Outreach to Minorities

It's fascinating to watch closeted homosexual RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman defending his party's attacks on another minority group, African Americans, in their racist ad against Harold Ford of Tennesse.

Leaving aside the self-loathing of a man who is Chairman of a party that is hell bent on denying him rights, Mehlman's support of this kind of attack demonstrates the GOP's attitudes toward race, best summed up in this post from Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, reacting to people who claim that these attack ads will hurt the alleged outreach of the GOP to minorities:

Again, let's be honest with ourselves. Racism is one of the key building blocks of Republican politics in the United States. Don't look at me with a straight face and tell me you don't realize that's true. That doesn't mean that all Republicans are racists. Far from it. It doesn't mean that a lot of Republicans don't wish the stain wasn't part of their party's recent political heritage. They do. But racism and race-baiting is the hold card Republicans take into every election. When times are good, guys like Mehlman 'reach out' to blacks and Latinos to try to take the edge off their opposition to the Republican officeholders. But when things get rough the card gets played. And pretty much every time.