The GOP Fails Its Empathy Test
After Mitt Romney’s defeat in 2012, the Republican National Committee published an “autopsy.” “When it comes to social issues,” the autopsy declared, “the Party must in fact and deed be inclusive and welcoming. If we are not, we will limit our ability to attract young people.” The autopsy also added that, “we need to go to communities where Republicans do not normally go to listen and make our case. We need to campaign among Hispanic, black, Asian, and gay Americans and demonstrate we care about them, too.”
The last two weeks, more than any since Romney’s defeat, illustrate how miserably the GOP has failed.
Start with June 17, when Dylann Roof, a young white man enamored of the Confederate flag, murdered nine African Americans in church. Within three days, Romney had called for the Confederate flag’s removal from South Carolina’s capitol. Four days later, the state’s Republican governor and senators called for its removal too. But during that entire week—even as it became obvious that the politics of the flag were shifting—not a single GOP presidential candidate forthrightly called for it to be taken down. Instead, they mostly called it a state decision, a transparent dodge politicians deploy when they don’t want to make a difficult call."
Then, on June 26, the Supreme Court ruled that gay marriage was a constitutional right. If the politics of the Confederate Flag shifted radically over the course of a few days, the politics of gay marriage have been shifting radically over the last few years. Young people, including young Republicans, overwhelmingly back marriage equality. Key conservative writers years ago conceded the fight was lost. Yet not a single major GOP candidate risked alienating the Christian right by endorsing the idea. "
*But those aren’t the only moments in which the GOP presidential field failed."
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/-empathy-gop-presidential-race-2016-/397115/
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