diversity issues

CPAC Minority Outreach Panel Goes Poorly

The surely well-intentioned Tea Party Patriots session with black conservative K. Carl Smith of the “Frederick Douglass Republicans” at CPAC today should have been an opportunity to address demographic issues within the Republican party that are not going away. Nope — a racist guy showed up. “It seems to be that you’re reaching out to voters at the expense of young white Southern males,” who are “being systematically disenfranchised,” said the white nationalist dude. It got uglier!

When Smith explained that Frederick Douglass eventually forgave his slave master, the same guy said, “For giving him food? And shelter?” Then things escalated, Talking Points Memo reports: “‘Let someone else speak!’ one attendee in Revolutionary War garb shouted,” not at the aggrieved Caucasian man, but at a black woman who tried to say her piece. That pretty much sums up the state of things.

CPAC Minority Outreach Panel Goes Poorly