They won’t. Sorry, over.

Ok, ok, I’ll start from the beginning. The Washington Post Sunday posted a long article by Sophia Nelson, a black Republican. She talked of how she feels alientated in her own party, and of the agonizingdecision to support and vote for Barack Obama. Her description of how Republicans have abandonded blacks in America is devastating. From the Washington Post:

But as a black Republican, I was chagrined that the political party I’ve belonged to for 20 years had just suffered a blistering electoral defeat. And that along the way, it had lost 96 percent of the black vote and 67 percent of the Hispanic vote — the worst showing for the Republican Party among minorities in its 150-year history.

After such a devastating loss, Republicans will have to do some retooling. We’ll have to decide whether we want to be the party that believes in smaller government, lower taxes and less regulation, or whether we’re going to be a litmus-test party that responds only to the demands of social conservatives. But most important, we’ll have to confront our most disastrous modern legacy: our poor relationship with black Americans, the very people the party was formed to protect from the expansion of slavery into Kansas and Nebraska in 1854.

That relationship may be lost for generations, thanks to a campaign by Sen. John McCain that seemed to simply concede the black vote. According to one senior aide, McCain had been polling close to 20 percent of the black vote before the primaries ended. But then his “Forgotten America” tour, which started soon after, never seemed to go anywhere. I knew of only one high-level black adviser or spokesperson on his full-time paid campaign staff. The GOP convention was embarrassingly devoid of people of color — among more than 2,000 delegates, only 36 were black.

Nelson goes on to highlight the words of Michael Steele, a black Republican running for RNC Chairmanship. Steele thinks that the Republican Party ought to promote the black members who are climbing the ranks of the Party, sort of an Affirmative Action within the Republican Party. Hey, that could start a riot if he used those terms, eh?

I have to give credit to Nelson. She does have a grasp on the real issue, that a whole bunch of Republicans are racists, and that it is a bit difficult for a black man or woman to believe in the ideals of the Republican Party and then to see that racism manifest itself. I like this passage in her article, then.

And truth be told, it’s sometimes an ill fit. Consider the comments of Shannon Reeves, an African American who started a college Republican chapter at Grambling State University in 1988. In 2003, he wrote an open letter to the party after it was disclosed that in 1999, a newsletter published by the then-vice chairman of the California Republican Party had carried an essay suggesting that the country would have been better off if the South had won the Civil War.

“I am tired of being embarrassed by elected Republican officials who have no sensitivity for issues that alienate whole segments of our population,” Reeves wrote. “This embarrassment is different for a black Republican. Not only do we have to sit in rooms and behave professionally towards Republicans who share this ideology, we have to go home to a hostile environment where we are called Uncle Tom and maligned as a sell-out to the community because of our membership in the Republican Party.”

It is clear that the Republicans, nor Sophie Nelson in this article, are willing to address the very real element of racism that is at least perceived to be present within the core of Republican ideals. Sure, Michael Steele can call for a return to those core ideals, but even if he suceeds in getting there he just might not like what he sees. There’s the real problem, that Republicans refuse to face what is at the core of their party, or at the very least perceived to be at the core. Hey, it isn’t just us liberals who see it. There were many racist incidents before and after the election of Barack Obama, and it isn’t surprising that we saw on YouTube and at rallies and even in GOP offices examples that were just like those racist incidents.

The simplistic calls of a Michael Steele for a return to Republican priciples aren’t enough to remake that party into a national party, not with the decline of the white population as a percentage of our national vote. This work to reform will take some hard looks in the mirror, and I don’t at all expect the Republicans to do more than window dressing on the issue until their power is even further eroded.