Why Does the GOP Write Off Minorities?
I once met a Republican activist here in L.A. who wanted to take the GOP message of smaller government and social values to the congregations of the city’s black churches, places where religion and politics have eagerly intersected.
But his plan was met with inaction by the GOP pooh-bahs that be, likely falling to the same excuses of no time, no money, no incentive to go to a place with few votes. In other words, accepting failure before even trying.
So the African-American man, believing strongly in the power of political rethinking to turn around some of L.A.’s poorest neighborhoods, hit the pavement, knocking on his neighbors’ doors to try to spread the GOP message.
This is the profile of America’s minority communities: not politically or ideologically homogenous, willing to consider new solutions, and willing to listen to new ideas and voices — if those voices would bother to make the effort to show up.
However, this election season is shaping up to be yet another year when the Republican Party quickly kisses off the black vote, and halfheartedly reaches for at least a decent portion of the Latino vote. It’s a mistake with the same script every time, like a political “Groundhog Day.”
And it could particularly be a colossal failing to ignore minority communities this election season, when the flap over Barack Obama’s questionable associations has seen the racial debate taken in a disturbing direction that strays from the colorblind, hand-in-hand path of brotherhood envisioned by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Former Congressman J.C. Watts, R-Okla., once the fourth-highest-ranking member in the House (and an excellent option for vice president — nudge-nudge, Mac), wrote in an October column in the Las Vegas Review-Journal that the GOP was exerting pathetically little effort at outreach. “Once in the general election, and safely out of the cloistered world of Republican primary politics, our nominee will want to trot out black faces — usually black Republicans — to try to win the black vote. This is insulting when you consider he likely didn’t show up at events that were established to reach out to the black community. Trust me, these candidates will pay a price in the general election.
“Republican candidates avoiding the Urban League and the Morgan State debate is as nonsensical as saying ‘I want a bath, but I don’t want to get wet,’” Watts continued. “The excuse du jour — ‘I had a scheduling conflict’ — is the campaign equivalent of ‘my dog ate my homework.’ All of us, in campaigns and life, make time for things that are important to us. It’s a matter of priorities. One can only conclude that growing the base of our party isn’t a priority to the GOP establishment.”
Personally, I want to drag our party leaders by the hand around Long Beach, Inglewood, Baldwin Hills, even Watts to get a true picture of the communities and their concerns. It may surprise party elites to see that many of their issues — small-business growth, social values, emphasis on faith, education, fighting crime — are ones where Republican core principles would likely resonate well.
And the common concerns don’t stop there. How about the impact of illegal immigration on job opportunities, or, as some activists in the black community have also stressed, the impact on the education of black students from utilizing stretched resources to instruct non-English-speaking children at those same schools? Or what about the fact that nearly 1,500 black children a day, on average, are aborted, slicing by 35 percent the would-be growth of the African-American community since 1973?
It’s also been widely taken for granted by the Democratic Party that efforts at immigration reform — from workplace crackdowns to fence-building — mean that Latino regions are firmly in their corner.
This insultingly assumes, of course, that Hispanics are one-issue voters.
I remember going to a 2006 Labor Day immigration rally in downtown Los Angeles, organized by labor and socialist-activism groups hoping to mirror the 500,000-strong showing by immigrant demonstrators that March. They fell about 499,000 short — but those who did march were easily outnumbered by the Latino vendors who swarmed the sidewalks hawking soda, ice cream, and countless sizzling platters of hot dogs with peppers and onions.
When it comes to the Latino community, the small-business dreamers buoyed by a fierce entrepreneurial spirit would love to hear about lower taxes and business incentives — especially when the left tells them that Republicans just care about white, fat-cat, big business.
True community outreach would also tap into the similarly shared concerns of safe neighborhoods as well as homeland security, good schools, strong families, etc.
But even at this rally, where I saw many residents just wander into the festivities to learn more — and the American-flag wavers clearly turned off by the separatists — there was no presence of pro-business, pro-entrepreneurship parties or organizations, just the medley of usual socialist suspects trying to lure in new members. I know because I took all of their red-hued propaganda — er, literature — and spoke with the far-left recruiters who were sure that James Sensenbrenner had driven all Latinos into the arms of the left, never to return and never to fully question the left’s policies.
