Steele: Put Pelosi on the 'firing line'

RNC chairman Michael Steele took his rhetoric against Democrats to a new level last night, suggesting voters send Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to "the firing line." 

"This woman has been derelict in her leadership duty to the country by not listening, by taking the party and I believe the country down a bad road," Steele told Greta Van Sustren on Fox News. "And this November, they're going to pay. So let's start getting Nancy ready for the firing line this November."

The metaphor was a slight but important variation on the RNC's new mantra to "fire Nancy Pelosi."

The DNC pounced on Steele for the statement, calling it evidence that RNC has joined the "fanatical right."

“We’re well aware of the Republican campaign to fundraise off of fear, but Michael Steele’s threat to put the highest ranking official in Congress in front of a ‘firing line’ is a new level of desperation for the GOP," said DNC spokeswoman Brandi Hoffine.

"After a year of scare-tactics from Republican leaders, very little surprises us.  But, death threats like the one Michael Steele has posed to Speaker Pelosi are usually reserved for the farthest right fringe – not the Chairman of the Republican Party.  This makes clear what we’ve known all along -  the RNC and the fanatical right are now one in the same."