There are conservative blacks anywhere, and I agree with you that the GOP should make more of an attempt to reach them. I was working the phones in the first Bush campaign when I got a call from a black man (who literally said he was calling where nobody could hear him because his family would jump all over him if they heard) asking us to come and put up door hangers in his neighborhood or hand out flyers. The response from the person in charge was a shrug, and then she said it would be a waste of brochures. So there’s definitely a problem.
However, the “outreach” that Cochran did was offering Federal freebies to a population that clearly thinks it’s incapable of doing anything for itself and that all good things come from the Federal government. Politicians have always offered pork - getting a construction project or some other project for their districts in order to provide jobs, for example - but the Dem/GOP-e approach to blacks is now the equivalent of offering fistfuls of cash to individuals: in other words, bribery.
It’s hard to compete with this, and furthermore, McDaniel would not have had the time to cultivate and build a conservative black voting bloc even if it were possible.
It’s not really a matter of “competing”, because Parker isn’t suggesting that McDaniels should have gone after the Liberal Black voters that swung the election to Cochrane.
She’s talking about drumming up an additional 6-7,000 votes by going to known Conservative Black parishes (such as those that are a member of her CURE network) and making a direct appeal based not on bribes and payoffs but on Conservative principles.
The only good argument against this, as just mentioned above, is a political calculation that in a short turnaround election where there isnt enough time to go elsewhere, there could be better returns by going other places.
It’s a legitimate argument, but I’m not sure I really buy it. If McDaniels was smart he should have been going there during the primary campaign, when there was enough time. Doing so might have even given him the majority necessary to beat Cochran outright and avoid a runoff.