The short list of Republicans who are expected to throw their hats into the presidential ring come 2016 is awfully diverse, the Associated Press reports.
A quick sizing up of the potential GOP contenders produces “two Hispanic senators, an Indian-American governor, a female business leader and an African-American neurosurgeon,” AP explained.
That roundup describes Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former Hewlett-Packard executive Carly Fiorina and Dr. Ben Carson.
Not all of these potential hopefuls have publicly announced campaigns, but Fiorina has, and she’s not skirting around the issue of how she thinks diversity is going to play a huge role in the upcoming election cycle.
“This is a diverse nation, and we need to be a diverse party,” Fiorina told AP—though not before reassuring conservative voters that she doesn’t intend to forfeit Republican “principles” in the process.
“That doesn’t mean we sacrifice our principles, but it means we need to look like and understand and empathize with the nation,” Fiorina added.
Political strategists believe that Republicans are starting to come to their senses about the changing demographics in America and are hoping to make a real play for the White House in 2016. However, some of their recent policy stances, like “pushing for voter-identification laws that disproportionately affect nonwhites” and “resisting comprehensive changes in the immigration and criminal-justice systems,” might take much more than a diverse ensemble of Republican nominees to erase that track record from the collective minds of Hispanic and African Americans, AP explained.
“They’re going to have to make a decision about whether they’re going to build a meaningful multiracial coalition by respecting and defending the rights of all people in this country,” said Benjamin Jealous, former president of the NAACP, “or whether they’re going to continue to play this dog-whistle politics that have besmirched the Republican Party since the days of Barry Goldwater.”
Read more at the Associated Press.