“It helps me understand my position on the chess board,” he told CNN . “It helps me understand, you know, where the enemy camp is and where those who are inside the tent are.” 
 
 By last March, perpetually embattled RNC chairman Michael Steele had already cultivated a reputation as something of a gaffe machine. But according to Steele, all of his supposed horrific blunders were, in fact, clever feints. 
 
 In other words, Steele would have us believe he was playing eleven-dimensional chess all along. Such a claim was always transparently ridiculous, but it seems even more so in hindsight; whatever game he was playing might be more closely likened to Russian roulette. Solo Russian roulette. Now, as he faces an insurrection within the GOP over his anti-Afghanistan War remarks, it appears he finally discovered a live round in the chamber. 
 
 Yes, it’s hard not to resist the siren song of sweet, sweet schadenfreude. The Michael Steel Comedy hour, after all, is (was?) one of the few sideshows in Washington politics one could enjoy guilt-free. His misadventures, unlike those of, say, John Boehner, do not have real-world policy consequences. And for liberals, Steele’s Michael Scott-esque ability to say exactly the wrong thing with astonishing frequency was a nice exception to the “Republicans have ironclad message control and Democrats have Joe Lieberman” rule. 
 
 No wonder, then, that Republicans have seized the opportunity to try and force Steele out for good; his high-profile humiliations are matched only by the RNC’s incompetent fundraising under his tenure. Despite all of this, Steele was nearly invincible until now, insulated both by RNC bylaws and optics (imagine what a public relations nightmare it would be if the GOP—long haunted by its troubled relationship with white identity politics—forced out one of its few prominent black members, who they appointed primarily to distance themselves from that troubled relationship). 
 
 Barring acts of God—or, perhaps, a sex scandal—the only recourse available to the rest of the party was to wait for Steele to say something so repugnant that they could plausibly demand his resignation en masse without leaving any room to interpret this demand as a race thing. Keep in mind that Republicans could not turn on Steele over just any controversial remarks; it would be hard for him to utter a sentence more offensive to our critical faculties and basic human decency than what you hear excreted by Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh on a regular basis, and yet the party continues to embrace them both. If the GOP turned on their chairman for the same infractions they made excuses for—and even celebrated—elsewhere, they risked looking like hypocrites, or even alienating their base. 
 
 Lucky for them, Steele provided one shining, golden opportunity. He committed the one act the Republican Party finds more vile than consensual gay sex: he unintentionally offered some mild criticism of his party’s own platform. 
 
 How deliciously, tragically ironic that Steele made this fatal stumble in doing exactly what the RNC appointed him to do. Forget policy, consistency, or coherence; a good chunk of his job description is attacking President Obama at every available opportunity, and his condemnation of the war in Afghanistan was little more than a pretense under which to do just that. Sadly, when he assumed that the party’s blind hatred of the president would win out over their blind embrace of military conflict in all its myriad forms, he grievously miscalculated. 
 
 But if Michael Steele’s reign of error comes to a characteristically ignominious end, that will be far from the greatest pity in this whole fiasco. The far sadder story is the narrowing this represents in mainstream debate over Afghanistan, as the leadership of both major parties concludes that the only acceptable position to take is a stalwartly pro-war one. It’s one thing to watch John McCain reflexively support American military involvement with every country whose name he can correctly pronounce; it’s quite another to see the DNC simultaneously embrace over-heated anti-dissent rhetoric that sounds like it was pilfered verbatim from a Karl Rove-authored internal White House memo circa 2003. 
 
 I am not taking a position on the merits of Steele’s claims; assessing the goals and current status of our efforts in Afghanistan is, as Todd Gitlin points out, a mind-bogglingly complex endeavor, and I don’t have the expertise for it. But opposition to the war is not a fringe position, and at least one highly respected foreign policy expert -- Steve Clemons -- has stepped up to defend Steele’s remarks. It appears that in the case of every liberal’s favorite RNC chair, even a stopped clock occasionally says something mildly plausible. 
 
 But that clearly isn’t how the vast majority of elected officials on either side of the aisle see it. And so, rather than having a deeply needed debate over the merits of our mission in Afghanistan, they continue to behave as if there is no debate to be had. 

 Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, continued to come under fire from his own party for his comments on the war in Afghanistan, but Republicans calling for his ouster could face an uphill battle. 
 
 Mr. Steele had said Thursday that the Afghanistan war was "a war of Obama's choosing" and implied it was unwinnable. While he appeared to walk back from that position in subsequent statements, he failed to assuage several prominent Republicans. 
 
