Kaine scoffs at GOP charges of race-baiting

Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Tim Kaine said Wednesday that GOP accusations of Democratic race-baiting are dishonest.

“They’re just grasping at a whole lot of different stuff,” Kaine said after a lunch hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. “It was just a week ago that Michael Steele said, ‘Our party hasn’t done enough to reach out to minority voters. We have to do more.’ I didn’t put out a press statement accusing him of race-baiting.

“That is completely non-controversial.”

Democrats this week have outlined a 2010 electoral plan focusing on turning out first-time voters from 2008. Many of those voters happen to be black or Latino, and Democrats like Kaine have said the effort will focus on them. He has also suggested that Republicans might work to “suppress” their votes.

That led the National Republican Congressional Committee in an e-mail to reporters to accuse the Democrats of playing “the race card from the bottom of the deck” and Kaine of a ploy to “shamelessly engage in race-baiting.”

Kaine pointed out that Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele recently said the GOP has failed to capture the imaginations of minority voters. He said it was dishonest for Steele’s party to go after him on similar grounds.