Every election cycle, Republicans lament their party’s lack of appeal to African American voters.

They apologize – as Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman did last year – for the GOP’s Nixon-era “Southern strategy” of welcoming white voters resentful of black progress.

They vow to do better.

But then, Election Day nears. Exploiting white fear looms as the easy way to pick up votes and fire up their base, in every sense of that word. And – as predictably as the sun rising in the east – they give in to temptation.

Which brings me to the political ad the RNC aired in Tennessee attacking Democrat Harold Ford Jr. in his Senate race against Republican Bob Corker. The ad should have “black men lust after white women” stamped across it in block letters.

In the grainy television spot – which looks like a phone-sex ad you’d see at 3 in the morning – disreputable characters declare their support of Ford, who hopes to be the first post-Reconstruction era black senator from the South. The star is a blond white woman, looking a little rough around the edges, who says she “met Harold at the Playboy party” and – at the end of the ad – holds her hand like a telephone and says, “Harold, call me,” before winking.

After watching it, you want to shower – immediately.

The point of the ad is the same old one: “Listen up, white folks. Black people want everything you’ve got. Your jobs, your money, YOUR BLOND WOMEN. If we can’t talk about issues, we’ll scare you to death. Vote for us or else!”

Jesse Helms had his “white hands.” George H.W. Bush had his Willie Horton.

Corker didn’t sponsor or like the ad, but he didn’t stop it from running.

The conciliatory Ken Mehlman of the RNC? He thought the ad was fair. He said that with a straight face. This saddens me because I do think the Democrats take African American voters for granted. Black voters want choices. But they deserve better ones.

I was raised by moderate Republican parents who were fans of GOP politicians like President Gerald Ford and – in our home state of Maryland – Sen. Charles McC. Mathias. My mother was a party activist until Ronald Reagan declared his 1980 candidacy in Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers had been murdered, and talked to cheering crowds using the code words of “states’ rights.” To her, it seemed Reagan only spoke about blacks to demonize them as welfare queens and freeloaders.

In its quest for Southern white votes, she felt her party had betrayed her.

Today in Maryland, the Republican candidate for the Senate is Michael Steele, a black man. Black Republicans are running for statewide office in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

While I see hope, I wonder where their voices are when their party plays on racial fears.

What have they given up for a seat at the table?