 "He should go," said Dan Senor, a former foreign-policy adviser to ex-President George W. Bush and to the provisional governments in Iraq, in an interview on Monday. "It is utterly unserious for a leader of a national political party to behave so irresponsibly on a war-related issue." 
 
 Associated Press Michael Steele speaks in San Francisco on June 24, 2010. 
 
 Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney and chairman of the group Keep America Safe, said in a web posting under a photo of Mr. Steele: "It is time for Chairman Steele to step down." 
 
 And in an interview Monday, Katon Dawson, a former South Carolina GOP chairman and past rival with Mr. Steele for the national post, called Mr. Steele's comments "another misstep in his chairmanship" and said it was "probably in the best interest for him to step down." 
 
 The Republican National Committee could not be reached for comment on Monday. 
 
 Mr. Steele, in an apparent modification of his comments, said in a statement issued on Friday that while winning a war in Afghanistan "is a difficult task… it is also a necessary one." He added that "the stakes are too high for us to accept anything but success in Afghanistan 
 
 His comments on Friday came the day following his remarks at a Connecticut fund-raiser, where, in addition to describing the battle in Afghanistan as "a "war of Obama's choosing," he suggested that the mission could not succeed. "Everyone who has tried, over a thousand years of history, has failed. and there are reasons for that," he said. 
 
 Mr. Steele's critics noted that Mr. Bush had moved troops into Afghanistan after the terror attacks of 2001 to dislodge the Taliban, who had provided haven to terrorists. Mr. Steele's critics also said the GOP leader should be fully committed to victory. 
 
 Republican Party rules could make it difficult for any of Mr. Steele's critics to secure his ouster. Under the rules, two-thirds of the committee's 168 members, or 112 members, would have to vote in favor of such a move. 
 
 Mr. Steele won the RNC chairmanship by 91-77 vote on the last ballot against Mr. Dawson. If all members who opposed Mr. Steele in 2009 voted against him in an ouster vote, the vote would not succeed unless 35 members who had backed Mr. Steele for chairman now opposed him. 
 
 "It's very hard to force a chairman out of his position," Mr. Dawson said., who added that many committee members were currently busy preparing for November's elections. "I don't sense they want the distraction." 
 
 Mr. Steele's comments are themselves proving a distraction, his critics argue, at a time when the party is trying to present a unified message to voters to win races in November for Congress, governorships and state legislatures. 
 
 Mr. Senor said he had been invited to moderate a panel at a national security conference in Washington later this month that was organized by the RNC, but he would not participate. "I can't be associated with an event sponsored by Steele, if he's running a platform with such irresponsible, dangerous arguments," Mr. Senor said. 
 
 Mr. Steele's comments also appeared to be dividing the party to some extent, with some Republicans voicing support for him. Shawn Steel, an RNC number from California and ally of Mr. Steele, said that after talking to Mr. Steele on Sunday, he felt that the chairman's comments as reported did not accurately reflect what he meant. 
 
 Mr. Steel described two GOP senators who criticized the RNC chairman over the weekend–Sens. John McCain (R., Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.)–-as two of "the most-marginalized" Republicans. 
 
 Mr. McCain told ABC News program "This Week" on Sunday that Mr. Steele "is going to have to assess as to whether he can still lead the Republican Party as chairman of the Republican National Committee." He did not directly call for Mr. Steele's ouster. 
 
 Mr. Graham, appearing on CBS News's "Face the Nation" on Sunday, said he was "dismayed, angry, upset" about the chairman's remarks. "It was an uninformed, unnecessary, unwise, untimely comment," Mr. Graham said. 
 
 Some Democrats were rooting for Mr. Steele to stay on. 
 
 "Michael Steele's future is for Republicans to decide—but, for what it's worth, we'd be happy if he stayed put," said Brad Woodhouse, spokesman for the Democratic National Committee. 
 
 —Melanie Trottman contributed to this article. 
 
 Write to Kathy Chen at kathy.chen@wsj.com
– Conventional wisdom says Michael Steele's days are numbered as head of the RNC. But as the Wall Street Journal explains, it's much easier to talk about firing a party chairman than it is to actually do so. The party committee has 168 members, and two-thirds of them (112) would have to back such a move. That means 35 members who voted for Steele as chairman would have to flip, which may not be insurmountable, but it's certainly no slam dunk. Besides, says Alex Pareene at Salon, "firing him would be as humiliating for the party as his continued presence." Which means "they have to wait for Steele to resign. And I think they'll be waiting for a long time."