In the new issue of the Washington Monthly, T.A. Frank argues that New York Times columnist Bob Herbert is “boring.”

I can’t say whether Herbert saw the Washington Monthly piece or not, but I can’t help but notice that the veteran columnist has been a lot less dull lately. Today, for example, Herbert notes that he’d like to see “a million angry protesters marching on" RNC headquarters because, he argues, the GOP has demonstrated “just how anti-black their party really is.”

At the same time that the Republicans were killing Congressional representation for D.C. residents, the major G.O.P. candidates for president were offering a collective slap in the face to black voters nationally by refusing to participate in a long-scheduled, nationally televised debate focusing on issues important to minorities. […]

[The Republican candidates] won’t be there. They can’t be bothered debating issues that might be of interest to black Americans. After all, they’re Republicans.

This is the party of the Southern strategy — the party that ran, like panting dogs, after the votes of segregationist whites who were repelled by the very idea of giving equal treatment to blacks. Ronald Reagan, George H.W. (Willie Horton) Bush, George W. (Compassionate Conservative) Bush — they all ran with that lousy pack.

“Boring” this is not. Indeed, Herbert’s column reads a bit like an indictment of a party that’s been on the wrong side of the racial divide for far too long. Take a look.