The Morning Joe team continued its ongoing discussion on the White House’s controversial — and, now, changing — birth control mandate, with host Joe Scarborough urging people not to turn an issue about government interference in religion into a discussion on contraception. This debate, he told his colleagues, is farther-ranging than a specific health care issue.

Former RNC chairman Michael Steele, for one, believes laws concerning gay marriage should be discussed and decided at a local level. Panelist John Heilemann then asked Steele what he thought about the fact that, at one point, local standards held that it was unacceptable for black men to marry white women. Steele rejected the comparison.

Former RNC chairman Michael Steele visited the Morning Joe crew on Miami Beach, wearing his finest approximation of a Miami Vice costume. Host Mika Brzezinski asked Steele to weigh in on a Washington Post op-ed piece that characterized the nation’s super-rich as “political props.” “For starters,” reads the article, “don’t pretend, as Obama does, that [...]

With Morning Joe still shooting live from JD’s Tavern in New Hampshire, the show was afforded, once again, a live audience. But with the excitement of the primary now passed, the show apparently drew a bit of a less-enthusiastic crowd.

During a discussion on Jon Huntsman‘s use of Mandarin during the Republican debate, MSNBC contributor, and former head of the Republican National Committee, Michael Steele mocked the former Utah governor, saying “I thought he was ordering takeout.”

On Thursday’s edition of Now, MSNBC host Alex Wagner mixed it up with former RNC chief Michael Steele over his hesitance to support Mitt Romney, playing archival video of Steele saying “I don’t care how you cut it, the brother just can’t bake the cake. No ones buying it.” “Here we are,” Wagner observed. “And there’s a lot of, there’s Mitt-mentum, as it were.

“Where is it?” Steele asked. “Twenty-five percent does not momentum make.”

The “must-reads” segment on Morning Joe today opened with a NY Times op-ed that ridiculed Newt Gingrich‘s claim that the $300,000 he received from embattled government mortgage agency Freddie Mac was for his “advice as a historian.” Given the fierce anti-Frannie and Freddie sentiment among the GOP, and blame assigned to these agencies for the housing crisis and credit default problems that helped tank the US economy in 2008, host Joe Scarborough believes that Gingrich has got some splaining to do.

An incredulous Joe Scarborough railed on Herman Cain this morning for the GOP frontrunner’s apparent ignorance of China’s national capability. Scarborough declared that Cain’s alarming foreign policy gaffe was evidence that he was “woefully ill-prepared to be commander-in-chief,” adding that had Sarah Palin, she would have been vilified.

On Wednesday’s edition of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough strongly lauded Mitt Romney’s debate performance at last night’s GOP debate. “I’ve got to admit, Mitt Romney completely deboned Herman Cain’s 9-9-9, made him look like an idiot,” Scarborough gushed. “And there, there’s not doubt, he got Newt to admit he supported an individual mandate.”

As Howard Dean seems to see it, anyone gunning for a win in the 2012 presidential election is going to face the same problem: the Tea Party. “They are not playing with a full deck,” he said earlier today on Morning Joe, arguing that they make for an unpredictable voter base. “I’ve never seen this on the Republican side,” he continued. “They are usually much more disciplined.”

It was as bad a Monday morning for Rick Perry as it was a good one for Mitt Romney. Following Romney’s media-adjudged victory in Thursday night’s debate over a beleaguered Perry, then Perry’s cartoonishly lopsided thrashing by Herman Cain in the Florida straw poll, things were looking way up for Romney. The Morning Joe crew assessed the winners and losers of a turbulent week in Republican primary politics.

With Tulane professor and MSNBC contributor Melissa Harris Perry at the helm today on The Last Word, the program has put a fair amount of emphasis on civility, today dedicating an entire segment of the show to getting along. The premise: the anonymity of the internet has given people like Perry’s crazy Uncle Fred the freedom to say offensive and hurtful things that hurt the political discourse. To give them an example of how to conduct a proper discussion, Perry found common ground with former RNC Chair Michael Steele, who made sure to emphasize that it isn’t his side that’s doing all the insulting.

Former DNC Chair and current Vermont governor Howard Dean and former RNC Chair Michael Steele waded into the murky waters of political doctrine on today’s Morning Joe, pitting the former president George W. Bush‘s foreign policy against President Obama‘s, and then, ultimately setting the whole thing aside because, as Dean himself said, “that’s not what the election is going to be fought on; it’s going to be fought on economy.”

