Did Rand Paul's Detroit gig rile up Dems and GOP?

As I write this, tea party Sen. Rand Paul is delivering his speech to the Detroit Economic Club on how to revive the bankrupt city by establishing Jack Kemp-style “economic freedom zones” with minimal tax rates.

This morning, the Kentucky senator was the featured speaker at the opening in Detroit of the Michigan Republicans’ African-American Outreach Office. 

The facility is located just south of Eight Mile Road in the Sherwood Forest neighborhood. Surely there’s a really good joke here somewhere for the liberals.

Democrats came together to protest Paul’s appearance, noting that he has previously criticized portions of the Civil Rights Act and that his knee-jerk reaction to Detroit filing for bankruptcy was that the Obama administration would extend aid to the city “over my dead body.”

I suspect that more than a few Republicans are equally disgusted about the entire concept of an African-American Outreach Office. GOP thinking is to not play factional, ethnic politics. What’s next? A GOP Hispanic Outreach Center in southwest Detroit? An Arab-American Outreach Office in Dearborn? Why are we spending money and resources in a city where President Obama won 97.5 percent of the vote in 2012?

On the flip side, the most recent Democratic attempt to portray Republicans as insensitive to the needs and concerns of black voters is a bit out of bounds. The Dems says that GOP Senate candidate Terri Lynn Land  subtly invoked references to slavery when she wrote this in a new fundraising letter: “We need to make reforms to make government the servant -- not the master. I'm ready to go there (to Washington) and whip things into shape.”

State Rep. Fred Durhal of Detroit stirred the pot adding this bit of melodrama in a press release:

“For the Republican Party and its candidate for U.S. Senate to become identified with statements such as whipping into shape and racist code words at worst reflects the real Republican Party, its agenda, and it’s out of touch philosophy with all of black and minority communities in Michigan and America. It is bad politics and only serves to inflame racial tensions that are already smoldering.”