Michael Steele Had Better Pray That New York Recount Never Ends

Does anyone still remember RNC Chairman Michael Steele circa, say... February? We're talking about his tempestuous first month in office, when he was fending off critics like Rush Limbaugh (who wanted to seize RNC control in a spittle-fueled coup) and Katon Dawson (who didn't want an RNC chairman that couldn't be admitted to his country club).

And what were the pundits saying around that time? It seems to us it was something along the lines of: If Steele's GOP can't win a gimme Republican seat in New York's 20th House district special election, his term will be shorter than Limbaugh's was as ESPN.

We're referring to quotes like this one from FiveThirtyEight.com...

According to multiple former high-level RNC staffers familiar with the dynamics involved, Steele is unlikely to survive in the post if favored Republican Jim Tedisco loses his open-seat race to Democrat Scott Murphy. The special election, scheduled for March 31, is to fill a vacancy left when Kirsten Gillibrand took Hillary Clinton's Senate seat.

If Tedisco loses, the ex-staffers said, "Steele is done."

Completely, definitively?

"Absolutely."

So with that in mind, let's check in on good old NY-20 and see what the results are at this point. And it appears that...

Oh dear, Tedisco is down 273 votes to Scott Murphy, a slick businessman who carpetbagged to the state shortly before the election! Which raises the unthinkable: Could it already be time for Steele to give up the ghost and devote himself exclusively to comedy?

Before you answer, there is one last bit of hope for Steele. As Political Machine's own Dave reports, Steele and Tedisco can try to systematically invalidate votes for Murphy using the legal system. All they need is for a judge to throw out 137 Murphy votes and zero Tedisco votes and the seat is theirs! Heck, they've even started by trying to invalidate their own senator's vote!

Although honestly folks, if Steele's hold on his job has come down to petty legal challenges, why not just make Norm Coleman's lawyer the head of the Republican Party?