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Title: Why Black Republicans keep losing.
Source:
New Republic
URL Source: http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w061106&s=clarke110806
Published: Nov 8, 2006
Author: Conor Clarke
Post Date: 2006-11-08 14:31:47 by Tauzero
Keywords: Kumbaya
Views: 154
Comments: 10
Why Black Republicans keep losing. In July of 2005, Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman did something unfashionable: He apologized. And it wasn't about sex or scandal, or even on his own behalf. Mehlman, speaking at the annual NAACP convention, was attempting to make amends for the way his party had treated black voters. "Some Republicans gave up on winning the African American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization," he declared to a somewhat dubious crowd. "I am here as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong." A year and a hurricane later, Mehlman was still trying to make right. And, at first blush, it seemed like he had a halfway decent plan: Get black Republicans to run for office. After all, blacks should, by Mehlman's logic, be a natural constituency for the GOP. Polls consistently show that they are more religious, more opposed to abortion, and more skeptical of gay marriage than white voters. And they aren't especially satisfied with the Democrats, either--which is why Howard Dean, Mehlman's Democratic doppelgänger, regularly promises that his party will "never again" take the black vote for granted. So Mehlman decided to call the Democrats' bluff, and helped blacks win primaries for three major statewide posts and eight House seats (with the reasonable assumption that black Republicans could win reliable GOP votes and black votes that would normally go to Democrats). There was just one problem: the election. Mehlman's plan was a failure. All three black Republicans vying for major statewide offices appear to have lost. J. Kenneth Blackwell conceded his race for governor of Ohio early in the evening, and Lynn Swann, running for the top seat in Pennsylvania, fell short by a double-digit margin. Maryland lieutenant governor Michael Steele appears to have lost in his quest for the Senate, and all of the black Republican House candidates have gone down in flames. And, while boatloads of exit polls and turnout reports will come out over the next few days, enough data is available to know that these candidates did not get substantially more black support, or create more excitement about the party nationally, than white Republicans normally do. (Steele did better than average, but his campaign consistently dissociated itself from the party, and materials distributed on election day claimed, falsely, that he was a Democrat and had support from key black Democratic leaders.) The failed GOP outreach to blacks shouldn't be a surprise. Black Republicans lose because both Mehlman and Dean are wrong: On the economic issues that matter most, the Democratic Party hasn't let black voters down, and, opinion polls to the contrary, they still vote on that basis. By most accounts, the bond between the Democratic Party and black voters dates to the civil rights era and the decade the followed, when blacks were drawn to the Democratic Party by Lyndon Johnson's push for the Voting Rights Act--and were pushed away from the Republicans by Richard Nixon's embrace of the Southern Strategy. But the romance between blacks and Democrats actually starts a generation earlier, in the 1920s and 1930s. In an attempt to shore up Republican support in the traditionally Democratic South, Herbert Hoover ran a campaign that promoted all-white Southern state committees--a tactic that eventually led to NAACP Executive Secretary Walter White calling him, in a memorable phrase, the "man in the lily-white House." But the GOP never looked back: The 1932 Republican National Convention had a smaller percentage of black attendees than any other in the twentieth century. By 1936, blacks were squarely in the Roosevelt camp. But blacks didn't make the switch because the Democrats were great on race--they did so because Roosevelt's social policies actually helped them. Individually, the new benefits might have aided them less than whites (New Deal programs were rife with institutionalized discrimination), but blacks also had more to gain: The Great Depression was so devastating that, to take one example, blacks were 17 percent of Baltimore's population in 1931, but they filled 31.5 percent of the city's unemployment rolls. "The simple reality that blacks were not excluded from the economic benefits of the New Deal," writes Princeton's Nancy Weiss in Farewell to the Party of Lincoln, "was a sufficient departure from past practice to make Roosevelt look like a benefactor of the race." The economic ties between blacks and the Democratic Party continued with the Great Society initiatives and, importantly, the prosperity of the Clinton years: for much of the 90s, blacks' incomes rose faster than whites'. Indeed, even at the most basic level--employment--the party of big government has been good for blacks. After the passage of the Civil Rights and Equal Employment Opportunity Acts, the number of blacks employed by the government shot up. By 1988, almost 40 percent of Department of Education employees were black--a figure that holds for many agencies. Part of this growth can be explained by the fact that so much government infrastructure is located in Washington, D.C.--60 percent of which is black. But the effects of government growth have been felt elsewhere. Between 1974 and 1993, the number of black women employed in state and local government increased by 50 percent; in the private sector, on the other hand, the presence of black women nudged up by less than one-third. Government employment turns out to be a two-way street. "The private sector is not as compatible in terms of hiring," suggests Notre Dame Political Science Professor Dianne Pinderhughes (with a charming euphemism). As a result, she continues, "Blacks are not so afraid of big government." And there is little doubt that blacks still vote on the basis of big government economic policy. In an AP-AOL poll from late October, black voters thought that the most urgent problem facing their community was the economy, and more black voters ranked health care and Social Security as "extremely important" issues than they did anything else--including terrorism and the war in Iraq. (The