{"id":7966,"date":"2006-07-18T14:42:33","date_gmt":"2006-07-18T18:42:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/7966.html"},"modified":"2006-07-18T14:42:33","modified_gmt":"2006-07-18T18:42:33","slug":"the-gops-african-american-outreach-isnt-working","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-gops-african-american-outreach-isnt-working\/","title":{"rendered":"The GOP’s African-American outreach isn’t working"},"content":{"rendered":"

The NYT’s Adam Nagourney explains<\/a> 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<\/a> that Republicans were “wrong” to try to “benefit politically from racial polarization” — but it hasn’t worked out the way the party had hoped.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Indeed, this week is particularly helpful in understanding why. In the last seven days, several dozen House Republicans, primarily from the South, fought against<\/a> 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<\/a>” with the [tag]NAACP[\/tag] over a possible [tag]Bush[\/tag] appearance, after five years in which the president has boycotted the group.<\/p>\n

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.
\n
\nNagourney noted the party’s underlying strategy, which doesn’t make a lot of sense.<\/p>\n

…Republican strategists have appealed to socially conservative blacks by emphasizing social issues like same-sex marriage.<\/p>\n

[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.<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

As Steve Gilliard put it<\/a>, “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.”<\/p>\n

Any chance of that happening? I don’t think so either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7966\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}