And alas, another GOP opportunity squandered. After all, half the battle is showing you care enough to show up — as John McCain learned when he was the only Republican candidate to RSVP to the Univision debate.
Bridget Johnson is a columnist at the Los Angeles Daily News.
“It may surprise party elites to see that many of their issues – small-business growth, social values, emphasis on faith, education, fighting crime – are ones where Republican core principles would likely resonate well.”
Well said. Excellent and timely piece.
It would be to their benefit, if all Americans, and in particular Americans who are of African descent, would realize how the Liberal view of them as “victims” that need to be saved by the big-government white Liberals, was and is so damaging to their communities, as well as to their psyches. Liberal welfare policies of the past failed them miserably, and only led to the dissolution of the formerly strong black family. Liberal attitudes of indiscriminate sex, and the renunciation of personal responsibility have ruined many young lives, some before they even began. Liberal policies could not have hurt the black community, in particular, worse if they had tried. And now Liberals want to sell that victim-think poison to the newly arriving immigrants. God help this nation if they succeed!
It is to the everlasting shame of the GOP leadership that they have not, and do not, reach out to fellow Americans who sorely need to be given the choice of a different path to follow; a path that leads away from the impotence of victimhood. A victim is never powerful; a victim is never a winner. It bears repeating, the liberal victim-think philosophy is poison for this country and it’s future. All Americans deserve more than just one option from their government; and the so-called GOP leaders are not doing their jobs, by failing to offer another, to the very Americans who need it most.
The GOP simply isn’t about identity group politics. Pandering to identity groups is much more a Marxist thing – creating victims and then fostering dependency on government largess is the Democrat path to power.
And yes, that does put the GOP at a disadvantage – the other side is more naturally able to exploit the Seven Deadly Sins (primarily envy) as an ally in effort to undermine the ‘E Plurbus Unum’ ideal by creating self-pitying victim groups.
Republicans have offered their hands to the larger black community many times only to have it (and their faces) slapped away. One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and again and somehow expecting a different outcome. How many times would you do that before realizing that the chances of success are remote? It takes two people to shake hands. We need to look at both sides of the transaction.
I am a 9/11 convert to Conservatism and I get the impression that the country-clubber establishment in charge of the Republican Party really don’t like Conservatives or Conservatism all that much; if they did McCain would be leading by Conservative ideals instead of poo-pooing them.
As it is, the country clubber Republican establishment is attempting to purge Conservatives out of the party in order to get the Centrist vote so why would they be interested in any ‘out-reach’ programs promotting wonderful Conservative ideals.
I understand it took Reagan several attempts to bring Conservatism into the GOP fold however after he left office the country-clubbers moved back in with middle-of-the-roader RINOs.
By country clubbers I mean those Wall Street Journal voters who want their own taxes low but do not like pro-lifers, want cheap illegal labor so their own pasty sons and daughters do not have to labor, and go along with whatever populism fad comes along so they can maintain their place in the social register.
I don’t donate to the GOP any longer however I am donating to every Conservative candidate running; unless the GOP runs a Conservative president who will lead a Conservative movement this will be the only way to buck the GOP country-clubber establishment.
That said; I’m voting for the troops and their mission even if this means I must give up Conservative ideals to pull the lever for McCain.
Three major problems arise with your suggestion of more GOP outreach to minority communities:
First, there’s no evidence that conservative principles exist in the GOP. How on earth do you expect Republican politicians to articulate principles that they neither understand nor believe?
Second, GOP politicians are gutless. The prevailing opinion, and the one espoused by the Democrats, is that racism causes the problems in minority communities. The GOP must agree as they never point out the fallacies in the liberal agenda, as Night Owl did above, nor do they champion initiatives that would allow the minority communities to correct the problems.
Third, there is no leadership in the GOP. Any outreach program requires clear articulation of principles, a vision for the future, and a significant time commitment… in short, it requires leadership. Anyone reviewing the last 10-15 years would conclude that the GOP has no principles, and a review of this primary season demonstrates the lack of vision.
