Getty GOP leaders: Trump sets us back on race In South Carolina, he confronts a changing Republican Party trying to bury its past.

Donald Trump is campaigning Wednesday in a South Carolina where the Republican Party has been turning the page on a divisive racial past: The state boasts the first black Republican U.S. senator elected to Congress from the south in over a century, an Indian-American Republican governor, and a Republican-controlled legislature that voted in July to remove a Confederate flag from the grounds of its State House.

So much for all that.


As Trump prepared to attend events with Sen. Tim Scott and the state’s African American Chamber of Commerce, national Republican leaders are saying his candidacy is pushing the party backwards on matters of race and inclusiveness.

“Donald Trump in and of himself represents a tremendous setback for anybody who’s trying to expand the party in an inclusive direction,” said Ari Fleischer, a former White House press secretary to George W. Bush and the co-author of a 2013 Republican National Committee report dissecting 2012 Republican losses that recommended making minority outreach a pillar of the party’s future.

Michael Steele, who served as the first black RNC chairman from 2009 to 2011, said Trump could affect the party’s standing with groups beyond those that are the subjects of his controversial comments, including white women. “It’s not just, ‘Oh well he said that about black folks it doesn’t apply to me.’ Other voters see that as being about how you treat people, how you talk about people. Other people see that as an indication of your character.”

Long before he ran for president, Trump was sued for housing discrimination by black would-be tenants and has made a number of controversial statements about blacks, including tweeting in April, “Our great African American President hasn’t exactly had a positive impact on the thugs who are so happily and openly destroying Baltimore.” From the start of his campaign, his sweeping depictions of undocumented Mexican immigrants as criminals have made him a villain to millions of Hispanics.

More recently, his insistence that he had no responsibility to correct a questioner at a New Hampshire town hall who insisted President Obama is a Muslim and not an American has stirred further controversy.

Many Republicans see this as a far cry from the vision of the 2013 report, which counseled “the importance of a welcoming, inclusive message in particular when discussing issues that relate directly to a minority group.”

“I’m of the school of politics that addition and multiplication is how you grow a party, not division and subtraction, and Trump is really of the division and subtraction camp, and it’s not good for the party,” said Mississippi Republican strategist Henry Barbour, another co-author of the 2013 Republican autopsy report and nephew of the state’s former governor Haley Barbour.

“He’s disgusted so many people and he has said such terrible things about so many people it’s hard to know who he hasn’t taken a shot at, and I think it’s an act that’s getting old, I think he’s reached his political apex,” said Barbour, a supporter of removing Confederate symbols from the Mississippi state flag and an adviser to Rick Perry’s recently ended presidential bid.

Perry gave a much-lauded speech on race and the GOP in July, in which he said, “For too long, we Republicans have been content to lose the black vote because we found that we could win elections without it. But when we gave up on trying to win the support of African-Americans, we lost our moral legitimacy as the party of Lincoln.”

Trump, for his part, has said of Muslims that “most are fabulous.” He’s also said “I have great respect for Mexico and love their people” and “I have a great relationship with African-Americans. … I just have great respect for them and you know they like me.” A Trump spokeswoman declined to comment.

During the business leader event on Wednesday — which was hosted by the Greater Charleston Business Alliance, of which the African American Chamber of Commerce is part — Trump made scant reference to race, instead sharpening his attacks on his rivals and lodging another complaint about the format of last week's Republican presidential debate. He did, however, say he would like more minorities on his team. "I want a couple of really good African-American negotiators. I'll take you right now ... I'll take you right now," Trump said.

In South Carolina, Republican leaders are more optimistic that the party’s image can withstand Trump’s candidacy.

Glenn McCall, South Carolina Republicans’ first black national committeeman, said he believe the state’s voters do not identify Trump with the Republican brand. “Of course you don’t want to hear those things from a candidate running on your ticket, but I don’t think African-Americans and other people see this and stereotype this as how our party thinks about people of color.”

He said of his extended family, which is black and with the exception of him leans Democratic, “They see [Trump] and this whole process as comedic.”

Former Gov. David Beasley, who lost reelection in 1998 after angering white voters with his support for removing the Confederate flag from the State House dome, said Trump’s trip could offer him a chance to clear the air on race-related issues.

“I think the people in South Carolina will give him a chance to be heard and explain some of these statements,” said Beasley. “I think it will give him the opportunity to clarify and to explain.”

Fleischer said that despite the setbacks he attributes to Trump, the mogul’s candidacy could prove an opportunity for the Republican party, too — if it nominates a candidate who draws a contrast with him on matters of race. “If another Republican beats Donald Trump in the primary speaking the language of inclusion, they’ll have a powerful message to take to the general electorate.”