About a year ago, Republican officials expressed some confidence that the party’s strategic outreach to Black voters was starting to pay off. The Hill reported that the GOP believed its messaging was starting to “resonate with the crucial voting bloc.” The New York Times reported soon after that Republicans saw “a fresh opening” to “peel away some Black voters.”
Even at the time, all of this seemed rather odd. Senate Republicans had just gone after Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson with “barely coded appeals to racism.” The same month, two House Republicans participated in a white nationalist event, after which GOP leaders decided not to do anything about it.
A year later, the party that thought its messaging was starting to “resonate” with Black voters appears to be taking fresh steps to push Black voters further away. NBC News reported on Thursday:
Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz. referred to Black people as “colored people” Thursday in floor debate over his proposed amendment to an annual defense policy bill, prompting a stern rebuke from the former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. “My amendment has nothing to do with whether or not colored people or Black people or anybody can serve,” said Crane, who is in his first term. “It has nothing to do with any of that stuff.”
At issue was Crane’s proposed amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which would prohibit the Defense Department from considering race, among other factors, as the sole basis for recruitment training, education, promotion or retention decisions.
In case his reference to “colored people” and his proposed policy were too subtle, the Arizona Republican added, “The military was never intended to be, you know, inclusive. Its strength is not its diversity. Its strength is its standards. … I’m going to tell you guys this right now: You can keep playing around these games with diversity, equity and inclusion. But there are some real threats out there. And if we keep messing around and we keep lowering our standards, it’s not going to be good.”
Or put another way, the freshman congressman apparently believes that to care about diversity in the armed forces is to support “lower” standards.
Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio asked that Crane’s derogatory phrase be stricken from the record, and it was. But when it came time to vote on the GOP congressman’s amendment, it passed with near-unanimous support from House Republicans.
All of this unfolded just days after a different congressional Republican, Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, appeared to dispute the racism of white nationalists, after having already sparked a controversy when he appeared to defend white nationalists serving in the military.
This coincided with an effort on the part of more than a dozen Republican attorneys general, who sent a letter to major corporations this week, “warning them to refrain from using racial preferences in hiring and promotion decisions.” It also coincided with new evidence of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Republican administration targeting dozens of voter registration groups with new penalties, and as The Guardian reported, “A crackdown on third-party voter registration groups is … likely to disproportionately affect Floridians of color.” Remember, all of these developments unfolded just this week — and the week isn’t over yet. I don’t doubt that the Republican Party would like to receive more support from Black voters. Whether the GOP is prepared to try to earn more support from Black voters is another matter entirely. Update: As I was writing this, another House Republican, Rep. Bob Good, condemned efforts to mandate diversity and inclusion initiatives in the military. According to a CBS News reporter, the Virginia congressman referenced “white nationalism,” adding, “whatever that is.”
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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