And then one could also make the argument that the GOP experiment in pandering to minorities is at the heart of the GOP’s problems.
The callous indifference of our politicians to the havoc that illegal aliens have brought to our citizens and communities (form of drunk driving fatalities, rapes, human trafficking, growth of gangs and crime, overwhelmed social services, fraud, slumlords, etc).
This ‘reach out’ to those who are not permitted to vote is quite puzzling. Or is that law to be ignored as well?
Perhaps the GOP needs to stop alienating citizens before doing any more of its disastrous ‘reaching out’.
James David Manning, HRC supporter, has some very harsh things to say about black politics in the middle of a sermon in which he viciously attacks Obama. Warning, some of this stuff offends me and might offend other readers too. But there is a rage in it that is crying out in a confused, inarticulate way for conservative values, and to understand the rage the unvarnished language must be examined. From a transcript on Rush’s website. I edited out Limbaugh’s editorial comments to focus on the purity of Manning’s rant.
Now if that isn’t a cry for help from conservatives I’ve never heard one!
J.C. Watts for Veep! Yeah! Don’t just nudge him, whack him with a 2×4! Should already be a done deal!
I largely agree with syn’s post above. The current leadership in the GOP doesn’t so much write off minorities as abandon many of the core economic conservative values. Attempts to include minorities range from including blacks in the highest administrative offices to cheap rank pandering to the lowest common denominator. As for high level appointments, there’s nothing wrong with it, and one may have expected a better response from blacks, for example. But how meanigful has this outreach been? Many blacks have simply repudiated these gestures as window dressing, or disgracefully labeled Rice and Powell “house negroes” or “Oreos” or on the other hand, promoting catastrophic open borders policies which pander to Hispanics invaders in the most cynical manner have also failed on every level. This disaster may have attracted a few Latino votes, but at what cost? We’ve encouraged lawlessness, encouraged millions more to storm our borders, and probably secured a pipeline of millions of leftist minions who will buy into the Marxist politics of grievance theater for generations.
An excellent point is made by Johnson above that appealing to the independent and enterprising fiber in many minorities would go much further than hollow, cynical, and feckless rudderless appeals.
“And it could particularly be a colossal failing to ignore minority communities this election season, when the flap over Barack Obama’s questionable associations has seen the racial debate taken in a disturbing direction that strays from the colorblind, hand-in-hand path of brotherhood envisioned by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.”
Flap? You call this story a flap? This “flap” is akin to learning, say, that John McCain (though he talks a tough line on whuppin’ Islamofacism) has actually been a dues-paying member of Code Pink over the past five years!
And I’m sorry, but the GOP cannot save “the black community” from themselves or from their liberal-elite “friends” — *that* will require a grass-roots reactionary awakening within the community itself. This is not something that GOP “whiteys” and their “Negro Uncle Toms” can influence in any meaningful way.
The GOP welcomes everyone to join its ranks. We are the true colorblind party. But there’s no forcing the horse to drink.
In short, outreach to minorities is a long-term investment, and always ends up taking a back seat to this year’s election priorities.
I find James Baker’s famous quote “F*** the Jews; they don’t vote for us anyway” extremely offensive, but you can’t argue with the short-term logic of it.
I got two words for you: Michael Steele.
Until such time, if ever, as the African-American community shows some willingness, no matter how slight, to break ranks with the Democrats, the Republican Party should not waste time and effort on that community.
Maybe, just maybe, the current imbroglio between He Who Must Not Be Middle Named and the Hillbillies, will be the wake up call. But it will not be until after the November elections that we can know that.
The idea that any single political party should “reach out” to this or that group in America and promise this or that…is antithetical to the spirit of the Constitution.
Such approaches to politics are actually a weakening of the representative Republic.
The democrat candidates actually alter their message depending on which group they’re addressing in which state.
So NAFTA is all roses in Texas (Hillary supported it, as her just released White House schedules make clear), but, NAFTA sucks speaking in Ohio, where Ohioans blame it for a loss of jobs.
And Barack Obama tells a Hispanic audience in Los Angeles that Mexicans in the country illegally haven’t taken jobs from inner city youth, and says something completely opposite to this in another state.
