Earlier this week, we had some fun with the Republican National Committee's recent Request-For-Proposal for a redesign of its website. The two-page RFP was so sketchy and vague that it generated blogospheric ridicule -- and even prompted one prominent conservative blogger to suggest that it might mean that embattled chair Michael Steele had already given a favored designer the inside track for the project.

The committee later sent out a second try, which was a bit more detailed. But if you want to see what a real RFP for a project like this looks like, Tech President has dug one up from 2002, that the RNC, then under different leadership, sent out for an earlier web redesign.

As Tech President notes:

The document makes for an interesting contrast to the RFPs the RNC is currently circulating, with the 14-page document detailing everything from the audiences the site should target ("party loyalists," "persuadable voters") to how the backend database should be designed to how user accounts should function.

You can check it out over at Tech President...

If at first you don't succeed....

In what looks like a second bite at the apple, Michael Steele's RNC has put out a new Request-For-Proposal for the redesign of its website -- after its original two-page effort was widely panned as sketchy and unprofessional.

That first RFP, which was circulating earlier this week, was so lacking in detail that one prominent right-wing blogger suggested it could mean Steele already had a favored contractor in mind, and was just going thru the RFP process for show. We offered a suggestion for who that favored contractor might be here.

The new RFP, posted by the site Tech President, is a bit longer -- five pages -- and a bit more specific about what the committee is looking for.

One interesting detail: the RNC says it wants a site that, in Tech President's words "functions as the backbone of a distributed network of sites populated by state parties and campaigns -- nonetheless connected back to the mothership at RNC headquarters." It's unclear whether that means it might subsume the state party sites, which currently are independent.

And, unlike before, there's a budget: $250,000 for the main site, plus $200,000 for the network of sites.

So about that RNC Request-For-Proposal for a contract to redesign the committee's website...

As we told you earlier, the document's hilarious vagueness and notably short time frame, flagged by the site Tech President, among others, haven't just provoked ridicule at the apparent incompetence of Michael Steele's RNC. They've also spurred one leading conservative blogger, Red State's Erick Erickson, to angrily suggest that Steele's team has already decided to give the contract to a favored firm, and sent out the RFP merely for the sake of optics.

That got us to poking around. And there's at least one web development firm that fits the bill as being close to Steele.

That would be iWeb Strategies, a political web design company with a long list of conservative and GOP clients. In fact, one of those clients, according to the firm's website, was Steele himself, whose own now-defunct site, promoting his recent run for RNC chair, was designed by iWeb.

iWeb is run by Blaise Hazelwood, an experienced GOP consultant, who, while at the RNC, played a key role in building the vaunted Voter Vault database that helped produce the impressive GOP turnout in 2004 that carried President Bush to victory. Hazelwood also runs a voter-targeting firm called Grassroots Strategies.

During his run for RNC chair, Steele responded to a questionnaire sent out by a GOP committeman. Asked which political consultants were assisting him, he named Hazelwood, as well as Curt Anderson, who runs a consulting firm called On Message.

Anderson also has close ties to Hazelwood. According to reports, he was her boss while both were at the RNC. And iWeb also touts its design work for On Message.

It seems clear that Anderson, at least, is still helping to call the shots at the RNC. In a piece published by Politico today, Anderson defended Steele's controversial tenure at the committee, identifying himself in a bio line as a "top adviser to Chairman Steele" who "has been Steele's personal friend for 15 years."

And last week, Politico reported, amid resignations by several RNC staffers:

For now, "the fourth floor," as the RNC's executive suite is known, is being run by a pair of consultants.

So: could those two consultants be Hazelwood and Anderson? And was that embarrassing RFP a reflection of the new chairman's pre-existing desire to give the web consulting contract to Hazelwood's iWeb?

Neither the RNC nor Hazelwood responded immediately to TPMmuckraker's requests for comment.

We've talked to a couple more people about that Request-for-Proposal sent out by Michael Steele's RNC, looking for a consultant to redesign the organization's website.

And if there were any doubt before about the fact the document is embarrassingly sketchy and vague for a project of this kind, there's isn't now.

"It's really hard to write a proposal for that vague of a request," Jennifer Kyrnin, who has been designing web sites since 1995, and teaching web design since 1997, and who frequently responds to RFP's for web design work, told TPMmuckraker.

Kyrnin allowed that she had received RFP's as vague as this one, but never from a company or organization as prominent as the GOP. "Most are from new small businesses who've never put up a site before," she said.

Kyrnin flagged several obvious weak spots in the RFP.

Citing the RNC's view that "an aesthetically pleasing site that is intuitive and fun to use should be the overall goal," she said: "Well, yeah. I mean, that's what everybody wants."

As for the RNC's advice that it want someone with "experience in building social networks," Kyrnin said: "That, I look at and I go, 'what the heck do you mean?' If I were writing a proposal that would make me nervous."

The RFP, which surfaced Friday and appears to have been sent out shortly before, calls for bids to be submitted by March 18. Kyrnin called that deadline "very short."

"Most of the companies that are large give at least a month," she added. "If they're asking for it a week from Wednesday, you get the quality that you can expect from a rapidly written proposal."

