Jon Stewart: 'Republicans have a big tent, you're just not in it' Mike Aivaz and Muriel Kane

Published: Tuesday October 2, 2007



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Print This Email This Monday's Daily Show took up the subject of the GOP's relationship to minorities. "If you are a minority or an interest group," Jon Stewart began, "the Democrats will hold a debate at your house. Whereas Republicans take a slightly different approach. They have a big tent. You're just not allowed in it." Not only have the Republicans skipped forums for gays, Hispanics, and bloggers, but "they'll even blow off their own base," said Stewart, pointing out that the Republican front-runners were notably absent last month from a debate sponsored by Evangelical Christians.



"Despite the snub, Evangelicals gave absent candidates plenty of time to not talk," Stewart noted, showing questions being asked of the empty podiums. "It must be so hard for Evangelicals to repeatedly ask questions into a void, only to wait in vain for an answer that will never come. I don't know how they do it." Stewart then turned to the detabe last week on African-American issues, which was avoided by all four front-runners. "What was going on? Where was Mayor 911? Or Oldington Hotwife? Or POW McStraighttalk? Or the Mormotron 5000?" After taking a few jabs at the second-tier candidates who did show up, Stewart turned to "the Daily Show's investigative team of Larry Wilmore and John Oliver" for a video report from the debate site. C. Vernon Gray, a policital science professor at historically-black Morgan State University, where the debate was held, angrily told Wilmore and Oliver, "To suggest at this point that [the front-runners] have conflicted schedules is just hogwash." "Sure blacks may be getting ignored now," responded Wilmore. "But isn't it just getting them warmed up for next year, when they're really going to be ignored?" Gray looked taken back and started to say, "I don't think they'll be ignored during the debates..." "As a white person, I have to say it is going to happen," interjected Oliver. "I'm struggling to pay attention to you now," he added, his gaze wandering around the room. "We're not going to be ignored," insisted Gray. "I think that day has long since passed." "Republicans are quick to acknowledge that," Oliver conceded, offering a clip of Mitt Romney saying, "Of course we care about minority voters. We're not entirely brain-dead." He then showed footage of where Romney preferred to be on the day of the debate -- greeting all-white supporters at an International House of Pancakes in Sacramento, CA. Many pancake jokes later, Grey was finally persuaded to take a bite of an IHOP pancake. "That's a good pancake," he admitted. The following video is from Comedy Central's Daily Show with Jon Stewart, broadcast on October 1, 2007



