Michael Steele: Off the hook

The wide-ranging interview with GQ's Lisa DePaulo also featured Steele's extensive commentary about Barack Obama, down to his clothing choices.

Steele drew criticism earlier this year for promising an "off-the-hook" campaign to give his party a hip hop makeover and reach out to the urban community. That didn't stop Steele from taking up the hip hop issue again in his latest interview, where he revealed his hip hop musical preferences include P. Diddy, Grandmaster Flash, Chuck D. and Snoop Dogg. But he also expressed his "love" for old school performer Dean Martin, who Steele said "was one of these guys who just didn't give an F."

Maybe that's the message Steele hopes will help the GOP win black votes while the African American community celebrates it first black president. "We are very much an entrepreneurial people, and I think the Republican message is one that speaks directly to that," Steele told GQ.

In an interview that is sure to generate more controversy for the man who has already stirred up his own share of controversy, Steele said he doesn't believe bipartisanship can work in Washington and said abortion should be an "individual choice," a position seemingly at odds with GOP leaders who have pushed to ban abortion.

Steele also indicated that he stays in touch with the black community by visiting the local Starbucks. Asked if the Starbucks was still in business in his neighborhood, the RNC chairman said: "You cannot close a Starbucks in a black community. We'll riot!"

As for Barack Obama, the RNC chairman said he was "bothered" that Senator Obama campaigned against him when he ran for for Senate in 2006. "He was the only African-American elected official in the country to come and campaign against me," said Steele. "Nobody else."

Perhaps that explains whey Steele said he was not "caught up" in all the emotion of Obama's inauguration. "My concern throughout this campaign was, people were treating him like he was going to be the Second Coming on the question of race. And because you have a black man as president doesn't mean that tomorrow morning a black business is not gonna get redlined or a black family's gonna be able to get their house."

Steele, who is Catholic, was also asked about gay priests and did not sound like a socially conservative Republican. "It's your nature," he said. "I can't deny you your nature." He said homosexuality is not a choice. "I don't think I've ever really subscribed to that view, that you can turn it on and off like a water tap," he said. "You just can't simply say, oh, like, 'Tomorrow morning I'm gonna stop being gay.' It's like saying, 'Tomorrow morning I'm gonna stop being black.'"

If Steele's election will shake up the Republican Party, he admits he has a lot of work to do just to get people to see him for who he really is. "I still think there's a degree of racism that exists out there that you still have to confront," he said. "You know, folks see me walk in a room, they don't see the chairman of the Republican Party, they see a black man just walked into the room."

The wide-ranging full interview is available on the Web site of GQ magazine.