The Republican Party must transform itself into a more accurate reflection of the nation if it wants to survive, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky tells
Newsmax TV.
Until the Republican Party looks like the rest of America — black, white, rich, poor, with earrings, without earrings, with tattoos, and without tattoos, working class folks in our party thinking what we're offering is the best for working class people — until that happens, we're not going to win again," Paul said in an interview aired Wednesday on "The Hard Line" with Ed Berliner.
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Paul, who is seeking the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, called himself "a different kind of Republican" who will be able to bridge that gap.
"You've got to go out and get independent votes or you've got to go into the African American community where we've gotten less than 5 percent of the vote in the Southside of Chicago or in Detroit. We bring those numbers up, we begin to win all of those states again, and we can," Paul said.
"When I talk to African Americans in the Southside of Chicago, they're upset about all their kids being locked up for petty nonviolent drug crimes, they're upset their schools are pitiful … poverty is worse, unemployment is worse."
Paul said African American men in Baltimore, between the ages of 20 to 25, suffer an unemployment rate 37 percent worse than the Great Depression.
"They recognize it and when you say, well what have the Democrats done for you, they're ready to think about another candidate — but only a candidate who will come in and say, 'I'm not going to arrest all your young men for marijuana offenses,'" he said.
"I am positioned to go after independent voters and the young voters in a way no other candidate is."
Paul believes the media must do a better job of covering the presidential race.
"The polling at this time measures one aspect, primarily name recognition and the polls are somewhere skewed by … a celebrity reality TV star who is skewing the polls to a certain extent," he said, referring to billionaire businessman and GOP frontrunner Donald Trump.
"Ultimately, if you look really closely at these polls and you say, how many people have decided who they're going to vote on? It's like 15 percent … This is about picking someone who can win Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, New Hampshire, Iowa — all purple states, all states won by President Obama.
"When you look at my polling, of me directly with Hillary Clinton in those states, I'm one of the few Republicans that actually beats her in all five of those states."
A new
Monmouth University poll of Republican voters nationwide shows Paul lingering towards the bottom of the GOP pack, tied with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, with 4 percent each.
In first place is Trump with 28 percent; followed by Dr. Ben Carson with 18 percent; Sen. Ted Cruz with 10 percent; Carly Fiorina and Sen. Marco Rubio tied with 6 percent each; and Jeb Bush with 5 percent.
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