Michael Steele‘s position as one of the most prominent voices on MSNBC means that he will, on occasion, find himself in a segment like this one, where Rachel Maddow notes the inherent discrepancies between Rick Perry the author and the candidate, points out the lack of enthusiasm surrounding New York governor George Pataki‘s probable run, and questions Jon Huntsman‘s chances strongly. Yet tonight, Steele took it in strike, defending Perry’s attempts to “finesse” the opinions in his book and arguing the Republican field is “pretty much set.”

If anything good* has come out of the first two days of Rick Perry‘s presidential campaign, it is this following clip, a wildly entertaining, somewhat difficult to follow discussion hosted by Al Sharpton and flanked by Bob Shrum and Michael Steele, though the latter seems to steal the spotlight from the other two for much of the segment. Between calling Ben Bernanke “treasonous” and saying a “big black cloud” was flying over America (the national debt), Perry has raised some eyebrows, but Steele insisted the attacks on Perry were “silly.”

With Congress out of session and half a month of little to do before him, President Obama is going on a bus tour across America to meet with people and discuss the important economic troubles the nation has ahead. While he isn’t the first or last executive (or wannabe executive) to do so, Chris Matthews hesitated to support the move today, suggesting that a tour without a plan didn’t make much political sense and rounding off his doubts with what could be the worst political insult possibly in August 2011: “It seems like something Tim Pawlenty would’ve done.”

On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, former RNC Chairman Michael Steele pressed senior Obama adviser David Axelrod on the Politico piece that suggested Team Obama’s strategy would be to paint GOP hopeful Mitt Romney as “weird.”

Axelrod called the Politico story “garbage,” and agreed with Steele that any Obama campaign staffer who used such an attack against Romney would be fired. For now, at least, we’re still talking about how “weird” Romney is.

It’s been a long month of July in politics– the debt crisis debate has certainly taken the wind out of the sails of many in Washington and, for anyone watching at home, leaving a bad taste of cynicism and fatigue in one’s mouth. But now it’s August, Congress is in recess and the news cycle is ready for a recharge. While we wait for the next Ground Zero Mosque imbroglio, here is something to thaw out the collectively grizzled and warn political hearts of America: your favorite cable news personalities interacting with dogs.

John McCain‘s recent disparaging remarks about Tea Party poster women Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell had many either breathlessly announcing that he was “back” or, alternately, opining that the Republican Arizona Senator “is Gollum.” Either way, it seemed that McCain felt strongly about the Tea Party’s influence in Washington and was truly and sincerely speaking his mind, however bluntly and lacking in tact his remarks may have been. And the media ate that up because Politicians Saying What They Mean is to us what candy is to a baby or, more accurately, what sweet corruptible human flesh is to Cthulhu.

It was always an obvious reality that Keith Olbermann‘s Current TV show would experience some degree of crossover with MSNBC’s prime-time programming, but any hope of a peaceful rivalry have evaporated, as Olbermann has made it clear he intends to go after his former employer’s audience by going after his former employer. The fact that Olbermann has opted to “go negative” so early (his show hasn’t even premiered yet) portends a bloody battle for the hearts and minds of liberal viewers.

The establishment of Current TV as a destination for liberal news programming doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing for MSNBC. There are, apparently, millions of liberals who aren’t watching cable news, and this represents an opportunity for both channels to attract a new audience.

Former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele says he won’t be a “conservative punching bag” in his new role as commentator on MSNBC. Or, put more bluntly, he has no intention of being the next Alan Colmes. I think people kind of look at it and they go, ‘Oh, gee, you know, yeah, he’s the Alan Colmes,’” Steele tells The Baltimore Sun. “But I don’t think it’s that at all. I think I bring a very different style…I’m not a wallflower. I don’t hold back my views…I want to engage people.”

While the worst (Donald Trump) may be behind us (or not!), the fate of the Republican Party in 2012 is about as stable and certain as a moment of peace on Real Housewives of New Jersey. But unlike that reality show, almost anyone with the right resources can hop into this race, and with that [...]

Former Republican National Committee head Michael Steele has found himself a new role: MSNBC legal analyst, following a series of negotiations with the channel. The “forward-leaning” news network will feature Steele as an expert contributor across its lineup.

Former RNC Chair Michael Steele is negotiating a deal to become a contributor for MSNBC, according to The Hill. Steele had hinted to a future in cable news since his defeat in the national party elections earlier this year, and had been making appearances on the network, most notably with Rachel Maddow and most loudly with Ed Schultz.

You may recall that, last Friday, Bill Maher invited MSNBC host Ed Schultz and former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele onto his show to yell over one another as viewers clapped in delight discuss proposed Medicare vouchers.

On his program, Schultz kept that discussion going.