Michael Steele is burning up the campaign trail and the airwaves. The GOP Senate candidate and Maryland Lt. Gov. took his clue-by-four to the Washington Post on Fox News Sunday. Responding to a WaPo editorial attempting to paint him as the “establishment” candidate, Steele upbraided the smug punditocracy with his trademark anti-establishment candor:

WALLACE: Lieutenant Governor, the Washington Post endorsed your opponent, Ben Cardin, over the weekend, and they had some very harsh words for you. Let’s put them up on the screen.

STEELE: Okay.

WALLACE: “Despite his efforts to construct an image as an independent-minded newcomer, there is nothing in Michael Steele’s past — no achievement, no record, no evidence and certainly no command of the issues — to support it.”

The Post says that as lieutenant governor for the past four years, you have had marginal influence.

STEELE: I know. Isn’t it a shame? Well, you know, Chris, that is pitiful. It is absolutely pitiful, and that’s nothing more than what the Baltimore Sun said about me four years ago, that I bring nothing to the table but the color of my skin. They were just a little bit more sophisticated in their ignorance.

My conversation with the editorial board didn’t go the way they wanted it to go because I wouldn’t kowtow and answer the questions the way they wanted me to answer them. I’m my own person. I don’t care about the Washington Post. The Washington Post is not going to get me elected. The Washington Post is not going to prevent me from getting elected.

They’re a bunch of folks, as I told them in the interview, who sit in an ivory tower, who have no clue what real life is about out here. It’s easy to pontificate when you don’t have to put a vote on the line, when you don’t have to look a voter in the eye and let them know what you really think, so what — they come after me.

Now, how many times very you seen the Washington Post do a second editorial on a candidate that they didn’t even endorse? It makes no sense. So clearly, I must be winning this race, and the Washington Post will have to write that headline, “Steele Wins”, and then eat it.

Awwww, yeah!

Latest poll numbers:

If the 2006 election for Maryland’s U.S. Senate seat were held today, would you vote for:

CARDIN 47%
STEELE 44%
ZEESE 0.6%
UNDECIDED 9%

This poll was conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, Inc. of Washington, D.C. from November 1 through November 3, 2006. A total of 625 registered Maryland voters were interviewed statewide by telephone. All stated they were likely to vote in the November general election.

Those interviewed were selected by the random variation of the last four digits of telephone numbers.

A cross-section of exchanges was utilized in order to ensure an accurate reflection of the state. Quotas were assigned to reflect voter turn-out by county.

The margin for error, according to standards customarily used by statisticians, is no more than plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Steele campaigned with former NAACP leader and failed rival Kweisi Mfume’s son in Baltimore. Bloomberg News has a profile that captures the Steele magic:

Cathy Ewing loves Maryland Republican Senate candidate Michael Steele’s television ads, such as the one where he appears with a puppy to assure voters he isn’t the hard- hearted pol Democrats make him out to be.

While the ads won Steele a long look from Ewing, and almost won her over, Iraq and Republican scandals tipped the 28-year-old hair stylist from Frostburg in the other direction. “If it had been any other year, I’d probably have voted for him,” said Ewing, a registered Democrat who voted for President George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004.

Other Democrats are readier to break ranks. “I’m a Democrat, but you need to be supportive of having African- Americans in the Senate,” Henry Harris, 51, who owns a telecommunications business in Fort Washington, said of the possibility that Steele will become the first black Republican senator in 28 years.

That Steele even has a chance against Democratic rival Ben Cardin in a state where Republicans are outnumbered 2-to-1 is one of the few bright spots this year for Republicans, who are fighting to keep control of Congress.

“It’s a really tough year for any Republican, especially in a state as blue as Maryland,” said Jennifer Duffy, an analyst for the Cook Political Report, a non-partisan newsletter in Washington. “The really big thing is that Steele made this a race when people didn’t think there’d be one…”

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Previous:

Taking black Democrats for granted
Hot Steele in Maryland
Man of Steele
Michael Steele’s hip-hop endorsement
The vile bile we have to put up with
Michael Steele and the Sambo smear
Whitewashing Chuckaquiddick
Chuckaquiddick: Look who’s paying the tab
NY Times “looks into” Chuckaquiddick
Chuckaquiddick: Where’s the MSM?
The NYTimes ombudsman is totally worthless
Democrat dumpster diving
A despicable Democrat dirty trick

Here is a very telling campaign moment you won’t read about in the New York Times. Yesterday, Democrat Rep. Ben Cardin, the Senate candidate in Maryland, tried to rally black politicians to his side after GOP challenger Michael Steele won huge endorsements from black Democrats in liberal Prince George’s County.

Look at what happened via the Washington Times:

Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin yesterday tried to rally support among black Democrats in Prince George’s County, while Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele campaigned with county Democratic leaders who broke ranks this week to endorse him.

Mr. Cardin appeared with Prince George’s County Executive Jack B. Johnson and about 30 other lawmakers in Hyattsville, aiming to keep a diminishing lead in the polls…

…But the rally turned sour later. State Sen. Nathaniel Exum, Prince George’s Democrat, berated Mr. Cardin for excluding him and other local delegates from speaking or being mentioned.

“You do the same [stuff] over and over again, just ignore us,” Mr. Exum yelled at Mr. Cardin after the rally, which was held in Mr. Exum’s district. Mr. Cardin shrugged off the incident.

