by P. David Gardner
The Republican Party has a huge public relations problem on its hands. But it's one of their own making, and the problem threatens to completely obliterate the Party if it cannot find its way out of the muck and mire that it has so heartily embraced even to this day.
The problem? It's the Republican Party's under-the-table yet quite apparent open acceptance and promotion of racism.
Racism is not by any means confined to the Republican Party. It is unfortunately everywhere one turns, and the ugliness of it follows no specific politics or religion. However, nowhere else than the Republican Party has it been on such blatant display than in this year's Presidential election cycle.
Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump, the current leader in the polls, has eagerly stoked the fires of racism, and it has struck a chord in many blatantly overt and even in-the-closet racists, who have risen to the call and exposed the ugly side of humanity in their rush to get Trump to the throne.
The Donald's strenuous efforts at promoting racism have not gone unnoticed, and he recently received a hearty endorsement from the Ku Klux Klan.
Other Republican candidates have rushed to distance themselves from the fallout, yet they continue to spout policies that clearly have their roots deep in racism, led mostly by their support of anti-immigration moves and the reversal of citizenship rights, but also include taking away from women the power to choose abortion over childbirth.
The Republicans have long underestimated the power of minorities, ignoring their needs and desires in favor of enriching their own as they shape the policies that the nation turns on.
But minorities, even white ones, are not stupid. They know when they are being gleefully crushed beneath the dirty boots of racism.
And that presents a huge problem for the Republican Party. There are so many minority voters in the United States now who are actually showing up on Election Day and exercising their power to cast ballots, all despite the Party's continuing efforts to disenfranchise them through crazy-making gerrymandering, voter registration and voting restrictions, and outright and devious lies to discourage them from voting at all.
And that will be the Party's ultimate downfall.
