GOP: The Exclusive White Club

Another debate another snubbing, the GOP front runners seem to think it’s beneath them to attend minority debates or forums. This time they have turned their backs on a debate by PBS at Morgan State University, a historical black college.

So far the GOP candidates have managed to thumb their nose at the Univision Latino debate, HRC-Logo Gay issues forum, The NAACP National Convention; only Tom Tancredo showed up for that, they originally refused the CNN/YouTube debate because the didn’t like the technology/citizen forum and the National Association of Latino Elected & Appointed Officials; Duncan Hunter was the only one to show up for that.

It’s apparent that if anyone wants GOP candidates to show up for a debate or forum the audience needs to be English speaking whites who don’t participate in technology forums. The only debate they did jump at the Ronald Reagan Library debate. This sounds like shades of the old south.

Former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson has become the fourth leading GOP presidential candidate to shun the PBS debate this month at a historically black college in Baltimore, the Huffington Post has learned.

The debates, moderated by Tavis Smiley, will go on as planned, despite the absence of Thompson, former mayor Rudy Giuliani, former governor Mitt Romney, and Sen. John McCain. Each campaign cited scheduling issues as the reason for their absence. Nevertheless, the rejections underscore the consistent absence of GOP candidates at minority voter forums.

“There is a pattern here,” Smiley told the Huffington Post. “When you tell every black and brown request that you get throughout the primary process that ‘no, there’s a scheduling problem.’ That’s a pattern… Are we really supposed to believe that all four of these guys couldn’t make it because of scheduling?”

The five other Republican candidates for president have all committed to the PBS debate and Smiley plans to proceed with the plans – albeit with four empty lecterns on stage.