Scarborough tells GOP: 'Get smart,' 'celebrate' Powell as a Republican

Writing in Politico, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough comments on the recent controversy surrounding former State Secretary Colin Powell.

On Sunday Powell said there's a "dark vein of intolerance" in today's GOP and suggested that many party members hold racist tendencies.

From Scarborough's column:

Republicans could kick General Powell around for the next four years or they could get smart and start celebrating the fact this commanding figure still identifies himself as a Republican. Then they should do everything possible to drag him back into a big GOP tent.

Unfortunately, the Republican Party of 2013 bears little resemblance to the party of Ronald Reagan, who would have responded to Powell’s concerns with an all-hands-on-deck effort to win the war hero back. That’s because President Reagan lived by the belief that “just because I’m your friend 80 percent of the time doesn’t make me your enemy 20 percent of the time.”

If the Republican Party is big enough to reach out to disaffected moderates like Colin Powell, then it is big enough to win the White House back in 2016. The question is whether the GOP will choose to go the way of William F. Buckley or Todd Akin.

The party’s survival depends on that choice.