WASHINGTON --Reince Priebus was elected chairman of the Republican National Committee on Friday after Michael Steeledropped his bid to stay atop the party for another two years.

Priebus clinched the victory after seven rounds, securing 97 votes, more than the 85 required to win. Steele dropped out of the race after four rounds.

"At this time, I will step aside for others to lead," Steele told the168 RNC committee members at the Gaylord Resort in National Harbor, Md. "But in so doing, I hope y'all appreciate the legacy we leave. Despite the noise -- because lord know we had a lot of noise -- despite the difficulties, we won."

Steele got a standing ovation after his announcement following a tenure marked by controversy and embarrassment despite huge Republican gains in the fall. Steele urged supporters to vote for former RNC Deputy Chairwoman Maria Cino.

But Priebus beat out Cino along with former Michigan state GOP chairman Saul Anuzis and former RNC Co-Chairwoman Ann Wagner.

Priebus will oversee the 2012 election cycle, in which Republicans, who now control the House, hope to capture the Senate and the White House. But Priebus must also retire an RNC debt of about $22 million owed to vendors and banks, as well as lure back demoralized donors who have been so frustrated with Steele's management that they sent their dollars elsewhere or didn't open their wallets at all last year. The party had only about $1 million cash on hand at year's end.

Priebus also will have to figure out how to navigate a GOP civil war in which conservatives and Tea Party disciples are trying to pull the Republican Party even further to the right, to the chagrin of moderates and some longtime establishment leaders.

The first black chairman of the Republican Party, Steele was elected to a two-year term in January 2008 just as Obama -- the country's first black president -- was taking office.

Since then, Steele, the former lieutenant governor of Maryland, has spent much of his tenure fending off criticism. He faced frequent complaints about questionable spending, anemic fundraising, staff shake-ups and cringe-inducing comments.

Longtime establishment Republicans and GOP elders in Washington argued that he damaged the party's image and its long-term fiscal health.

Steele angered them by predicting the GOP wouldn't win House control last fall; Republicans did win. He also drew their ire when he criticized fellow Republicans in a book that GOP leaders didn't know he was writing until it was published.

He lashed out at critics, telling them to "get a life." Steele also drew fire for collecting payments for his speeches.

Demands for him to resign came last year after the disclosure that RNC money was spent on a $2,000 tab at a sex-themed California night club, and when he said that the 9-year-old conflict in Afghanistan was a mistaken "war of Obama's choosing." It began under Bush.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/01/14/republicans-select-new-party-chief/#

I am excited, I really like this guy and I am glad to see Steele go. I am also glad they didn't support who he wanted them to support when he bowed out.

did that republican litmus test already pass or is it soon to follow?

Who is this guy, never heard of him?

He is the former chair of the Wisconsin Republican Party and Chief Counsel for the National GOP party for the past few years. He was also the youngest state GOP chairman in history.

Hmmm

?????????????????????

you can google him for more information(you just have to search a little for something thats not just giving the basic information and the fact he has the position)

Why is this important?

Will he be running for President?

Or is he just another theif in the chain?

He fits with the Parties message of half-truths.!
I found this from his very own state politifacts.


Wisconsin Republican Party chairman Reince Priebus says President Barack Obama has added 141,000 workers to the federal payroll and wants to add 125,000 more


Eager to ridicule the economic stimulus package, Republicans long have pounded President Barack Obama for overseeing a rise in federal government employees even while private-sector payrolls have shriveled.

It started over the summer, when two Ohio congressmen -- including soon-to-be U.S. House Speaker John Boehner -- separately claimed the federal payroll had jumped by 400,000 or 590,000 since Obama took office in January 2009.

Those claims were greatly inflated by including temporary U.S. Census workers, PolitiFact National found.

Now the GOP is back with a new set of numbers.

In the wake of election victories, officials are working them into interviews and even social-networking messages, such as this Nov. 16, 2010 Twitter post from Reince Priebus (@ReincePriebus), chairman of the Republican Party of Wisconsin:

"Obama has grown fed. payroll by 141k workers-not counting Census, postal, & uniformed military. Wants to add 125k more."

