The former chairman of the Republican National Committee just laid the shutdown blame where it belongs

Former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele joined the minority of his GOP colleagues in placing the blame for the government shutdown squarely on the shoulders of President “No Deal” Trump this morning.

Steele was asked by Politico who he thought the American people would blame for the debacle, and he responded with this statement:

“Despite the rhetorical effort to paste Democrats with “Schumer’s Shutdown” and to redefine what constitutes majority control of the senate (“60”? Really?), the fact remains that this shutdown rests at the feet of the GOP and it appears a majority of Americans agree. I don’t like it. It certainly could have been avoided, but the President wound up negotiating against himself by taking a potential agreement off the table, leaving Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to lament, “As soon as we figure out what he is for, then I would be convinced that we were not just spinning our wheels.” That put Republicans in the position to spin their wheels right into another government shutdown. Pitiful.”

Steele, who ran the RNC during the first term of the Obama administration, has been critical of President Trump in the past, but this attack on the President’s leadership could not come at a worse time for the embattled Trump who will now be forced to celebrate the first anniversary of his presiding over the government by forcing it to shut down.

With the Republican Party already notorious for wanting to minimize the effect of government on American citizens, the blame for shutting it down will surely settle on the people who spend every day opposing it. Perhaps the shutdown, however long it lasts, will remind those people who would rather see oligarchs and corporations get massive tax cuts rather than pay a fair portion of their profits to fund services for the common good exactly how crucial an effective government, even one as incompetently managed as the current administration runs it, is to their everyday lives.

Vinnie Longobardo

is the Managing Editor of Washington Press and a 35-year veteran of the TV, mobile, & internet industries, specializing in start-ups and the international media business. His passions are politics, music, and art.