Writing at his Hutchinson Report News, Earl Ofari Hutchinson says that Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus is failing miserably at his mission to improve minority outreach and eradicate racism in his party because, well, racists abound.
Priebus could save his breath. A few choice and timely words against a loose cannon congressman, and a wayward local GOP official, are not even the proverbial finger in the dike against the steady torrent of racial baiting that routinely pours from the lips and actions of legions of GOP rank and filers, whether their target is President Obama. Or Priebus's thinly disguised campaign to stop Hillary Clinton by saber rattling the networks to dump their Clinton on air projects. But even that almost paled beside Priebus's declaration on the Christian Broadcast Network in July that he didn't much like the word diversity personally and that the RNC would stay the course in representing “christian” beliefs. This was a wink and nod assurance to those Republicans having nervous fits about his diversity manifesto.
The other problem with Priebus's minority outreach public relations charade is that even if he really meant to crack down on his party bigots he couldn't. There are millions of GOP backers in the South and Heartland, and the gaggle of right-wing webs, blogs, and talk radio jocks that think the GOP's only flub is that it's not truly conservative enough. They have hammered the GOP that any retreat from its core beliefs and message will perpetually doom it to political extinction in national politics. They warn that if the GOP suddenly started pandering to minorities and gays it could kiss millions of their fervent supporter's goodbye. Indeed many who didn't think Republican presidential contenders John McCain and Mitt Romney were authentically conservative enough for their tastes did stay home in 2008 and to an extent in 2012. It was evident even in the backwash of the 2012 defeat, when a parade of GOP hardliners jumped all over Romney and wailed that he and GOP candidates lost because they weren't conservative enough, or their self-inflicted gaffe wounds did them in. They denounced and sloughed off any talk from the GOP party leaders of re-messaging, mounting an aggressive outreach to minorities, even Hispanics, and do a reversal on immigration, and they won't let up on that.
Read Earl Ofari Hutchinson's entire piece at the Hutchinson Report News.
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