Steele to Rush: I'm sorry - Mike Allen - POLITICO.com: "Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele says he has reached out to Rush Limbaugh to tell him he meant no offense when he referred to the popular conservative radio host as an “entertainer” whose show can be “incendiary.”

“My intent was not to go after Rush – I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh,” Steele said in a telephone interview. “I was maybe a little bit inarticulate. … There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership.”

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Oh, really? He "meant no offense"?

Here is what Steele said, in the real world where most of us reside: Steele told CNN host D.L. Hughley in an interview aired Saturday night: “Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer. Rush Limbaugh — his whole thing is entertainment. He has this incendiary — yes, it's ugly.”"

I completely understand Steele's original point of view--the one he is trying to crawfish on--and his frustration. His party has been identified with a certain kind of discourse that is often so harsh and uncompromising it turns off groups the party needs in order to win elections, at least outside the South. Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage, Ingram, Coulter, and others are louder than any voice that comes from within the party organization or even elected Republican office-holders. They are "branding" (Steele's word) the party in a way that makes it hard to win over the non-ideological center of the political spectrum.

The media's conservative flame throwers disagree with that strategy, and want the party to fight Goldwater/Reagan-style from the hard ideological right, which (they believe) is a winning strategy because of an inherent conservatism that they discern in American political culture. Steele is frustrated because he thinks he knows how to win, but these folks are standing between him and the media and electorate.

I don't know what the Republicans should do. I don't have an ideological axe to grind anyway. But I do know the leader of a national political party can't shoot his foot off this way. Even Howard Dean was more circumspect. Whatever you do, you just don't alienate your base.

Coming on the heels of conservative delight at Limbaugh's speech at CPAC, Steele's timing couldn't have been worse. There is nothing Steele can do to erase the effect of what he said. It will never be forgotten, much less forgiven, by the conservative base of the GOP. That resentment will translate directly into an unwillingness to contribute, and exacerbate the existing division within the party over ideology and electoral strategy.