http://www.politico.com/story/2014/09/rand-paul-republicans-minorities-voting-111129.html?cmpid=sf#ixzz3DiXZqWIzBy KATIE GLUECK | 9/18/14 8:30 PM EDT
Sen. Rand Paul on Thursday blasted his own party for making it tougher for minorities to vote.
The Kentucky Republican, a likely presidential candidate, has long argued that drug laws disproportionately affect minorities and has also championed restoring voting rights for some non-violent felons. He laid out those views in a speech at the Liberty PAC conference, a gathering tied to his father, libertarian icon Ron Paul.
“So many times, Republicans are seen as this party of, ‘We don’t want black people to vote because they’re voting Democrat, we don’t want Hispanic people to vote because they’re voting Democrat,’” he said. “We wonder why the Republican Party is so small. Why don’t we be the party that’s for people voting, for voting rights?”
As he has done previously, in more traditional Republican circles, Paul said that the libertarian movement can help the GOP be successful.
“The bottom line is, we’re not winning,” he said. “…We’re not winning because, it’s pretty simple, we don’t have enough people in the group yet. The liberty movement has been more open to receiving people of all walks of life… I think we have been much more open, sometimes, than the Republican Party in general.”
He also skewered what he characterized as excessive use of force by police in Ferguson, Missouri, where an unarmed teenager was shot by a police officer, an incident that kicked off weeks of protests fueled by racial tensions.
