GOP Spares Little Time for MLK Day

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http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2008/01/gop-spares-little-time-for-mlk.html

GOP Spares Little Time for MLK Day

By Craig Crawford | January 21, 2008 3:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (57)

Republican presidential hopefuls all but skipped observing Martin Luther King Day, while Democrats exclusively focused on today’s holiday honoring the civil rights leader.

Not all of the GOP candidates ignored the occasion. On Sunday in Atlanta, GOP contender Mike Huckabee sat in a front row pew at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King preached from 1960 until his assassination in 1968. Mitt Romney greeted African-Americans at a King parade in Jacksonville (awkwardly saying, "Who let the dogs out? Who who").

Despite those efforts, the sharp divide between the political parties over the political significance of black voters was painfully obvious on this national holiday.

For Republicans, the intense pressure of their intra-party rivalry did not allow room for focusing on voters who play no meaningful role in their nomination balloting. It is a reminder of how little progress the party has made in reaching out to African Americans.

With just a week left to compete for support in Florida’s Republican primary, most of the party’s presidential candidates clearly could not spare much time to even pay lip service to a voting bloc that means almost nothing to them.