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Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele’s series of gaffes turned into something more serious Thursday, as leaders of a pillar of the GOP—the anti-abortion movement—shifted into open revolt over comments in an interview with the men’s magazine GQ.

Steele called abortion an “individual choice” and opposed a constitutional ban on abortion in the Feb. 24 interview, which appeared online Wednesday night. He echoed the language of the abortion rights movement and appeared to contradict his own heated assertions during his campaign for chairman that he is a committed soldier in the anti-abortion movement.

While he issued a statement Thursday affirming his opposition to abortion and his support for a constitutional amendment banning it, the damage appeared to be done as leading social conservatives publicly attacked the embattled chairman.

“Comments attributed to Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele are very troubling, and despite his clarification today the party stands to lose many of its members and a great deal of its support in the trenches of grass-roots politics,” former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-Ark.) said in a posting on his blog. “For Chairman Steele to even infer that taking a life is totally left up to the individual is not only a reversal of Republican policy and principle, but it's a violation of the most basic of human rights — the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, a conservative rival who ultimately backed Steele's bid for chairman, also lambasted him in a written statement.

“Chairman Steele needs to reread the Bible, the U.S. Constitution and the 2008 GOP Platform,” said Blackwell. “He then needs to get to work or get out of the way.”

The flap also added to worries generated by a series of earlier, less policy-oriented statements, ranging from insulting radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh to offering “slum love” to Indian-American Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-La.).

“Are you saying you think women have the right to choose abortion?” GQ’s Lisa DePaulo asked in the interview in his office.

“Yeah. I mean, again, I think that’s an individual choice,” he said, according to GQ’s transcript, which he did not dispute.

“You do?” he was asked.

“Yeah. Absolutely,” he said.

In his statement Thursday, issued through the RNC press office, Steele said, “I am pro-life, always have been, always will be.”

“I tried to present why I am pro-life while recognizing that my mother had a ‘choice’ before deciding to put me up for adoption,” he said, explaining his comments. “But the Republican Party is and will continue to be the party of life. I support our platform and its call for a Human Life Amendment.”

Huckabee said he spoke to Steele Thursday and appreciated the chairman’s “set[ting] the record straight.”

But the explanation was too little, too late, for a series of other anti-abortion leaders.

"I think it is very troubling for a public figure, of either party, particularly one who presents himself as pro-life, to describe the abortion issue as being a matter of 'individual choice.' That is language straight out of Planned Parenthood's messaging playbook," said Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life, who called the comments “disturbing and demoralizing."

"Michael Steele has just walked away from the Reaganesque position of strong moral clarity on abortion to personify why the Republican Party continues to be in a 'free fall',” said another activist, Jenn Giroux, the executive director of the conservative group Women Influencing the Nation. “It is amazing that he cannot see and learn from the fact that Sarah Palin's position on abortion and her unapologetic defense of every conceived child drew crowds by the thousands on that issue alone.”

Another anti-abortion activist and Illinois foe of President Barack Obama on the subject, Jill Stanek, was even blunter.

"Michael Steele has just unmistakably proclaimed himself to be pro-choice," she said in an e-mail. "You thought he was 'embattled' last week over his Limbaugh comment? Ha. He has now stepped both feet into it."

The remarks dipped into a deep and barely-concealed well of distrust for Steele among anti-abortion activists — sentiment that prompted him to assure the Washington Times last fall that he opposes abortion rights and favors a constitutional amendment, and left him defending his membership in the liberal Republican Leadership Council, an organization composed largely of Republicans who support abortion rights.

“[Steele] assured me as chairman his views did not matter and that he would be upholding and promoting the party platform, which is very clear on these issues,” said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. “It is very difficult to reconcile the GQ interview with the chairman's pledge."

The president of the Susan B. Anthony List, Marjorie Dannenfelser, said she expected Steele to win back anti-abortion support by engaging in the public fight on “wedge issues” like Obama’s move to end the Mexico City Policy, which barred the use of federal dollars by foreign nonprofits that offered abortion counseling.

“When you have an issue like that, you ought to be using it,” she said, adding that “that continues not to happen.”

“I read and reread the GQ article trying to figure out what it meant,” she said.

Another group taken by surprise by the GQ piece was gay Republicans. Steele drew fire from that quarter for an interview with a conservative radio host given the same day, Feb. 24, in which he responded to a question about civil unions with, “What are you, crazy? No.”

He told GQ, “I think that there's a whole lot that goes into the makeup of an individual that, uh, you just can't simply say, oh, like, 'Tomorrow morning I'm gonna stop being gay.' It's like saying,'Tomorrow morning I'm gonna stop being black.’”

