Pooor Michael....He can't get it Right No Matter What! Watch & See The Lattest

GOP boss Michael Steele says he and Barack Obama have one thing in common: It's tough being black

Wenig/AP

Two sex-themed embarrassments rocked the GOP and party boss Michael Steele last week.

 

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Beleaguered GOP boss Michael Steele misplayed "the race card" by claiming he and President Obama are held to a higher standard because they're black, a White House spokesman said Monday.

Steele has been under merciless criticism after revelations his Republican National Committee squandered thousands on jets, limos and questionable fund-raisers, including a $2,000 bash at a West Hollywood, Calif., club featuring lesbian bondage acts.

Steele drew the White House's attention after he claimed he's being treated unfairly because he's black, like Obama.

"The honest answer is, 'Yes,'" said Steele, answering the question on ABC's "Good Morning America."

"Barack Obama has a slimmer margin [of error]. A lot of folks do," he said. "It's a different role for me to play and others to play and that's just the reality of it."

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs thought Steele's observation had a Michael-in-Wonderland quality to it.

"That is a fairly silly comment to make," Gibbs said. "I think Michael Steele's problem isn't the race card; it's the credit card."

Steele's world was rocked again yesterday by reports that top GOP fund-raiser Sam Fox was quitting his unpaid post, and that a newly hired fund-raising aide, Neil Alpert, had been ordered to repay $70,000 in unauthorized expenses to a pair of baseball business groups in 2007. "The guy's just a nightmare," said one disgruntled Republican of Steele.

Later yesterday, in a high-level staff shakeup, RNC chief of staff Ken McKay resigned.

On Sunday, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, Arizona's Jon Kyl, said Steele has to get the RNC's act back together. California Rep. Kevin McCarthy,the top recruiter for the National Republican Campaign Committee, seconded that notion.

Some Democrats yesterday suggested Steele might have a point, noting campaign committee Chairman Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas has gotten less scrutiny for racy fund-raisers. Sessions, before becoming the committee boss, spent $5,378 in 2007 at Las Vegas burlesque club Forty Deuce in an an event for his own committee, Pete PAC. A spokesman did not comment, but an official told The Washington Post at the time no women were naked.

Steele has complained in the past about Democrats playing the race card, but this is the second time he has done just that. In February, he raised GOP hackles after telling the Washingtonian magazine some criticism he gets is motivated by racism.

In the "GMA" interview, Steele said he understands that his "grass-roots" style has "rubbed some feathers the wrong way" in the GOP. "I tend to, you know, come at it a little bit stronger, a little bit more street-wise

BY MICHAEL MCAULIFF AND CORKY SIEMASZKO
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

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