In Las Vegas, Hillary melodramatically tells the husband of a woman illegally in the country that “no woman is illegal”.
Who could call all of these appeals anything but pandering ? No thanks.
For the record, I see much more active inclusion of “minorities” in Republican politics than I do in Democrat politics. Democrats seem to think of and treat members of (so called) minorities as children to whom they make promises and assurances.
The purpose of this government, as conceived, is not to make you a happy camper by giving you stuff.
And who remembers that anymore ?
Anyway, before I leave this hot topic for the nonce…
I do believe that many persons of melanin (aka “blacks”) are seeing through the rants of the victimology and race pimps like Jesse and Al.
And gravitating away from those never ending messages of oppression and hopelessness. On their own, without necessity of the Republican party pandering to them.
And I’ll throw the Reverend Jeremiah into that ugly lump, as well.
It has always been a matter of wonderment to me that American BLacks and Jews have sided so uniformly with the People’s Democratic Party, an institution led by closet anti-semites and bigots, whose neo-stalinist programs could literally mean death to these two groups.
As long as the Jews of this country fear to “make a scene” and black people can be conned with permanent victimhood, then I despair of them ever becoming fully enfranchised and functional American citizens.
Why bother? Watch politicians who campaign to minorities. They offer handouts and “honored victim” status. The only way for the GOP to compete with this is to make sure that the liberal public schools and media actually teach people economics and the value of liberty and independence. Fat chance. One could even argue that the lack of educational achievement in the black community dooms blacks to fall for the infantile arguments and policies of the Democrats.
Minorities in the US have their hand out. Not all, just 90%. They are not worth changing our values.
Look at the Obama/Clinton contest. You have blacks who are blatantly racist voting for the unknown socialist because he is black (the media downplays his socialism, if they knew how socialist he was, they would all turn to him) or else they are voting for the known socialist Clinton dynasty, where excuse making and handouts are guaranteed.
and
As they say on lolcats, “ur doin it wrong”. You can’t compete with donkey pandering, but but you can peel a few independent thinkers away from the fringe by making the (obvious) case that all the goodies aren’t helping. Over time, you may erode the monopoly this way.
The alternative is to let demographic trends relegate the white conservative to the scrap heap of history. They have demographics on their side. Republicans don’t have the luxury of considering some sort of appeal to minorities to be optional.
This fight has to be fought, because there’s nowhere to run to.
That seems to be a question often asked and reporters always are astounded by the answer, there is a high cost to low turnout formula that will not be overcome. Sure, we can all agree that the GOP should do well with blacks, as they share many issues. Yet, when voting day comes the majority of blacks pull the lever for the party that patronizes them and does little. Look at appointments; it took a GOP President to appoint Blacks to the highest Cabinet posts. Clinton could have done it, but he did not. Bush did not put people in office based on political expediency (if he did it might have helped him more in the long run).
It seems that there is nothing that the GOP can do short of the distasteful pandering of the race hustlers to get Blacks to vote for them. If they did start pandering, many long term Republicans would be turned off, as they were by Romney’s pandering forays during the primaries. It is unseemly to promise everything to everyone, that might work for Democrats, but we are not Democrats. No, the Black community needs to see for themselves that they are stooges to the Democrats, nothing but another block of safe votes that can be ignored and mistreated and only then will they look for an alternative. Bush 43 tried very hard by going to events where he was unwelcomed like the NAACP and Urban League and then they funded a commercial that blamed him for lynching a black man. These groups act is disgusting ways towards the GOP, but get offended when GOP candidates will not give them the time of day.
What I’m hearing people say is:
It’s hard.
It’s thankless.
Low bang/buck ratio.
Well, duh. The low hanging fruit has been picked. The high hanging fruit, too. The only additional fruit you’re going to get is in the other guy’s basket.
Republicans aren’t supposed to be the ones who blubber about how hard it is and how unfair it is when the going gets tough. Are they?
There is one thing the GOP can do: completely eradicate any vestige of the Southern Democrats who joined and then hijacked the GOP as a response to the civil-rights movement.
Until that happens, blacks will continue to trust the Democrats more than the GOP, and rightly so.
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