Priebus weighed in on this national topic -- coincidentally we assume -- about a week after his name came up in speculation about succeeding Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele at some point.

Priebus’ tweet linked to a Fox News.com story that quoted U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who is in line to run a House subcommittee on federal employment.

Chaffetz was pushing a 10 percent across-the-board pay cut for federal employees. He told Fox that Obama had added 141,000 federal workers. The Fox story, without attribution, added: The president wants to hire 125,000 more workers."

Since the numbers had changed from the summer, we wondered how the new ones added up.

First some context and history.

Federal employment figures are cyclical. They are lower now than 20 years ago. The federal payroll began a dive in the 1990s, rose again after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, held pretty steady for much of the last decade -- then began a sharp climb up in 2008, the last year of George W. Bush’s presidency.

The White House and private analysts attribute much of the rise this decade to homeland security and civilian defense positions related to fighting two wars and international terrorism.

Let’s start with how much the federal work force has gone up.

During Obama’s tenure, the number of federal workers has increased by about 141,000, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics -- though it is in large part a product of Bush’s last budget.

Priebus and Chaffetz did not include census workers, avoiding the misleading approach taken by Boehner and others.

They also excluded U.S. Postal Service workers in their count, which tallies some 2.19 million civilian federal workers. That makes the increase much larger than it otherwise would be, since the postal workforce is shrinking.

Got that?

If the postal workers cuts were included, the overall increase in employees under Obama would be about 40,000, or a modest 1.4 percent increase in the workforce. By leaving the postal service out, as the GOP does, the increase is 141,000 jobs, or almost 7 percent.

That’s a huge difference.

Tad DeHaven, a budget analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute, says postal workers are federal employees and should be included.

But government statisticians, the White House and some private watchdog groups routinely exclude postal workers in their reports. So Chaffetz and Priebus are not off base -- and both were careful to note which workers they meant.

A second caveat is more important.

Obama was elected in November of 2008 and took office in January of 2009. An analysis by Cato, the libertarian think tank, said the vast majority of spending for the 2008-’09 year -- which began a month before the election -- was from Bush-implemented changes.

If you start counting with the first full fiscal year under Obama, the job increase under Obama is half of the 141,000. But it’s also true that Obama picked up the ball from Bush and ran with it.

Let’s look at part two of the Priebus claim: that Obama wants to add 125,000 more workers.

It’s based on the Fox story, which did not attribute that number to anyone.

The 125,000 figure is an apparent reference to fiscal year 2011. But the 125,000 figure is not the projected job growth in fiscal year 2011 -- it’s just new hires, according to an analysis by the Partnership for Public Service, which provides research for The Washington Post.

Priebus’ tweet makes it sound as if that 125,000 would come on top of the 141,000 increase. But two-thirds of the 125,000 hires will replace departing federal workers, the Partnership estimated. So those positions won’t grow the number of federal jobs.

We won’t know until next fall, when the 2011 fiscal year ends, how many net jobs were added across the government.

But like any good charge, a pointed tweet doesn’t wait.

So, our evaluation won’t wait either.

Like others in his party, state GOP chairman Reince Priebus’ claim on federal hiring takes a statistical approach that makes the 2009-’10 trend more dramatic than under another method. And the claim pins the entire growth on Obama, while ignoring the budget implemented by Bush. But it’s a legitimate number, commonly used, and clearly defined.

The second claim is off base, using a new-hire number as a proxy for job growth to suggest that Obama would nearly double the two-year job growth in one year. The mixed message earns Priebus a Half True.

http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2010/nov/24/reince-priebus/wisconsin-republican-party-chairman-reince-priebus/


I guess the litmus test was who is the better liar?

more like which jobs are important enough to be counted or not

just like most polls and numbers,, choosing what 'qualifies' becomes pretty subjective from source to source

That was not a poll!

??????

Wow...

Political spin...

ie. propaganda for (insert party here).

i.e. LIE.

Even if it is just a half truth it is still a lie.