Drum roll, please:
"My intent was not to go after Rush - I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh," Steele said in an interview. "I was maybe a little bit inarticulate. ... There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership.
"I went back at that tape and I realized words that I said weren't what I was thinking," Steele told Politico. "It was one of those things where I thinking I was saying one thing, and it came out differently. What I was trying to say was a lot of people ... want to make Rush the scapegoat, the bogeyman, and he's not."
Shorter Michael Steele: “Rush Limbaugh is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life.”
Ouch. Some of us on the left had bets on how quickly this would happen. I figured Steele would at least wait 24 hours; he didn’t even wait four.
Any doubts about who is in charge of the Republican Party have just been erased. Hint: it’s not the black guy who just groveled before the bloated white bigot who once told an African American caller to “take that bone out of your nose.”
