I didn't think you would.If you consider Birmingham a hick-town. Riddle me this, Batman, is there a single redneck racist from said hick-towns who will be voting for the Democratic Candidate this year? The Republican party welcomes these votes rather than make a conscious effort to distance themselves from them, and that's my beef.
I really don't know what you are looking for from the Republican Party on this subject. I think that any political party welcomes any votes. No one can control who votes for them since this nation got rid of the poll tax in the Fifteenth Amendment. Unfortunately many Southern Democrats tried to grandfather this tax into their states to prohibit folk from certain races from voting.
The Republican Party has made it quite clear on platform after platform that racism and discrimination is intolerable.
This is from the GOP mission statement:
African American Mission
From the founding of the Republican Party to today, African Americans have been central to the GOP. The leadership of President George W. Bush provides an opportunity for us to work together and better include everyone of all backgrounds in the Republican Party. Bringing African Americans back to the Party of Lincoln has been a central priority of President Bush, RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman, and is the mission of the RNC's African American Team Leader Outreach program. Working together with African Americans in communities across the country, we can make the Party of Lincoln stronger and more diverse than ever before.
This is from the latest Party Platform:
Ensuring Equal Opportunities
Out nation is a land of opportunity for all, and our communities must represent the ideal of equality and justice for every citizen. The Republican Party favors aggressive, proactive measures to ensure that no individual is discriminated against on the basis of race, national origin, gender, or other characteristics covered by our civil rights laws. We also favor recruitment and outreach policies that cast the widest possible net so that the best qualified individuals are encouraged to apply for jobs, contracts, and university admissions. We believe in the principle of affirmative access-taking steps to ensure that disadvantaged individuals of all colors and ethnic backgrounds have the opportunity to compete economically and that no child is left behind educationally. We support a reasonable approach to Title IX that seeks to expand opportunities for women. We praise President Bush for his strong record on civil rights enforcement, and for becoming the first President ever to ban racial profiling by the federal government. Finally, because we are opposed to discrimination, we reject quotas, and set-asides based on skin color, ethnicity, or gender, which perpetuate divisions and can lead people to question the accomplishments of successful minorities and women.
Voting Rights
The foundation of our democratic republic is our commitment to conducting free and fair elections. Unfortunately, in November of 2000, too many people believed they were denied the right to vote. Many African Americans, Hispanics, and others fear they may lose the right to vote because of inaccurate or insecure technology or because of a rolling back in the gains made by the passage of civil rights legislation. Our national commitment to a voting process that has integrity was underscored in 2002 when the Congress passed and the President signed the Help America Vote Act. We will continue to do all we can to ensure that every lawful vote counts for all Americans.
Finally, after the unfortunate "macaca" statement by former Senator George Allen of Virginia the Republican Party issued a Guidebook through the National Republican Senatorial Committee to assist candidates in this issue by helping them to be more proactive in guarding against racism and promoting an open effort to reach out to all people. (I don't have a copy of this guidebook and can't find it online but I do know that it exists because it has been referenced in several legitimate political blogs that I read.)
Apart from that and if you don't think that's enough and if you think that strongly about this issue you need to take a proactive role in your local Republican Party. Tell them about this concern and why it drove you away don't just bitch about it and walk away like a poochy-lipped child. That's part of the problem with the Republican Party today! Too many conservatives sit-n-spin bitching but they don't DO anything or they join some dumb-ass third party that won't amount to nothing on election day.
Lastly, as GarMan pointed out above I don't see the Democrats apologizing for the racially motivated actions of that party in their history nor demanding that racists like Senator Byrd (D-WV) and former KKK Grand Wizard leave the party! At least Republicans cull this kind of behavior in short order.
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