Michael Steele Slams Reince Priebus: "All That Money, But No Message & No Focus"

Michael Steele (pictured left) and RNC chairman Reince Priebus

From Politico, about the moderate-conservative Republican's comments about his former ally: "Before Steele’s attack, MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell played a clip where Priebus’s press conference earlier Monday where he said that when he arrived to take over the RNC, the party’s two credit cards had been cancelled. 'Now just think about this for a second,' Priebus said. 'You’ve got one of two of the biggest national political parties in the world, but had both credit cards suspended.' Asked if Steele had ruined the party financially, Priebus said: 'I think the numbers speak for themselves.'"

Mr. Steele, who was the previous RNC chairman, was of course salty about Mr. Priebus's comments. His response: "'Reince is just being silly,' Steele said. 'And I understand that. He wasn’t complaining about debt and concerned about debt when I was writing checks to Wisconsin when he was chairman and wanted to win the state Legislature, which they did; win the governorship, which they did....And at the end of the day, the members were all on board about going into debt to win. Now the RNC had a surplus, they had money in the bank at the end of the 2012 cycle, but they had nothing to show for it. You lose eight House seats, you don’t win the White House when you should, that to me is more than enough evidence of what’s wrong. There’s no message. There’s no focus.'"

He twists the knife further: "Steele said Priebus was being generous by calling the 100-page report the RNC released earlier Monday sharply criticizing their 2012 performance an 'autopsy.' 'This is an examination of what you did wrong, where your leadership failed and how you get back on winning again after we had unprecedented wins in 2009 and 2010,' Steele said."