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Jackson: Trump may be best thing for GOP since Lincoln freed the slaves

Donald Trump may be the best thing to happen to the Republican Party since Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves. Just as the Great Emancipator's proclamation endeared African American voters to the Grand Old Party for a century, Trump's demolition of today's GOP could provide the perfect opportunity to reinvent itself as the big tent that does more than pay lip service to coveting more black and brown members.

Trump's divergence from the neo-conservative and religious wings of the Republican Party has opened the door for it to abandon the campaign strategies that propelled Ronald Reagan and two Bushes to the Oval Office. Finally, the GOP can stop fawning over token black candidates who can't win black votes and do the harder work it takes to field credible African American and Latino candidates whose views actually appeal to minority voters.

When Trump loses (some might say if he loses, but I'm a believer in the power of positive thinking), the GOP should cleanse itself of any trace of the E.coli-fouled waters it swam in by anointing the xenophobe as its standard bearer. If Trump does win, no amount of perfume will mask the resulting stench. His presidency threatens to be the extinction-level event that sends the Republican Party to a mass grave where it can compare notes with the Federalists, Whigs, and Dixiecrats.

But after so many years of promoting itself as the better party for Christians, the GOP has a chance to be born again, to turn away from life in the wrong lane and choose a better path. With Trump standing at the door to become the Republican nominee for president, it's time for the party to decide whether it wants to stay on the road that has made a deal-cutting, truth-shading narcissist the image of the party or reinvent itself as something better.

That doesn't have to be difficult. All the party needs to do is remember less recent times when it instigated racial tolerance; when it was the party of Ulysses Grant, whose Enforcement Acts of 1870 and 1871 helped disband the Ku Klux Klan for a while; the party of Dwight Eisenhower, who supported the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 and sent in federal troops to integrate Little Rock, Ark, schools; the party that gave Democrat Lyndon Johnson the votes he needed to pass the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 despite opposition by racist Southerners in his party.

Republicans need to look back at their history and admit that the policies and positions that have led to an overwhelming majority of African Americans identifying themselves as Democrats have taken the GOP too far in a different direction. Democrats, too, often are guilty of standing on tradition to keep specific segments of the electorate happy instead of engaging in the meaningful discourse necessary to close the partisan divide that has made Congress impotent.

I was at the 2005 annual convention of the National Association of Black Journalists in Atlanta when Republican Party chairman Ken Mehlman apologized for the GOP's Southern strategy, which since Richard Nixon's 1968 campaign has used wedge issues such as affirmative action to woo conservative white voters. George W. Bush had beaten John Kerry in the 2004 election, but Mehlman still wanted to reach out to minority voters. Too little outreach has occurred since then.

Instead, the Republican Party has engaged in window dressing by putting the occasional spotlight on great black hopes like Alan Keyes, Herman Cain, and Ben Carson whose conservative stances on affirmative action, income inequality, and other social issues repulse more African American voters than they attract. Today's GOP cares more about staying on the good side of voters who think government is a four-letter word. Having cultivated that attitude, the party can only blame itself for the ascent of a complete government outsider like Trump.

The Republicans are stuck with Trump, it seems. There appears to be little chance of any last-minute drama at the national convention in Cleveland that would deny him the nomination. So it's time to start looking beyond the presidential election. It's time to figure out how to reinvent the party. The resulting competition for candidates and voters will help ensure no one is taken for granted by either party. That will yield better candidates for office, better government, and a better America.

Harold Jackson is editorial page editor for The Inquirer.