Q: In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) said in an interview broadcast Sunday that parts of Republican Party base are moved by racism. 
  
  
  
 Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) (J. Scott Applewhite/ AP) 
  
 Appearing on CNN's "State of the Union," Israel was asked by host Candy Crowley whether he thought his Republican colleagues were racist. She mentioned comments from last week by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who said Republicans have engaged in "ugly and divisive" attacks against President Obama and him; and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who said that Republican opposition to comprehensive immigration reform was motivated in part by race. 
  
 "Not all of them, no, of course not," replied Israel. "But to a significant extent, the Republican base does have elements that are animated by racism. And that's unfortunate." 
  
 Israel appeared with his GOP counterpart, National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.), who rejected the notion that race has fueled opposition to Obama's agenda. 
  
 "It's both wrong and unfortunate," he said. "You know, there have been a lot of executive overreaches by this administration. We see the latest with Lois Lerner and the whole IRS scandal." 
  
 Israel and Walden debated the 2014 midterm landscape. Democratic hopes' for wining the House majority have been all but erased. Now, the big question is which party will pick up seats in the fall. 
  
 Acknowledging the drop-off in Democratic turnout that has been typical in recent off-year elections, Israel said his party is waging a robust effort to get voters to participate. 
  
 "We're using every tool in our toolbox, accelerating our investments in field, putting people on the ground. We've got 33 districts covered with staff in order to deal with that drop off," he said. 
  
 Walden said Republicans are "focused on jobs and the economy, trying to grow both." 
  
 Asked whether embattled Rep. Vance McAllister (R-La.) should resign amid the release of video of him kissing a staffer, Walden declined to take a position. 
  
 "It's bad. It's wrong. He needs to answer and be held accountable," said Walden. 
  
 Walden also expressed confidence Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) would be reelected as House speaker, even as some House conservatives have plotted possibly forcing Boehner aside next year. ||||| "Not all" Republican lawmakers are racist, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Steve Israel said Sunday, responding to a direct question from CNN's Candy Crowley on "State of the Union." 
  
 But, the New York Democrat added, "To a significant extent, the Republican base does have elements that are animated by racism, and that's unfortunate." 
  
 Israel's comments came after Crowley brought up remarks by Attorney General Eric Holder. At a speech to a civil-rights group, the attorney general complained about not being treated respectfully by lawmakers at a House Judiciary Committee hearing. Still, Holder said that progress has been made "even in the face of unprecedented, unwarranted, ugly and divisive adversity," citing the hearing as evidence. 
  
 (Also on POLITICO: Donald Trump: Democrats playing the ‘race card’) 
  
 While Holder did not explicitly say his treatment was rooted in racism, Crowley said that Holder believes "the treatment he has received in the House ... would not have happened if he were not African-American." 
  
 Crowley also tied in recent comments by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who suggested that Republicans were avoiding an immigration vote because of racial issues. 
  
 Democrats are ready to pass an immigration bill, Israel said. 
  
 "We'd rather pass an immigration bill than worry about the election. We have 190 Democrats ready to vote on a comprehensive immigration bill today," he said. "We know not every Republican is going to agree with us on that. It passed the Senate with 67 bipartisan votes. All we need is 20 Republicans, just 20 to vote for that bill and it will be law, and we don't have to have this debate anymore." 
  
 Rep. Greg Walden, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, called the comments "both wrong and unfortunate" and said Republicans are focusing on the "executive overreaches by this administration." 
  
 "The American people just want to know the truth," the Oregon Republican said. "They want to know the truth about what really happened in the targeting of conservative truths by the IRS, they want to know what happened in Benghazi. They want to know answers, that's all we're trying to do." 
  
 CLARIFICATION: An earlier version of this article implied that Greg Walden was stating that the Republican base was motivated by racism. 
  
 Read more about: Eric Holder, Republicans, Racism, Steve Israel, Greg Walden ||||| Duh! 
  
 Not a month goes by without a GOP racial gaffe, racist vitriol fills conservative websites’ comment sections, and the party refuses to take on the issue. Of course Steve Israel’s right. 
  
 Some time back, whenever a big racial controversy erupted, I trained myself into the habit of reading about it at FoxNews.com, just for the unbelievable comment threads. Let’s put it this way: If my friends and I went out to a bar and started playing a “let’s write the racist FoxNews.com comment thread” drinking game, our efforts couldn’t begin to approach what I read there. 
  
