Matt Boyle has this fascinating piece about the inner workings of the legislative battle this week over the border crisis. The bill pushed by the Republican leadership had a number of serious defects.

The story recounted by Boyle is how a small group of activists and congressmen drove the immigration narrative, and ultimately the legislative outcome.

Buried toward the end of Boyle’s piece is a disgraceful statement from Florida Representative Alcee Hastings (D):

Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) decried the House GOP lawsuit as he addressed “all the white people in here” during the Rules Committee hearing — which was filled with battles between the Democrats and the newly unified Republicans like Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte and Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers, who both also commented to the Rules panel.

Forget about Hastings’ impeachable past. What his statement represents is the increasingly open philosophy in Democrat Party circles that race explains everything, including the certain demise of the GOP in time. Instead of acquiescing to this evil, instead of accepting the premise of this immoral racialism, the Republican Party must strike back.

David Horowitz this week said it’s time for Republicans to start calling out the racists in the Democrat Party. He’s right. The response to those who would support Alcee Hastings cannot be outreach. Instead, the GOP must borrow the morality of the civil rights movement and condemn, isolate and ridicule the sentiments of Alcee Hastings and his ilk. If you ignore the cancerous attitude he expressed this week, it will continue to metastasize and block your timid “growth and opportunity” outreach.

No matter how much money the GOP spends, you cannot sow the seeds of opportunity on soil where the enemy has sown weeds. The GOP must first bundle the weeds and burn them.

How? Step One is to recognize a coordinated and wicked racial attitude which has become a central organizing catalyst of the modern Democrat Party: whites are to blame for ________; race is to blame for ______.

Blaming races and groups of people for what ails a nation is a tactic used by the wicked for centuries.

If the Republican Party wants to make progress on racial issues, it needs to go back to its roots. It needs to echo the universal views of people like Senator Charles Sumner and expose and crush the racialist tropes of the congressman from Fort Lauderdale. Without aggressively confronting and exposing the immoral (and sadly far too popular) attitude expressed by Hastings, timid outreach efforts are doomed to fail.

Will it happen? Maybe, if the Republican Party ignores those who think silence about racial issues is the way to win. Meanwhile, the other side enforces groupthink.