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Minority Outreach at CPAC: The Most Important Panel Everyone Missed

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Hat tip to Brookings fellow John Hudak for snapping the photo and telling this story:

Thursday afternoon, CPAC hosted a panel on GOP outreach into minority communities. The panel included Virginia Senate candidate Ed Gillespie and a panel of Republican political strategists: Jason Roe, Elroy Sailor, and Robert Woodson. The panel delivered a remarkably pointed review of GOP voter outreach (largely its failures) and explained, in very straightforward terms, how the party can (and must) do better. However, the most revealing part of the experience was not what happened on stage, but what happened off stage, and reflects the national electoral struggles Republicans are facing.

Namely, an empty room.  Conservatives clearly aren’t prioritizing their outreach to Latino and minority voters.  In fact, House Republicans have gone the other way — stalling on immigration reform, giving Steve King a vote to deport DREAMers, and this week voting on Rep. Diane Black (R-TN)’s bill to eliminate a public outreach position meant to help immigrants.

This inattention will come back to hurt Republicans in 2016 and beyond.  Because when your voter outreach effort looks like this, your election results look like this:

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