Checked in with a couple of people about the state of Michael Steele today. The consensus is that he’s likely to stay. If he doesn’t resign—the best option, but one everyone thinks is improbable–it’s really hard to remove him. You’d need a strong consensus of the committee members that he needs to be removed, and absolute assurance that the votes are there to do it, and a consensus on a replacement–because nothing would be worse than trying to remove him and failing. As it is now, the story probably goes away in a few days, fading into all the other Steele gaffes. Whereas an effort to oust him makes it an even bigger deal when he’s already up for re-election in January anyway. If there’s one person who could affect his fate it’s probably Haley Barbour, who is influential with the governors as head of the RGA (the governors, in turn, are very influential with the committee members) and who has a lot of sway with the committee members himself as a former RNC chairman. If Haley thinks Steele should go and works against him, it’d be a big deal. But why would Haley want to inject himself into this mess? He’s having a great year as head of the RGA, and looks particularly good in comparison to Steele. He probably wouldn’t want to be perceived as installing his own guy at the RNC. In sum, unless something changes or something is bubbling up out there that hasn’t been picked up yet, the approach to this latest flap by party leaders and insiders will probably be more of the same: ignore and bypass Steele’s RNC as much as possible, and address his performance come January.