Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is finally speaking out about his failed presidential bid, and among the things the former candidate says he regrets is his campaign’s inability to effectively reach out to minority voters.
“The weakness our campaign had, that I had, was we weren’t effective in taking my message, primarily, to the minority voters, to Hispanic Americans, African Americans and other minorities. That was a real weakness. We did well with the majority population but not minority populations, and that was a failing. That was a real mistake,” Romney said during an interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace that aired this morning.
Since the 2012 election many notable Republicans, including fellow 2012 Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, have criticized the Romney campaign and the Republican Party as a whole for ignoring minority voters in the last election and for refusing to acknowledge that the demographics of the country are changing for good.
Romney agreed with Gingrich that the one thing the GOP absolutely has has to do moving forward is do a better job of reaching out to minority voters.
“Clearly, we have to do a better job bringing minority voters in to vote for republicans, and that is Hispanic Americans, African Americans, other minorities. We have to do a better job taking our message to them to help them understand why we’re the party with the ideas that will make their life better.
The criticism has not fallen on deaf ears. Republican National Committee Chair Reince Preibus, who was reelected to a second two-year term by the committee in January, has launched a task force “charged with identifying winning political strategies and broadening the GOP’s appeal with minority voters.” Organizers of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) will focus on ‘America’s Future: The Next Generation of Conservatives’ at their 40th annual conference later this month.
Both Gingrich and Romney have been tapped to speak at CPAC, a move liberals are trying to spin as proof positive that the GOP and the conservative movement still don’t get it. Even Romney noted that given the fact that he lost, “I recognize that as the guy who lost the election, I’m not in a position to tell everybody else how to win, all right? They’re not going to listen, and I don’t have the credibility to do that anyway.”
However, Romney added that just because he wasn’t successful at capturing the White House, that doesn’t mean he’s going to “disappear” altogether from the national stage. The former candidate said he cares too much about the country to let it go to hell in a hand basket.
“Well, I’m not going to disappear. I’m not running for office. I don’t have a big organization that is out speaking in my behalf, but I care about america. I care about the people that can’t find jobs. I care about the fact that we’re racking up larger deficits and putting the peril of the future generations very much in play,” he said. “Sitting on the sidelines when so much is at stake is just not in my nature.”
