Michael Steele, the Republican Maryland senatorial candidate who dined on steak and risotto while bashing the GOP and President Bush during a Monday luncheon with reporters, gave his opponents even more material to work with the next day, telling ABC News that it's OK for members of Congress to give themselves another pay raise while keeping the U.S. minimum wage at $5.15.

One has nothing to do with the other, he said.

Even symbolically, I guess.

Leading Democrats have proposed that Congress forego another pay increase until the minimum wage is lifted to $7.25 an hour. (That's still only about $15,000 a year for a 40-hour work week, and below the government-established poverty line for the sole wage-earner of a family of four. The minimum wage went from $4.75 to $5.15 an hour in 1997. Congressional pay has gone up every year for almost a decade, and the salary of a Representative or Senator is now more than $160,000 a year, plus benefits.)

Here's a quote that's sure to get Steele the votes he needs among the average, working-class citizens the GOP is trying to woo: "Trust me, whether or not a congressman gets a pay raise has nothing to do with the brother who's living on the street corner."

Good stuff. A real populist flare there, Michael.

Who's writing this guy's material?

Perhaps no one.

Perhaps that's the problem.

I think what we have here is a first-degree identity crisis. More later.