The GOP’s African-American outreach isn’t working

July 18, 2006

The NYT’s Adam Nagourney explains today that the [tag]GOP[/tag] made a concerted effort a few years ago to reach out to [tag]African-American[/tag] voters — including Ken Mehlman’s acknowledgement that Republicans were “wrong” to try to “benefit politically from racial polarization” — but it hasn’t worked out the way the party had hoped.

The reality is the outreach was always rather dubious. As Nagourney noted, part of the effort had less to do with African-American voters whom [tag]Republicans[/tag] had rejected and more to do with improving the party’s image with moderate white voters. Regardless of the motivation, however, the drive can fairly be described as a failure.

“I have heard Ken Mehlman talk about the Republican Party as the party of Lincoln,” said Bruce S. Gordon, the president of the N.A.A.C.P. “I have not seen that evidence itself as much as Ken would suggest. If the party wishes to reflect the principles of Lincoln, it has a long way to go.”

Indeed, this week is particularly helpful in understanding why. In the last seven days, several dozen House Republicans, primarily from the South, fought against the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act, and ultimately the bill had to be pulled from the floor to avoid defeat at the hands of the far-right. At the same time, the Bush White House entered into “negotiations” with the [tag]NAACP[/tag] over a possible [tag]Bush[/tag] appearance, after five years in which the president has boycotted the group.

In case the Hurricane Katrina nightmare isn’t enough of a clue, Mehlman shouldn’t have to look too hard for an explanation as to why blacks aren’t flocking to the GOP.

Nagourney noted the party’s underlying strategy, which doesn’t make a lot of sense.

…Republican strategists have appealed to socially conservative blacks by emphasizing social issues like same-sex marriage.

[J.C.] Watts, the former Republican congressman, called that a “lame strategy” and said the top concerns of African-American voters were racial and economic issues.

“It’s a little bit insulting to all those pastors out there and people who stand with the party on the social issues,” Mr. Watts said, when the party then does “nothing” to help blacks on opportunity issues.

For a change, I think Watts is right. The GOP was under the odd impression that, like white southerners, socially-conservative African Americans would respond to a culture-war agenda. The party counted on the notion that these black voters would put aside personal self-interest and history because of, say, gay marriage.

As Steve Gilliard put it, “Until [Republicans] get serious about opportunity, like changing some of the drug laws and felons getting the franchise back, people aren’t going to take it seriously.”

Any chance of that happening? I don’t think so either.

And of course frustrating Watts right out of his office didn’t help either: it looked bad for an already lily-white group of Republican’t elected officeholders, and it made him willing to say things like the above quote.

Republican’ts: can’t represent anyone but bigoted old white males.

  • Let felons have the franchise back? Yep, that is not going to happen at the hands of the Republican’ts.

    I’ve always been a little sad about the fact that lower-middle class white Americans choose to vote Republican’t, against everything that seems to be their self-interest. Maybe they just worry more about their country than their children’s college education? But that doesn’t make sense when not having an educated populace is going to doom our country too.

    And I’m a little sad that African Americans would let their ‘social conservatism’ mislead them away from equality and opportunity as well as economic development.

    But maybe these people know what’s best for them.

  • There was a really good piece recently from one of the DLC outlets–I know, I know, but let’s not blame the message for the perceived sins of the messenger–about “post-material” voting patterns in the American electorate. Boiled down, the point was that while working-class whites might be voting against their own economic self-interest by supporting the Republicans, in an absolute sense their material standing was good enough that they had the luxury to do. (Similar to how George Soros, Peter Lewis, Hollywood machers, et al tend to vote Democratic.)

    Perhaps the Republicans thought that this might also hold for African-Americans, despite their very different historical experience–i.e., that they’d embrace anti-gay bigotry at the cost of their own prospects. To which I’d say to Rove and Mehlman: guess not, jerks.

  • I already commented at some length (Will v. Kristol, #9) on “the party of Lincoln’s” problems with black voters. Suffice to say, I’m glad they – unlike many working class whites — know where there economic interests lie, what really matters. I do sometimes allow myself the luxury of wishing religion didn’t have such a strangle hold on America. The old time religion, with its hatred of gays and promises of pie-in-the-sky-bye-and-bye (through a grave on green hillside, etc. etc.), might make some feel good (the way the hymns actually do). I’d rather their children felt full, in their stomachs and in their aspirations for rewarding lives. Why we punish blacks so much more severely than whites is beyond me. Why we punish anyone as severely as we do in this country is beyond me. Why we won’t let released felons vote is beyond me.

    We are a vindictive bunch, aren’t we?

  • Perhaps when outreach means extending a hand instead of a single finger African Americans (read also pretty much every other dispossessed subgroup that the GOP routinely ignores until the quadrennial panderfest before election day) will take the effort seriously. Until then a few black faces on the podium won’t hide the fact that the GOP is turning ever more racist and economically elitist and leaving the majority of all Americans behind.

  • The GOP is the party that supports flying the Stars and Bars, the Confederate battle flag and symbol of slavery. Is much more needed to show African-Americans the truth about how the GOP views African-Americans?

    Trotting out lonely and the few, I mean, African-American Republicans, only highlights the problems.

  • The GOP was under the odd impression that, like white southerners, socially-conservative African Americans would respond to a culture-war agenda.

    No, they were under the correct impression that they could offer up such an agenda without costing themselves anything.

    It’s kind of fun reading this site and Billmon back to back; it always feels like statements are carefully made here to give the GOP the benefit of the doubt (out of politeness, I’m certain), vs. the blacker-than-black cynicism of Billmon.

  • what a great phrase, “opportunity issues.” that’s even better than fairness. that’s what the democrats should stand as, the party of opportunity.

  • Are the Democrats really planning to do much on fixing drug laws or felon disenfranchisement? I haven’t heard them talking about either much.

  • Bush was partying and fundraising for days, playing guitar and eating cake with McCain while a lot of black people were dying in New Orleans.

    I wonder why they don’t trust Republicans?

  • Why we won’t let released felons vote is beyond me.
    Comment by Ed Stephan

    What really gets to me even more is that, while the incarcerated felons cannot vote, they’re counted, as “population” for redistricting purposes.

  • Of course the GOP is the party of Lincoln. He fought the civil war not to end slavery but to prevent secession. He signed the Emancipation Proclamation as a political expedient to help weaken the South and help improve Northern support for a flagging war effort. He at no time believed in black equality and advocating sending them all back to Africa.

  • I think you are being unfair a bit RobertL. Lincoln ran on a program of preventing the extension of slavery into the western territories (New Mexico and Arizona today, as well as the territories just north of them). After the new civil war arising from the statehood of Kansas and Missouri, that’s hardly an unreasonable position.

    But as Lincoln wasn’t even on the ballot in some Southern states, they went ape-shit when he won. The rolling secession of states along with provocations like shelling federal forts eventually lead him to call for troops to put down the ‘rebellion’. Of course, the South had been developing militias for years, in some part to handle slave revolts, but in another part because they knew they would attempt to secede. And attempt they did.

    I suppose the idea of sending African slaves, some generations removed from their homeland, back to Liberia seems racist today. But if you consider how badly they were treated after reconstruction, you might think it was a better option.

    Lincoln may have not been the most abolitionist of Republicans, but his party WAS abolitionist at a time when many Americans still thought they had a god given right and duty to enslave people.

    And I suspect that Lincoln came to respect African Americans a lot more after they took up arms in the United States army to help free their race.

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