“Chairman Steele’s comments regarding a federal marriage amendment reflect the traditional conservative belief in federalism,” Christopher Barron, a former political director for the gay GOP group the Log Cabin Republicans said in an e-mailed statement.

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Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki confirmed Tuesday that the Obama administration is considering a controversial plan to make veterans pay for treatment of service-related injuries with private insurance.

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Federal agents this morning are searching the office Washington, D.C.'s Chief Technology Officer.

The search of the office at 1 Judiciary Square is part of "an ongoing investigation," said a spokeswoman for the FBI's D.C. Field Office, Lindsay Gotwin, said.

She said two men, Yusuf Acar and Sushil Bansal, had been arrested.

Acar is an information security officer who was also, according to online requests for proposals, responsible for contracting. Bansal is listed on the city's procurement website as the CEO of the Advanced Integrated Technologies Corporation, which was awarded two technology contracts last year worth a total of $350,000.

The Washington Post and WTOP Radio report that the men are being held on bribery charges.

The outgoing Chief Technology Officer, Vivek Kundra, was appointed last week Chief Information Officer by the Obama administration. His last day at the city government office was March 4, a spokeswoman for D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, Leslie Kershaw, said. He was appointed to the Washington post in 2007, and held it when Bansal's contract was awarded.

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FORMER ambassador Charles W. Freeman Jr. looked like a poor choice to chair the Obama administration's National Intelligence Council. A former envoy to Saudi Arabia and China, he suffered from an extreme case of clientitis on both accounts. In addition to chiding Beijing for not crushing the Tiananmen Square democracy protests sooner and offering sycophantic paeans to Saudi King "Abdullah the Great," Mr. Freeman headed a Saudi-funded Middle East advocacy group in Washington and served on the advisory board of a state-owned Chinese oil company. It was only reasonable to ask -- as numerous members of Congress had begun to do -- whether such an actor was the right person to oversee the preparation of National Intelligence Estimates.

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Democratic sources say that H. Rodgin Cohen, a partner in the New York law firm Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, and the leading candidate for Deputy Treasury Secretary, has withdrawn from consideration.

It's the third withdrawal of a top Treasury Department staff pick in less than a week.

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he lied about lobbyists in his admin, going line by line for earmark reform and bipartisanship. change you can believe in.

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leftist liars

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It was an inference not a quote. You know, like reading between the lines. Keep up son.

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But let's not forget what Rush, Hannity, O'Reilly, Ingram, Cavuto and Coulter made their number one story on multiple days last week.

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If it was a liberal media ploy it was fucking brilliant. Every single conservative bled the story to death. They made their own bed on this one.

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Let's see how much the conservative media run with the other stories and see if they have legs. You and I both know they won't.

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your inability to understand language and basic concepts makes this debate difficult.

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An inference is when a statement is made implying a topic or feel which is not directly stated.

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When you refer to the media being in the bag for Obama you are inferring that they are not being truthful.

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I then used that inference in a sarcastic way. Is that clear enough or do I need to draw pictures for you?

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No, I don't listen to them everyday. I watch them on Fox.

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O'Reilly, Hannity and Cavuto host shows on that network where they spoke about it several nights in a row. Ingram and Coulter are regular guests on O'Reilly and Hannity where it was discussed. Rush's internet feed clips were widely spread throughout the week.

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But let's not forget what Rush, Hannity, O'Reilly, Ingram, Cavuto and Coulter made their number one story on multiple days last week

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I find it hard to believe you missed this since you are so upset about the coverage. Kind of contradicting yourself aren't you? Are you saying that you missed all of those programs but the coverage was excessive?

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As for the other stories. Your argument is that the liberal media won't cover those stories with the same vigilance as the Rush story.

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My point is that the conservative media won't cover them either, because they don't have legs.

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... Take all the bible thumpers on the right, and the tree huggers on the left, and fire up the ovens in Aushwitz.

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The 50-60% of rational citizens left over could probably make this country a decent place.

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Rush, Hannity, O'Reilly, Ingram, Cavuto and Coulter

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Rush, Hannity, O'Reilly, Ingram, Cavuto and Coulter


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A murderer's row of corporate-driven stupidity or just plain stupidity?

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Rush, Hannity, O'Reilly, Ingram, Cavuto and Coulter


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A murderer's row of corporate-driven stupidity or just plain stupidity?

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William Ayers, Rev. Wright, Frank Marshall Davis, George Soros

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