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Steele's wink to whites

One can only imagine the scope and intensity of the uproar if a white guy had said what Michael Steele said to a reporter regarding the general election for the Sarbanes Senate Seat, and a possible matchup of Steele and Democrat Kweisi Mfume, both African-Americans.

"Voters have to ask who's going to better serve them," Steele told U.S. News & World Report's Dan Gilgoff. "[Someone] who represents all the people, or just one particular race?"

Great stuff. Just what we need: Steele signaling whites that Mfume, because of his skin (or that strange, ethnic-sounding name of his) can't be trusted to represent them. What year is this? What century?

Aren't Republicans and conservatives always the first to grouse about the injection of race into politics and debate? Aren't they -- and Steele -- the ones who have complained loudest and longest about this newspaper's 2002 editorial that dismissed Steele as a candidate for lieutenant governor, saying he had little to offer in qualification but the color of his skin?

Mfume's camp had no comment to make when The Sun contacted them about Steele's cynical wink. Smart move. Mfume has nothing to gain by engaging Steele on this level, and everything to lose -- along with the rest of us -- in a campaign that becomes about race instead of character or ideas.

Yeah, do Maryland voters need someone who will constantly place the concern of his white backers over the rest of the state.

We know Steele will not stand up for black people, we know he seeks to please whites at any cost. So the question is apropois. Will Maryland elect a person who has no concern in standing up for black people or not.