Kyrnin said that if she were to receive this RFP, her response would be to request more detailed instructions before submitting a bid. But given the fast-approaching deadline, she said she wouldn't expect to get a response.

Micah Sifry, a founder of the Personal Democracy Forum, which focuses on the intersection of technology and politics, and whose site was among the first to highlight the RFP Monday, agreed. He called the document "at best a back of the envelope vision statement that you give to someone to write an RFP."

"This is every consultant's nightmare," said Sifry, who, like Kyrnin, has worked regularly with such RFP's for web design. "They have no idea what they're asking for."

Conservtive blogger Dale Franks, who, as we noted earlier, says he responds to web design RFP's for a living, has already offered his own point-by-point rundown on the "confusion and idiocy" of the document.

And Red State's Erick Erickson was so appalled that he suggested the RNC may already have decided to give the contract to a favored firm, and had sent out the RFP merely to cover its bases.

Michael Steele has already said that he's going to implement communications strategies at the RNC that are "off the hook" and "beyond cutting edge." But is he now taking things to a whole new level?

Check out this RNC Request-for-Proposal that's been circulating on the internet, soliciting bids for redesigning the group's website.

It begins with a general (very general) statement of principles:

Chairman Steele made his tech priorities clear at the [RNC Tech Summit]: "...bottom line is if we haven't done it - let's do it. If we haven't thought of it - think about it. If it hasn't been tried - why not? If it's going to be 'outside the box' - then not only keep it outside the box, but take it to someplace the box hasn't even reached yet."

And it doesn't get a whole lot more specific after that. In fact, the two-page document is so light on the kind of details you might expect an RFP of this sort to have, that it's already being slammed on conservative blogs.

Dale Franks at The Next Right -- who says he responds to web development RFP's for a living -- calls the document "a masterpiece of confusion and idiocy" that was put together by "clueless losers". He continues:

I assume it was written by someone who has heard of this new thing called "com-poo-tors", and who doesn't actually have one, but has been told that they'll be very big in the future.

In fact, one prominent conservative thinks the document is so sketchy that it could suggest that the open bidding process is just for show, and that the RNC has already picked out a favored contractor.

Erick Erickson, the founder of Red State, writes:

Friends, either the RNC has no freakin' clue what the hell it is doing or else all the rumors about certain consultants having an inside track at RNC contracts is true.

Why? Because there is no way any competent person would put together an RFP like this. It's crap. It is not legitimate. It is unprofessional. It is illusory.

Either they don't know what they are doing, or they've already picked their consultant and are going through the motions. If it is the former, well, the RNC is screwed. If it is the latter, Michael Steele's claims about bidding out work was B.S.

And I suspect it is all B.S.

These are hardly the first allegations of contract-related BS directed at Steele. The FBI has been investigating payments made by his 2006 Senate campaign to a catering company run by his sister, which were listed as being for media work, and ... web design.

And a Baltimore TV station recently reported that that same Steele campaign paid $64,000 to a commodities trading firm, run by a Steele fundraiser, for work that was described as "political consulting."

We've been looking to get a better sense of how this RFP measures up to the kind of document that a potential contractor would need in order to submit an effective bid on a project like this. (Readers with experience bidding on these kinds of contracts, we'd love to hear from you, too.)

We're also hearing more about what Erickson means when he refers to rumors about "certain consultants having an inside track at RNC contracts"...

We've also asked the RNC about all this (no response so far, shockingly), and will keep you posted on what we find out...

Looks like Michael Steele's got more to worry about than his abject surrender to Rush Limbaugh the other day.

The RNC chair is also facing renewed questions about what looks like irregular campaign spending during his thwarted 2006 Senate bid in Maryland.

We told you a few weeks ago about allegations -- albeit from a convicted felon seeking reduced jail time -- that Steele's campaign made payments to a company run by his sister, for work that was never performed. FBI agents questioned Steele's sister about the issue, and the Steele camp still hasnt given explanations for the payments that add up.

Now, a local Maryland TV station reports on what sounds like a similar possible scheme. Both Steele and fellow GOPer Bob Ehrlich -- who was running at the time to hold on to the governorship -- made payments from their campaigns to a firm called Allied Berton, according to campaign finance records.

As the news channel, WBAL, reports:

The firm's Web site said it was in the business of trading commodities, such as minerals, metals, coffee and sugar. But the campaign payments it received, according to the candidates' accounting, were for a wide range of other activities, according to campaign filings.

It continues:

Steele's Senate campaign made four payments to Allied Berton in October and November 2006 totaling more than $64,000. Each of those expenses was listed as political consulting, according to campaign filings.

The company is run by Sandy Roberts, a well-connected Republican who held a party for Steele at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York.

A Steele spokesman offered no better explanation for these payments than it has for the payments to Steele's sister -- saying only that Steele's campaign followed all FEC rules.

As for the Ehrlich camp, it said that the payments might have been for those homeless election day workers that the Republicans bussed in from Philadelphia to give the illusion of African-American support.

Why the GOP would have entrusted that task to a commodities trading firm was not explained.