Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) hit the nail on the head on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday: “I don’t think it’s about the Republican Party needing to become more moderate. I really believe it’s the Republican Party becoming more modern. And whether it’s Hispanics, whether it’s women, whether it’s young people, the Republican Party has to make it a priority to take our values, take our vision to every corner of this country, to every demographic group.”
She is 100% correct. Every time I suggest better, smarter GOP outreach to young people, Hispanics, African Americans, and women, many in the GOP old guard wave their pointer fingers at me and insist that I am advocating pandering, that I am allying myself with the Left’s divide and conquer tactics.
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Let me correct them in writing, as I have done in speech: Outreach is not pandering. They are completely different things. I am not talking about dividing the country up into special interest groups, pandering to voting blocs with speeches telling them what they want to hear in order to win votes. What I am talking about is taking the conservative message, a message that stands to benefit everyone in society, to places the GOP often ignores–local African-American and Hispanic church groups, feminist centers, and left-leaning college campuses, to name a few.