general public, according to a Washington Post poll from last week, ranks Iraq a full ten points ahead of the economy.) And gay marriage barely mattered: Even though two-thirds of blacks oppose same-sex unions, well over half trust the Democrats more than the Republicans to "do a better job of handling" the issue. "On Election Day, African Americans tend to put their economic and social situation in perspective," says Donna Brazile, the Democratic consultant who ran Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign. "Personal opposition to wedge issues like abortion and gay rights is not going to make anybody write home and say 'Wow, we need to vote Republican.'" Of course, you'd also have a hard time pointing to recent initiatives that would make blacks want to write home about the Democrats. But that's not because the Democrats took them for granted; it's because the Democrats weren't in power. Now that the House has turned Democratic, that will start to change: Prominent black congressmen are expected to gain chairmanships in three of the most important House committees: Judiciary, Homeland Security, and Ways and Means. And, according to research by David Bositis of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, that's also the case with 16 House subcommittees. These posts are important for more than just policy reasons; they shore up a visible and diverse leadership in the Democratic Party. It's one thing to appoint Condoleezza Rice. It's another to have a party with black leaders and lawmakers at every level of government. It's true that there are lots of other reasons why black Republicans didn't win this year--particularly the fact that it just wasn't a great year to be any kind of Republican. And it's also true that Democrats do face one worrying trend with black voters: Young blacks are less likely to register as Democrats than their parents were. In 1974, 80 percent of blacks identified with the Democratic Party. By 1994, just 65 percent did, and, among African Americans aged 18-29, it was less than 60. But that loss is not associated with a commensurate rise in GOP membership: Blacks still vote for Democrats, even if they don't always call themselves Democrats. The challenge for the Democratic Party will be to make sure that remains the case--that a slide to the GOP does not occur. And, while so doing, it should take notice of a different trend: In contrast to almost every other demographic group, wealthy blacks are more likely to identify as Democrats than impoverished ones. This means that appealing to blacks with big government social policy is win-win: By improving public education, economic well-being, and social mobility--and helping blacks into the middle class--Democrats can increase the likelihood that blacks will become Democrats. And these policies still appeal to the self-interest of blacks who don't make it up the income ladder. Republicans, unless they abandon a good portion of their governing philosophy, can't offer the same thing--the black Republicans that ran in 2006 sure didn't. And that, fortunately, isn't something for which Ken Mehlman can apologize.
Dream Deferred
by Conor Clarke
Only at TNR Online | Post date 11.08.06
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#1. To: Tauzero (#0)
Maybe if they'd stop all the hand-wringing, soul-searching and shape-shifting about being downtrodden, entitled, colored, afro-american, black-american, black, homeboys... (whatev), and just demonstrate good leadership, I could bring myself to care. Why on earth would someone who panders to the "get whitey" mentality expect to get whitey's vote?
(The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only true good news)
The state -- or, to make matters more concrete, the government -- consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get, and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time it is made good by looting 'A' to satisfy 'B'. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advanced auction on stolen goods. -- H.L. Mencken
Bottom line? Economics trumps ALL other issues. Black people who vote for Repubs are INSANE.
"I woke up in the CRAZY HOUSE."
Becuse they are double FAKE: FAKE blacks FAKE republicans
OREO.
the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal bread.
Were the Cheka exactly like you and me?
To make a long story short, yes. Limited government: It's a (mostly) white thang.
True, you have to tailor the message for the audience. For a white audience the keys are "equal opportunity", "level the playing field", "legacy of slavery", appealing to whites' sense of justice and reciprocity. "Mo money fo us", by itself, isn't satisfying for most whites. Holy and (purely coincidentally) money-grubbing, that's the ticket.
Economics per se doesn't dictate the outcome one way or another. Black people who vote for Repubs are INSANE. Given their short average time preference, I'd have to agree. If they had a longer time preference (and there's no objective reason why they should have one) they'd be better off voting Republican. But granting the premise that economics trumps all, what explains white voting patterns? Why do they frequently vote Democrat? The answer, IMO, is short term competetive altruism.
The GOP is for limited government? LOL! Ya kill me.
the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal bread.
Why Black Republicans keep losing.
#2. To: Tauzero (#0)
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
#3. To: Tauzero (#0)
#4. To: Tauzero (#0)
Why Black Republicans keep losing
#5. To: Tauzero (#0)
Why Black Republicans keep losing.
#6. To: IndieTX (#2)
The state -- or, to make matters more concrete, the government -- consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office.
Take heed and cower before The Lord's Chosen for a profit.
-- Subgenius Commandment Generator
#7. To: bluedogtxn (#5)
OREO.
Take heed and cower before The Lord's Chosen for a profit.
-- Subgenius Commandment Generator
#8. To: Starwind (#1)
Why on earth would someone who panders to the "get whitey" mentality expect to get whitey's vote?
Take heed and cower before The Lord's Chosen for a profit.
-- Subgenius Commandment Generator
#9. To: mehitable (#3)
Economics trumps ALL other issues.
Take heed and cower before The Lord's Chosen for a profit.
-- Subgenius Commandment Generator
#10. To: Tauzero (#7)
Limited government: It's a (mostly) white thang.
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