Alex Isenstadt and Tyler Pager at Politico point out that Republicans conducted a post-election autopsy in 2012. They came to the conclusion that the Grand Old Party itself would be on the autopsy table soon unless it launched a more vigorous effort to lure African-American and Latino voters into the fold, and recapture women who have fled a party they feel disrespects and penalizes them just for being women.
With Donald Trump the nominee (unless a rogue meteorite takes out the Quicken Loans Arena), one might expect that a strong effort would be made to get more women and people of color onto the Republican National Convention stage.
But no.
With 71 speakers on the roster, seven are African American and three are Latino. Women make up one-third of the total. For those keeping score, that’s 80 percent white and 66 percent male. Of the 24 women, three are Trump family members who, it is said, write their own speeches or have a team write them or just steal them outright. Most of the people of color and women who have addressed or will address the delegates are relative unknowns:
“Looks like the 2012 autopsy report might need a little CPR,” said Rep. Carlos Curbelo, a Miami Republican who isn't attending the convention.
While the GOP has a number of leaders who reflect the country’s diversity, “it is regrettable so few of them will be in Cleveland for the national convention and that fewer will be stepping on the dais before the American people to make their voices heard. It is a reflection of where we are as a party at this moment, and anyone saying otherwise is simply being less than forthcoming,” added Danny Diaz, a prominent party strategist who managed Jeb Bush's primary campaign.
Mr. Diaz, your complaint would have a deeper resonance if you had figured out the scene a long time ago. After all, the white supremacist rhetoric and misogyny flowing from Donald Trump’s mouth was not sprung on an innocent GOP when this campaign season began.
The party has been building for this moment since Richard Nixon adopted the “Southern Strategy” in 1968 and Ronald Reagan reinforced it by kicking off his 1980 general campaign with a “states’ rights” speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi, at a time when it was still home to those who had conspired to murder the Freedom Summer civil rights activists 16 years earlier. If Diaz thinks that having some additional people of color at the convention will mop up this decades-old Republican mess, he’s as clueless as the people who put together this year’s speaker roster.