Eric Kleefeld December 27, 2010, 10:08 AM

The Republican National Committee chairmanship race is on — and so are the recriminations on race, Jonathan Martin reports.

When Steele officially launched his re-election bid earlier this month, he said of the contest: “Who you elect as our next Chairman will speak volumes about our willingness to truly be the party of Lincoln.”

This line was immediately attacked by a Steele detractor, committeeman James Bopp of Indiana: “This is the threat he has made by playing the race card - he will smear the RNC by saying we are all racist by not voting for him.”

Now Bopp is jousting with a Steele-supporter, Idaho GOP chairman and Steele-supporter Norm Semanko, who is calling the blanket anybody-but-Steele campaign launched by Bopp and others “hateful.”

A key development has been a letter circulated by some members of the Republican National Conservative Caucus, led by Bopp, to gather pledges that committee members would vote for anybody but Steele in successive rounds of what is expected to be a multiple-ballot race.

In response, Semanko criticized the e-mail campaign. In his own e-mail message, obtained by Martin, he wrote that the anti-Steele effort was sent to only 26 RNC members, a fraction of the 90-plus Conservative Caucus. But what’s more, he wrote:

“Concern has been expressed among members of the Caucus that these two anti-Steele pledges/resolutions could be viewed as hateful toward Chairman Steele — regardless of what benign names they may be given,” Semanko wrote. “They are also considered arbitrary in that they, quite literally, purport to support anyone but Chairman Steele, without consideration of any particular candidate’s qualifications.”

Bopp responded forcefully: “Norm, are you some liberal professor at some liberal arts college enforcing their ‘hate speech’ prohibition?”

Bopp continued:

“I know that liberals view any criticism of someone’s conduct to be ‘hateful,’ if the person happens to be black, etc, but I was unaware that we at the RNC had adopted such a political speech code,” he wrote. “In my view, it is not ‘hateful” to decide not to vote for Steele because one views his conduct in office to be detrimental to the interests of the Republican Party and the country, even though he happens to be black. To suggest otherwise is playing the race card, again, and it would seem that your considerable legal talents could better be used mounting a substantive defense of Steele, rather than trying to enforce some non-existent and destructive censorship regime on the RNC.”

James Bopp, Michael Steele, Norm Semanko, RNC