Jan. 10 (Bloomberg) — Republican National Committee
Chairman Michael Steele called on Democratic Senator Harry Reid
to step down as majority leader over comments he made about
then-presidential candidate Barack Obama during the 2008
campaign.
Steele said Reid, of Nevada, should suffer the same
sanction as former Republican Senator Trent Lott, who was forced
out of his leadership role in 2002 for comments about a 1948
segregationist campaign.
Obama yesterday accepted Reid’s apology for the remarks, in
which he said the U.S. was ready to elect a black president,
especially someone like Obama who is “light skinned” and
speaks “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”