New RNC chairman talks about new ideas

Michael Steele on Fox News Sunday:

[CHRIS] WALLACE: But do you need to show Americans that you have new solutions…

STEELE: Absolutely.

WALLACE: … to their daily kitchen-table concerns?

STEELE: Absolutely. Absolutely. It is taking those core principles of this party and making them relevant in the 21st century.

WALLACE: Such as? Give me an example of a new idea.

STEELE: Well, a new idea would be let’s focus on poverty. Let’s focus on how we can take someone who is being poorly educated in an American public school and how they are poorly trained for a job, and put in place those opportunities for them to get that education, give their parents choice in education, make it real for them.

We did it right here in my home town of the District of Columbia. The president of the United States, when he was a U.S. senator, blocked three times — tried to block three times legislation that would enable poor black children in this city to go to the high school that I graduated from, what they otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford to do.

So create those opportunities. Put people on a pathway to earn a job, earn an education, so they can empower themselves. I don’t need the government to do that.

Sounds like a good idea, but I’m not an education policy guy, so I’m not sure what program Steele was talking about. If you listen to the broadcast, it sounds like Steele was struggling to come up with an answer to Wallace’s question. An RNC chair should always be ready with a half-dozen new ideas that can make people say, “Hey, why didn’t I think of that?”