Republican Party's downfall: Burning relationships with ethnic minorities?

I have been pondering why this past year, why I have been aligning myself more to the democratic party.  It has been somewhat of drastic change since my views in high school till the third year of undergrad.  I still retain certain conservative values (pro-life, church/small organizations more involved in welfare, upholding 2nd amendment etc.), yet I will vote for a democrat this year.  There has been two factors that have been the tipping point for me changing political parties.

1) (Evangelicals being manipulated tools of the Republican Party, and that the message of Christianity has been miscontrued).  Since this is not my main point in this topic, you guys can ask me why I feel this way privately.  (If you want a brief answer, type in the name David Kuo in youtube)

2) The second factor is that I feel that the Republican Party this year,  has  made a very very poor effort in reaching to minorities.

Reading CJ's note, has resurfaced a lot of my thoughts about this issue.
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=43252181544&ref=mf

First of all, I do not believe that Democrats are the answers for minorities.  I do think that certain Democratic officials have been somewhat exclusive to minorities.  With all the criticism on George W. Bush, he has appointed people such as Rice, Powell, Gonzales, and Chao to high ranking positions.  He has the second most diverse cabinet of all time (first is Clinton). 

That being said, I will be very surprised if more than 10% of all minorities will vote for McCain.  I don't think the lack of minority support for Republicans is simply because Obama (Clinton/Richardson to lesser extent) is running.  I think it simply because a good majority of the Republican Party has  failed to reach out and/or burned bridges with minorities.  It seemed that all the work that Bush did, seemed to just get pushed back.  One of the republican candidates, Tommy Thompson seemed to be more aligned and open to minority issues (Of course he is the first guy to drop out.)

-A fairly significant forum (All-American Presidential Forums) was held last fall by Tavis Smiley.  The forum had a Black and Latino audience and had issues that pertained to Black and Latinos.  All of the candidates, both republicans and democrats were invited.  However all of the republican front runners (McCain, Giuliani, Romney, and Thompson) all happened to skip this debate. It says a lot when their fellow competitor (Huckabee) says, "I'm embarrassed for our party and I'm embarrassed for those who did not come, because there's long been a divide in this country, and it doesn't get better when we don't show up."

-A similar events happened as well.  Univision (Latino) hosted a debate, and only John McCain arrived.  Tancredo didn't attend the debate because it supported "illegal immigration".  The NAACP hosted a forum and only Tom Tancredo (shocking, lol) participated.

-As for the Asian American community.  I recall several asian american groups (80-20) sent out surveys and questionaires to candidates of both parties during mid January.  The only candidates that returned their questions, were Clinton, Edwards, and Obama.  CJ has informed me that there was an Asian American forum, and again none of the Republicans showed up.

-I understand that to some people, fighting terrorism and illegal immigration are very important issues to them.  However, listening to a couple of republican primary debates, I felt that several of the candidates seem to have this inability of separating the issues from the people.  Some (particuarlly Tom Tancredo) seem to have this mindset that all hispanics are illegal immigrants or arabs are islamic terrorists.  There were very few times where someone stepped in and said hey not everyone of an ethnic group is terrorist (Huckabee, McCain). 

-The campaign staff for several of the Republican candidates are nowhere close to be diverse as Bush.  The worst offenders are Giuliani and Romney who have 100% white male staff.  It might be understandable if they reside in a rural part of America.  However Giuliani is from...NYC, and Romney is from...Massachusetts, yet they cannot find a single person of color, or a female to work for them?

-Some other minor points.  McCain had offeded a huge part of the Asian Americans by saying that he  "hates gooks and that hopes that they die".  He and other republicans have voted against having a MLK holiday.  Romney disturbs me with his interaction with African Americans, thinking that by saying "Who lets the dogs out?" and stereotypical slang is apparently going to appeal him to African Americans.  The RNC convention this year has only 37 minorities out of 2400 people that were sitting in the audience.  A drop off of 150 minorities from last year.

Conclusion:  Some people may be thinking, what the big deal is, since its not the Republican's base.  The basic strategy is that one has to reach out to as many different people as possible.  Evangelicals are generally conservative, but that did not stop Obama or Hilary in pursuing them this year.  Rural residents weren't excluded from Obama trying to reach out to them.

I don't think Republicans have to change their positions on the "typical issues"(Affirmitive Action, Illegal Immigration etc.) in order to appeal to minorities.  I think all they have to do is just try to reach out.  Try to talk to blacks, latinos, asians, native americans etc.  Try to actually to care about the issues that are relevant in these communities.  Huckabee actually sort of did that when he ran for governor, and he got a significant amount of African American voters.  Ron Paul argued about fighting racisms through other aspects.  Same with Jack Kemp.  The republicans obviously are not going to get these votes overnight (because...it takes hard work), but it should be a long time goal.  The complete lack of care from the republican party is completely stupid because it also pushes away minorities who are voting for them.  There is a reason why conservative minorities are being more and more reluctant to vote for McCain this fall.

If John McCain loses this fall, I feel that this is one of the biggest factors (reap and sow)...or lack of.

P.S.
I want to address to some of the minorities who are thinking of voting for McCain this fall.  I do not want to pressure you guys to not vote for McCain.  I will not hold it against you.  I do not want people to think they are "less of a minority, or a race traitor" (because I think that is complete rubbish) if they vote McCain. 

However, I do think that this is something you guys should read contemplate and consider this for a bit.