"The initial perception of our brand is ‘Hmmm…’”
The Republican “brand is broken,” Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) asserted this weekend when he appeared on CBS’ “Face the Nation” with Bob Schieffer.
Schieffer started off the interview with this question to Paul: “You said, and this is your quote: ‘The Republican brand sucks.’ That’s a pretty unusual rallying cry in an election year. What do you mean by that?”
Sen. Paul: “What I meant by that is, if I were to go into a college campus today, and I were to talk to a young person, and I was to say, ‘Hey do you want to be a part of the Republican party?’ or let’s say I go and talk to a young African-American man or woman, ‘Do you want to be part of the Republican party?’ The initial perception of our brand is ‘Hmmm…’”
Paul continued: “Like for example, I had a meeting with some conservative African-Americans recently and I said, ‘Let’s try to get something moving nationally.’ And they said ‘Yeah, but we may not want to put the word Republican in it.’ So that means essentially our brand is broken.”
“I don’t think what we stand for is bad, I believe in the Republican party’s values,” said Paul. “But we have a wall or a barrier between us and African-American voters.”
“I’ve spent the last year trying to break down some of that wall,” Paul said. “Maybe what the Democrats have been doing for you… isn’t working. Maybe we could look at some of the Republican proposals for long term unemployment.”