The RNC is 20 million in debt and worried.

At Monday's debate at the National Press Club, all five candidates focused on fundraising, particularly as incumbent Chairman Michael Steele has come under fire for several financial decisions made during his tenure.

Steele's challengers were quick to point to the committee's debt burden.

"We had historic victories, absolutely,” said former Missouri Republican Party Chairwoman Ann Wagner. But the RNC wasn’t “really a big player in those victories … because the RNC was not fully funded to the extent that it should be.”

Wagner's observation is an understatement. The RNC was irrelevant in the past election cycle and one has to seriously ask the question of whether that's merely a function of Michael Steele's alleged incompetence or the new reality of citizen-activism.

I tend to think its the latter and now that its clear that the Tea Party can effectively perform the RNC's function the only real responsibility left for the RNC is staging the Republican National Conventions.

There are very good reasons to keep the RNC out in the cold.

The virtue of populist movements like the Tea Party (liberal-Progressive delusions about mysterious billionaire puppet-masters notwithstanding...) is that their message is simple, clear and unadulterated. When these people fund your campaign, you know exactly what they are asking in return. Can the same be said of the RNC? There are 145 committee members and they raise funds from God knows where. How is this any different from the DNC?

In my view, the RNC should become the party-planning committee and leave it at that.

UPDATE: An excellent rejoinder to Michael Steele's conflation of the party's performance in the just finished electoral cycle, with his own dismal record.