Race and Rick Perry
I applaud Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry's call for the Grand Old Party to patch up its differences with African-Americans, among other voters of color. Although I eagerly wait to hear how he would follow up his words with deeds, lip service is better than no service at all.
The former Texas governor's olive branch offers a welcome counterpoint to billionaire Donald Trump's dangerous depictions of marauding immigrants flowing across the border to rape, pillage and steal jobs from hard-working Americans.
Perry's no softy on border security issues. A year ago, for example, he sent a 1,000-troop National Guard surge to the border when thousands of unaccompanied children turned up at the border seeking amnesty.
But he also was "offended," he said last weekend, by Trump's characterization, contrary to official crime statistics, of most undocumented immigrants as violent criminals. Trump countered by tweet that Perry "needs a new pair of glasses," a crack at which I as a fellow wearer of spectacles take umbrage.
Trump is getting what he wants, which is to be the center of attention. His fellow GOP candidates are being asked to take positions on his positions and whether they represent the party to which Trump belongs but in which he has never held elective office -- and, I would wager, never will.
The dispute between Trump and Perry lampoons a serious divide within the GOP over the party's future. It is a divide between what I call the "outreachers," who want to expand the party's turnout to more single women and people of color, and the "double downers," who want to roust out larger turnouts among true-believers in the party's base.
Perry declared his own position in a speech at the National Press Club, while Trump's xenophobic rants dominated the spotlight elsewhere. Perry called on the party of Abraham Lincoln to "reclaim our heritage as the only party in our country founded on the principle of freedom for African-Americans."
Indeed, Republicans can justifiably claim credit for leadership against slavery and the century-long regime of Jim Crow segregation that Southern Democrats maintained.
But what, African-Americans understandably ask, has the GOP done for us lately?
"For too long, we Republicans have been content to lose the black vote because we found we didn't need it to win," Perry said. "But when we gave up trying to win the support of African-Americans, we lost our moral legitimacy as the party of Lincoln, as the party of equal opportunity for all."
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