After a landslide election that allowed the GOP to retake control of the House of Representatives the Republican National Committee has ousted chairman Michael Steele in favor of Reince Priebus:
[Priebus] received more than the 85 necessary votes in the seventh round of balloting and will hold the post for two years.I thought this was coming, but am still a little surprised. Conventional wisdom is that the GOP succeeded in spite of chairman Steele rather than because of him. Regardless, it seems to me to be a little awkward that a party would remove its chairman after such a successful tenure.
Michael Steele, the Republican Party's previous head and first black chairman, withdrew his bid for re-election after failing to win votes in earlier rounds.