WASHINGTON The Republican Party chose the first black national chairman in its history Friday, just shy of three months back the nation elected a Democrat of the same kind with the first African-American president. The choice marked no less than “the dawn of a new party,” declared the new GOP chairman, constructer Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele. Republicans chose Steele over four other candidates, including former President George W. Bush’s hand-picked GOP chief, who bowed out declaring, “Obviously the winds of change are blowing.”

Watch original video:

Steele takes the helm of a beleaguered Republican Party that is trying to recover after crushing defeats in November’s national elections that gave Democrats control of Congress levy Barack Obama in the White House.

GOP delegates erupted in cheers and applause when his victory was announced, but it took six ballots to get in that place. He’ll serve a two-year term.

Steele, an attorney, is a conservative, but he was considered the most lessen of the five candidates running.

He was moreover considered an outsider because he’s not a member of the Republican National Committee. But the 168-member RNC clearly signaled it wanted a change after eight years of Bush largely dictating its each move as the party’s standard-bearer.

Steele became the primeval black candidate elected to statewide office in Maryland in 2002, and he made each unsuccessful Senate haste in 2006. The maker chairman of the Maryland Republican Party currently serves of the same kind with chair of GOPAC, an organization that recruits and trains Republican political candidates, and in that role he has been a frequent presence adhering the talk manifest circuit.

He vowed to swell the reach of the party by competing beneficial to every group, everywhere.

“We’re going to say to friend and antagonist alike: ‘We want you to be a part of us, we want you to with be through us.’ And for those who wish to obstruct, get ready to get knocked over,” Steele said.

“There is not one twelfth part of a foot of ground that we’re going to yield to anybody,” he added.

“This is the dawn of a new somebody moving in a new direction with nervous diction and settled belief.”

His job is to spark a revival in opposition to the GOP as it takes on one empowered Democratic Party for that which is less than the country’s first black president in the next midterm elections and beyond.

He replaces Mike Duncan, who abandoned his re-election bid in the face of dwindling support midway from one side Friday’s voting.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2008684754_aprepublicans.html?syndication=rss