Via TPM we learn that when asked during a debate among the candidates for the RNC chairmanship what her favorite book is, Missouri’s Ann Wagner distingiushehd herself by naming her favorite bar instead:

… the real highlight of the exchange came when Ann Wagner responded to the question, saying, “Probably my kitchen table.” What was she referring to exactly? Her favorite bar, apparently, which she thought she was being asked. Her favorite book, though, is George W. Bush’s new memoir, Decision Points.

Better lit up than literate in this case perhaps? Of course, Wagner’s was not the only startling response.  Current RNC chairman, Michael Steele, decided to go for the big time and selected War and Peace to burnish his intellectual credentials – and then mistakenly quoted the opening sentences from Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. Both responses were fitting somehow, one probably sincere and the other intended to be the usual ho-hum – Steele’s reveal just an added delight.

UPDATE:  Michael Tomasky thinks Ann Wagner will get the nod – based on the fact that she “looks the most Republican of the four”:

Affinity groups such as political parties go with people as leaders they feel comfortable with. Steele was an aberration for an extremely aberrant historical circumstance. Partly in response, I think Republicans will want in the new chair a surfeit of normalcy. That starts with how the person looks, and that means Wagner.

Just another country-club matron …

Ann Wagner, who is running to replace Michael Steele as the  Chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC), just finished a successful stint as Roy Blunt’s campaign manager. As Hotflash noted in a comment to a blog post here at SMP, she has the gift of sounding mild and rational while speaking for a party that is rushing to walk on the wild side. Certainly, under her leadership, the Blunt campaign negotiated the Tea Party shoals while never abandoning the GOP corporate crew whose interests Blunt seems to put first and foremost.

The upcoming campaign for the RNC Chair could pose a serious challenge to her skills, however. In this context, I was struck by a comment Slate‘s David Weigel made about the benefits of his attendance at a FreedomWorks-Republican Conservative Caucus forum for RNC chair candidates:

As a way of seeing just how successful the Tea Party’s capture of the GOP has been, it was very useful. And it was even better as a gauge of how smart Republicans have become at 1) figuring that out and 2) figuring out what Tea Partiers want to hear.

Wagner already seems to be trying her best to exercise tact. In response to claims at the forum that the GOP owes it’s Nov. 2 victories to the Tea Party, she cautiously observed that “we have to reflect the true, independent nature of these Tea Parties that are out there.” Bunkum, but important bunkum for someone who wants to keep the squalling baby placated while they throw out the foul bathwater.  

I expect that Wagner’s performance will offer many such moments of rarefied amusement for those of us who appreciate a nuanced delivery. The GOP, after all, now has to cater to a chorus of crazies who, encouraged by the purposely vague Tea Party rhetoric, have crawled out of the woodwork where they have  hidden since the late 1950s.

Just this week, Judson Phillips, president of the Tea Party Nation, declared that voting should be restricted to property owners only. I know that these delusional fools think they have a private line to the Founders, but it will be incumbent on the likes of Wagner to steer them gently when they get their 18th century lines this badly crossed – which she just may be able to do. She did after all, get many of the  “we-the-people” contingent to toady for Roy Blunt in spite of the fact that he delivered some of his Tea Party friendly lines with all the conviction of a confirmed drunk at a prohibition rally.