Slideshow: Michael Steele's most memorable missteps

At the 2008 RNC National Convention, Steele coined the phrase in his speech as GOPAC Chairman, in support of extended off-shore drilling, which McCain-Palin took up as a campaign slogan. Opening with DJ-like cries of "We're ready to party in this house tonight!", and a story of his mother - a "sharecropper's daughter" - who put "country first", it was a rousing speech that pushed him to the forefront of the election for RNC Chair.

(AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Steele denounced front-runner Chip Saltsman's use of this Limbaugh parody in an Al Sharpton-imitated voice, based on a 2007 LA Times article, to get an 11th-hour boost in the tangled RNC Chair election. Unfortunately, Steele changed his mind only a few months later, supporting the song and its offensive assertions while guest-hosting Bill Bennett's radio show.

Less than a month into his tenure as head of the RNC, the Washington Post reported on a federal investigation into Steele's use of campaign funds to make a payment to his sister Monica Turner, ex-wife of Mike Tyson, and his frequent campaign supporter. Steele and Turner maintained that the payment was for legitimate catering services, except that the company, Brown Sugar Unlimited, was dissolved nearly a year earlier.

(Video still from (Steele for Maryland campaign video)

Bush is "my homeboy"

Michael Steele, while a Republican Senate candidate in Maryland during the 2006 mid-term elections, attacked the then-wildly unpopular President Bush's handling of Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq War. When party regulars gave him hell, he quickly walked back his statement and declared George W. Bush 'my homeboy'.

(AP Photo/Ron Edmonds, File)

Steele gave an arguably embarrassing interview to GQ early on in his chairmanship in which he discussed his "hip-hop" makeover plans for the RNC, being an "old-school" fan of P. Diddy, and in context of having been adopted, referred to abortion as a woman's "individual choice". Almost immediately afterwards, conservatives balked, and Steele quickly refuted his earlier statements and scrambled back to the RNC's anti-Choice stance.

(AP Photo/Steve Helber)

Rush Limbaugh 2, Michael Steele, 0

Steele won a lot of respect from pundits and progressives when he called out some of Rush Limbaugh's rhetoric as "ugly". When Limbaugh struck back Steele quickly retreated from his remarks and praised the controversial shock jock.

(AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

Michael Steele vs. his own party

Routinely under fire, mostly from his fellow Republicans, Steele has employed a series of comical retorts such as, "They don't understand my streetwise style" and "Get a life." He would eat his words every time.

(AP Photo/Danny Johnston)

I've got your race card right here...

Throughout his tenure at the RNC Steele was keen to accuse the Democrats, Harry Reid and the president of "playing the race card" in the midst of political fights. Steele turned around and played it himself when he was under fire for his spending habits.

(AP Photo/Harry Hamburg)

RNC chair admits black people 'don't have a good reason' to vote Republican

In yet another unscripted moment, Steele admitted that his party "haven't done a very good job of really giving you one [reason to vote Republican]." He later tried to go after the Democrats but the self-inflicted wounds just kept coming.

(AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Steele, strippers and jets...oh my

Earlier this year, Michael Steele's job was once again in jeopardy after a lavish RNC spending spree was revealed which included massive amounts for strip clubs and private jets. After weeks of defending his leadership, Steele eventually fired an underling and admitted he'd "made mistakes."

(AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

The war on Thurgood Marshall's legacy

This year, when President Obama nominated Elena Kagan, a former clerk for Justice Thurgood Marshall, to the Supreme Court Steele showed more duplicity and double-speak. Turns out he was for Marshall before he was against him. Now he calls the legendary first black Supreme Court justice an 'activist' but in the past he's chastised opponents for not being more like Marshall.

(AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

'A war of Obama's choosing' remark becomes a mess of Michael Steele's making

Then there's Steele's latest debacle. In a speech before GOP supporters, Steele (unaware he was being taped) claimed the Afghanistan conflict was a "war of Obama's choosing" even though it was waged in the fall of 2001, a full eight years before Obama was even sworn in. We imagine an apology is forthcoming.

(AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)