“You do the same [stuff] over and over again, just ignore us.” That about sums up the last 40 years of the relationship between the Democrat Party and black voters, doesn’t it?

Contrast that scene with the dynamic campaign event we attended yesterday in Annapolis, where Steele received full-throated endorsements from a diverse group of mostly registered Democrat pastors:

Watch the whole thing.

Steele has tapped into bubbling discontent among independent-thinking minority voters–a phenomenon ignored by MSM elites intent on smearing him as an Uncle Tom, sellout, or “lawn jockey” and pandering to the tired, old liberal establishment. Investor’s Business Daily gets it:

Leading black Maryland Democrats, including a former NAACP head’s son, endorse Republican Michael Steele for the U.S. Senate. That giant sucking sound you hear is the wind leaving the Democrats’ sails.

If the GOP holds on to the Senate on Tuesday, it may be due to a November surprise that smashes the carefully crafted liberal media stereotype of the GOP as the party of David Duke — the victory of Michael Steele due to a black electorate finally refusing to be taken for granted.

There would be a delicious irony in this. The Democratic plan for taking control of the Senate depends in large part on knocking off incumbent George Allen in neighboring Virginia by exploiting his alleged use of the “n” word in college and the racial term “macaca” as examples of GOP insensitivity to minorities.

On Monday, former Prince George’s County Executive Wayne Curry and five fellow black Democrats on the county council endorsed Steele while blasting their party over its lukewarm support for the Senate campaign of former NAACP chief Kweisi Mfume, who lost the primary to 10-term Rep. Ben Cardin.

Curry, who in 1994 became Prince George’s County’s first black executive, said Steele is a “good man with a good plan,” adding, “We’re not puppets. We’re not gullible.”

Trotting out Barack Obama, as Cardin will do today, is not going to allay their dissatisfaction.

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Mary Katharine puts the question to Steele: Smackdown or beatdown?

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Democrat Bob Casey thinks black voters are stupid, too.

Hot Air’s Ian Schwartz was in Baltimore tonight and captured video of hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons’ endorsement of GOP Senate candidate Michael Steele. It’s a highly significant event for the Steele campaign. Steele and Simmons became friends a few years ago “because the two share interests in minority entrepreneurship and housing,” reports WJLA. The Washington Times reports on Steele’s rising black support:

Mr. Simmons is scheduled to hold a fundraiser tonight at Baltimore’s Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park for Mr. Steele, the lieutenant governor and the first black to win a statewide office in Maryland.

“Russell Simmons is one of the leading progressive voices in America,” said Donna Brazile, who managed Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign.

“This is a major endorsement for Lieutenant Governor Steele that will help him attract young people, as well as black voters,” Ms. Brazile said. “Once again, this should serve as a wake-up call to Democrats not to take their most loyal constituents and voters for granted.”

Mr. Simmons, who promoted the rap group Run-DMC in the 1980s and has since built a media and clothing empire, helped the Democratic Party register hundreds of thousands of voters via the Hip Hop Summit Action Network, which he co-founded in 2001.

Mr. Simmons “definitely represents the younger generation. … He’s a pioneer, and hip-hop has become one thing that defines black youths in this country,” said Tyrell Ruff, a 19-year old Baltimore native.

“Russell Simmons … would definitely get some votes for Mr. Steele. If you look at black kids in the city, many of them would probably be wearing something he made,” said Mr. Ruff, a sophomore at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.

Cathy Hughes, founder and chairman of Radio One, the seventh-largest national radio conglomerate and the largest aimed at black audiences, also is supporting Mr. Steele and will attend tonight’s event.

“That’s huge,” said Eric Nelson, a 34-year old rapper and single father from Baltimore. “The tide is shifting.”

Which means it’s just a matter of time before the Chuckaquiddick Dems try and pull another dirty trick. Keep an eye out.

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Paul Mirengoff at Power Line calls the endorsement a “Great Hip-Hop Forward” and notes:

In the past, apparently, Simmons has helped the Democratic Party register hundreds of thousands of voters via the Hip Hop Summit Action Network. Moreover, one of Steele’s potential opponents in November is Kweisi Mfume, an African-American who sits on the board of directors of Simmons’ political action group. But Simmons has decided to endorse Steele regardless of who his opponent will be.

Jason Smith: “Is it really a suprise that the party of Robert “KKK Kleagle” Byrd and DNC Chair Howard “Candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks” Dean, and the party that filibustered the Civil Rights Act, called the first black Secretary of State a “House Slave“, and whose last President never elevated racial minorities to positions of real power, could finally be losing some of the black vote?”

Mfume calls black conservatives puppets

So, what else is new?

Well, apparently Latino liberal actor John Leguizamo is dissing Hispanic Republicans along the same lines. At the DNC fund-raising hate-a-thon in New York last week, he jibed: “”A Latino voting for a Republican is like a roach voting for raid.” (Hat tip: Rightwingduck)

All this tired, old “sellout” rhetoric reminds me: I just received my cool new Ted Rall-inspired t-shirts (courtesy of Rachel Jurado, the Banana Republican). I sent a “Self-loathing race traitor” shirt to my brother. And I may wear my “I’m Not ‘White.’ I’m RIGHT” shirt to the next UNITY Journalists of Color conference.

Michael King, who will be on Scarborough Country tonight taking on the NAACP mafia, has his own line of t-shirts, too: Black and Unapologetically Conservative

Get ‘em while they’re hot!