A senior female official in the Republican Party has delivered a stark message to her colleagues – they are too male, and they are too white.

Congresswoman Susan Brooks, a white woman who represents Indiana’s 5th congressional district, said the GOP needed to attract more women, and more people of colour, if it was to compete effectively in elections in the future.

Speaking to colleagues this week in Washington DC, she told them: “It’s important that we, as a conference, do a better job of looking like America, and better representing the very diverse country that we have.”

The comments of Ms Brooks are especially significant given that she is in charge of seeking new candidates the party believes can run and win, and is the National Republican Congressional Committee recruitment chair.

She told Roll Call she said to her colleagues is was important to pick a diverse number of candidates for the 2020 election cycle, following the party’s humiliating performance in the 2018 midterms, when the Republicans lost control of the House of Representatives.

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Right now, of the 197 Republicans in the House, only 13 are women and only 11 are non-white. In the Senate, of its 53 members, there are seven women and one, Tim Scott of South Carolina, is not white.

The report said Ms Brooks told her party abut five candidates who recently launched their campaigns – Suzette Martinez Valladares in Californa’s 25th District and restauranteur Irina Vilariño in Florida’s 26th District, who are Latina; Peggy Huang in California’s 45th District, who is Taiwanese; Wesley Hunt in Texas’ 7th District, who is African American; and Chele Farley in New York’s 18th District, who is a white woman.

Larry Sabato, Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia, told The Independent: “This is simply a recognition by the GOP that almost their entire House delegation is white and male. Women are 52 per cent of the US population and minorities are 28 per cent – headed for a majority before 2050. Even with all the archaic institutions such as the Electoral College and the US Senate, as well as gerrymandering, Republicans will be unable to sustain control of America’s politics as time goes on unless they start to look more like the country’s population.”

Following Mitt Romney’s 2012 defeat to Barack Obama, the Republican Party commissioned a tough-to-read study, the so-called Growth and Opportunity Project report.

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Commissioned by RNC chair Reince Priebus, it said the party was marginalising itself and that without a major shift in thinking, “it will be increasingly difficult for Republicans to win a presidential election in the near future”.

It called for supporting policies such as comprehensive immigration reform, a reversal of its opposition to same-sex marriage and warned that without an overhaul, Republicans would remain “out of touch” and be seen as party of “stuffy old men”.

Much of this strategy was rejected by Donald Trump, who has sought to double down on a base of white, working class support, while also offering major sops to establishment Republicans in the form of huge tax cuts.

“New @RNC report calls for embracing ‘comprehensive immigration reform’,” he wrote in a tweet soon after the RNC “autopsy” report was published. “Does the @RNC have a death wish?”

Christina Greer, an expert on issues of diversity and associate professor of political science at Fordham University in New York, said it was impossible for Republicans to be more inclusive while Mr Trump, who she said considered himself a “white nationalist”, was at the helm. She said the bulk of the party had been silent on this topic.

“So you might have all these well-meaning Republicans telling you they are there for the tax cuts or certain social issues,” she said. “But at some point you’ve got to accept you signing off on this white nationalist agenda.”

Democrats have a more diverse range of elected legislators. The 2018 saw more women and more people of colour, elected to the House than ever before.