 I wasn’t alone. Liberal websites started feasting on these threads. And so, a couple of years ago, Ailes & Co. got wise. Stories about race were, at least in my disheartened experience, closed to comments. 
  
 Fox acted, I recall, back in February 2012, when the thread on Whitney Houston’s death made even many conservatives a little jumpy. Here’s a taste: “Whitney is just an inferior lo w life ni gg er that needed to go, no tragedy, no loss…” “Any death is a tragedy you heartless bastard…” “not nignogs their death is a plus…” 
  
 Well, at least there was that person in the middle there! But these threads were poisonous, and they didn’t appear just on Fox. They’ve been all over conservative websites and have bled into some mainstream ones, too. Lord, the things I read in comment threads on North Carolina newspapers’ sites in their stories about the “Moral Monday” protests. Believe it or not, conservative readers, I don’t go flinging the r-word around loosely. But these comments, hundreds, thousands of them, were just thuggishly racist. Nothing else to call them. 
  
 Beyond these, we have numerous instances of low-level (and sometimes not so low-level) Republican Party officials—Republican Party officials—making racist jokes about Obama. Here’s a little chrestomathy of some of them. If you follow the news closely, you know that hardly a…not quite a week, but let’s say hardly a fortnight goes by that some local GOPer doesn’t show up in the news explaining that he “didn’t mean any harm” in sending that email to friends showing watermelons piled up on the White House, and he’s sincerely sorry “if it offended anyone.” Often, of course, it’s something more malevolent than that. 
  
 And now it’s supposed to be controversial when Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY) says, as he did Sunday on CNN, that “to a significant extent, the Republican base does have elements that are animated by racism”? Please. You have to be living a life of willed ignorance and denial to take issue with what Israel said. (The link above, by the way, is to the FoxNews.com story; if you scroll down you will indeed see the inevitable and darkly amusing sentence “Comments are currently closed for this article.”) 
  
 Now I don’t know if the people making these comments and the larger group they represent constitute 5 percent of this base or 15 or 50. It depends in part on how you define “base.” But look at the matter this way. Say you were a Republican political consultant. Would you ever in a jillion years suggest that your candidate take on racism within the GOP as a speech topic? You most certainly would not. Your candidate would be dead immediately. I mean metaphorically, but depending on the part of the country in which the speech was given, maybe literally, too. In other words, whether they’re 5 or 15 or 50, commenters like these are enough to prevent Republican politicians from ever addressing racism with any degree of candor. The cowardice on the GOP side on this issue is universal and always has been. 
  
 We should not, then, even be debating whether what Israel said is true. Sadly, we shouldn’t even be debating why Republican politicians won’t discuss it. My little hypothetical above showed why. None of them has the stones to. Some, Rand Paul and others, talk a little in general terms about how the party needs to “change” and “modernize.” But to spell out what that change and modernization would involve, in racial terms? No one will confront that. 
  
 And so the only question we’re left debating is when all this might change. For starters, it will change some when Barack Obama leaves office. All the Obama-related racial craziness will, obviously, end. But we shouldn’t count on that for much. True, the next president will apparently be a Caucasian one, but racial controversies will still occur, black celebrities will continue to die, juries will keep letting George Zimmermans off. We are going to be divided by the same things we always have. |||||
A:
Does Democratic Rep. Steve Israel think his "Republican colleagues are racist"? His reply to Candy Crowley's question on CNN yesterday: "Not all of them, no. Of course not," said the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. But "to a significant extent, the Republican base does have elements that are animated by racism, and that's unfortunate," he said, per Politico. His comments came amid a discussion of Eric Holder's concerns about himself and President Obama facing "ugly and divisive" attacks; Nancy Pelosi has also suggested race plays a role in opposition to immigration reform, the Washington Post notes. National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Greg Walden, who also appeared on the program, said Israel's take was "wrong and unfortunate." Further reactions to the comments have already begun. Per Michael Tomasky at the Daily Beast: "You have to be living a life of willed ignorance and denial to take issue with what Israel said." (Also on yesterday's talk shows, Kathleen Sebelius told Meet the Press that staying on as HHS secretary "really wasn't an option.")