'War On Whites?' No Way
But Brooks wasn't buying that. He stuck to his muskets. The anti-white war, he explained, was "part of the strategy that Barack Obama implemented in 2008, continued in 2012, where he divides us all on race, on sex, greed, envy, class warfare."
I was waiting for Brooks to claim that President Obama's critics hate him, not because he's black but because he's half-white. But the congressman didn't quite go there.
By mid-week Brooks released a written statement to MSNBC's Joy Reid. He was only trying to "call out the Democrats for their racial appeals," he said. "Race is immaterial and everybody ought to be treated the same."
That's a sweet-sounding sentiment, but think about it: Voters don't always want to be treated the same when they have distinctly different problems and other concerns. You can listen to those concerns without playing the race card and respond to them without pandering.
In that spirit, Fournier was only stating what the GOP's own "autopsy" concluded after their 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney's disastrous drop-off in Hispanic support.
"If Hispanic Americans perceive that a GOP nominee or candidate does not want them in the United States (i.e., self-deportation)," the report said, "they will not pay attention to our next sentence. It does not matter what we say about education, jobs, or the economy; if Hispanics think we do not want them here, they will close their ears to our policies."
With the party's long-term future hanging in the balance, GOP chairman Reince Priebus denounced Brooks "war on whites" claim on Real Clear Politics as a "pretty idiotic thing to say." On that, I think both parties can agree -- or, at least, they should.
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E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.)
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