Steelman: Blunt was "anything but conservative"

There hasn't been a lot of grist for the Blunt/Steelman/Schweich rumor mill in the past couple of weeks, but the SEMO Times posted a new interview with Steelman yesterday. She's still railing against the Republican leadership in Washington -- "people do not trust us to be conservatives because we were anything but conservative when ," she said -- but remains cagey about her actual intentions in the Senate race. A couple of the responses that stood out:

Can you give us your thoughts on the current state of the Republican Party?
“I think we need to take stock of where we are and look at how we got here. I think we need to be more principally conservative, and reflect on  just how we lost the House and Senate. The people do not trust us to be conservatives because we were anything but conservative when we were in the majority. Jack Kemp knew how to do this, and we should learn from his example.” [...]

What are your thoughts on endorsements?
“They obviously  don’t mean much to anyone in this mall or many regular working people. It is way too early for people to care about that sort of thing if they care at all.”

The full interview is here.

It's also worth noting that Steelman says she has "set up an exploratory committee" for a Senate run, though it's not clear what that means or what it's done. There's nothing on file with with the FEC yet, so it may not be doing a whole lot. But if her committee is actually spending money to "explore" her chances, it should be on file with the FEC.

Federal election rules require that she file in any of the following cases:

• spends or raises more than $5,000 on the exploration, or if someone else raises or spends $5,000 on her behalf,
• conducts activities over a protracted period of time,
• makes or authorizes statements that refer to her as a candidate (which she clearly has done, and continues to do on her website)