The Republican Party is well aware of its demographic problem. The GOP relies heavily on older white men, which is a recipe for electoral failure in a nation that’s growing more ethnically and racially diverse. And while GOP leaders are once again saying the right things about outreach, challenges clearly remain.
At the House Republicans’ annual retreat, for example, there’s been a fair amount of chatter today about the party hosting a breakout session on “successful communication with minorities and women” in a room named after a slave plantation.
Of course, the criticism on this really isn’t fair — it’s not like Republican officials named the room at the Virginian resort, which has been used by both parties. The party did, however, choose the folks who’ll appear on the panel about “successful communication with minorities and women,” and the criticism here seems far more reasonable.
[The session will have] a female moderator (Rachel Campos-Duffy), a female consultant (Ana Navarro), a female congressman (Rep. Jaime Herrera Buetler), and three congressmen who are neither female nor minorities: Rep. Adam Kinzinger, Rep. Scott Rigell, and Rep. Frank Wolf. Yep, three of the five panelists on the House Republicans’ session on “successful communication with minorities and women” are white protestant men. No one on the panel is African American. The larger effort is laudable, but it appears the GOP has a difficult road ahead.
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