The party that Ken Mehlman repeatedly insists is reaching out to black people, the party that ran several black candidates at the national level in 2006, the party that made a (albeit half-hearted) bid to install failed senatorial candidate Michael Steele as head of the RNC — that party just elected a man to the No. 2 position in the Senate who said his state proudly voted for a segregationist presidential candidate and that this candidate would have saved America from “all these problems over the years.”
So the GOP is officially the big tent party now. It has room for black people (especially when they give the party a veneer of inclusion and equality), but doesn’t feel the need to actually get rid of the people who hate black people, or, for that matter, keep them from the party’s most powerful positions. Sounds like coalition-building to me.
