the governor's mansion. Both leading candidates for next year's gubernatorial nomination addressed the Kenosha County audience Saturday.

Neumann continued his effort to distinguish his private-sector background from Walker's politics-heavy career. Neumann has run home-building businesses and other companies in the years before and since his 1995-99 stint in Congress; Walker has served seven years as county executive, before which he spent nearly a decade in the Legislature.

"America was founded and America was made great by people coming out of the private sector and serving for a limited amount of time, and then returning to the private sector," said Neumann, whose congressional career ended after he lost a 1998 Senate bid to Democrat Russ Feingold.

Both Neumann and Walker stressed campaign agendas focusing on smaller government, creating jobs and lowering taxes. Both received applause, though it was Walker who appeared to generate the most volume from the crowd.

Said Walker: "It's not about whether you're Republican or Democrat; it's not whether you stand on the right or the left. It's whether you know the difference between right and wrong."