South Carolina senator Tim Scott speaks at CPAC, March 14, 2013.
Posted on 03/25/2013 8:46:49 PM PDT by neverdem
South Carolina senator Tim Scott speaks at CPAC, March 14, 2013.
‘What have the Democrats done for you lately?”
Republicans should start asking black Americans that question — early and often. Doing so could become the GOP’s secret weapon.
As Republicans regroup after presidential and Senate campaigns that they should have won easily last November, they should seek votes among the 41 million black Americans whom Democrats take for granted, and Republicans lately have written off. Here’s why engaging black voters could revitalize the GOP.
Republicans need not win the black vote, or even a third of it. Securing 15 percent of the black electorate severely erodes the stalwart-Democrat base. If 20 to 25 percent of blacks vote GOP, it’s curtains for Democrats.
If Republicans seek black votes, they will win some. As the Republican National Committee’s recent autopsy of the 2012 election noted: “We are never going to win over voters who are not asked for their support.” The study lamented that black voters routinely back Democrats “without hearing anyone in their community making a case to the contrary.”
Campaigning among black voters would help Republicans stop resembling “stuffy, old white men,” as an RNC focus group described them. Listening to and speaking with black Americans refutes the notion that Republicans are just country-club Caucasians.
If Republicans largely campaign among white voters, Democrats will caricature them as racists who dislike or even hate blacks. That lie collapses when white GOP candidates shake black hands and kiss black babies. Doing so reassures nervous white voters that Republicans are not bigots, and it’s OK to support them.
Like Al Capone with a knife but no machine gun, Democrats would be badly disarmed without the race card. Denied the GOP = KKK meme, Democrats would have to double down on their phony “War on Women” and stoke class hatred even harder.
Bored by cautious, vanilla GOP nominees, Republicans and right-leaning independents likely would become electrified, knock on doors, populate phone banks, and cast ballots for Republicans who deploy this strategy. Mitt Romney contracted terminal shrunken-base syndrome. Had Romney visited black neighborhoods in Miami, Richmond, Cleveland, and Denver, unenthused conservatives would have become inspired and, at least, voted. That might have been Mitt’s margin of victory.
Such overtures to black voters surely would parallel appeals to other minorities. But even in a vacuum, such black-outreach efforts likely would increase support for Republicans among voters of Asian and Hispanic descent.
The Republican message should combine opportunity-related themes with historical facts about Democrats’ largely shameful record towards blacks (from stymieing Reconstruction to launching the Ku Klux Klan and filibustering federal anti-lynching legislation and the 1964 Civil Rights Act). Democrats’ treatment of blacks remains pitiful — e.g., celebrating the leadership of the late Senator Robert Byrd (D., W.Va.), a former Exalted Cyclops of the KKK, until his 2010 death in office. There also is Obama’s defunding of the Washington, D.C., school-voucher program.
Republicans should cite these additional steps backward — by comparing these material conditions on January 20, 2009, the date of Obama’s first inauguration, with those on his second, last January 21: The rise of black unemployment (from 12.1 percent to 14.0 percent), an increase in poverty among blacks aged 18 to 64 (from 34.9 percent to 38.6 percent), and a fall in black median income (from $22,901 to $21,206).
Besides addressing the NAACP, Mitt Romney did little to win black votes. Nonetheless, against Obama, he won 6 percent of black voters, 50 percent more than Arizona Republican senator John McCain’s 4 percent in 2008.
What if Romney had fought for black votes? He barely lost several swing states. With mildly stronger black support and a modestly tighter embrace among decreasingly “nervous” whites and energized GOP-base voters, Romney could have delivered an Electoral College squeaker.
Based on ballot results and exit polls, here’s how Romney could have added at least 64 electoral votes to his actual 206 and advanced to the Oval Office.
• Obama won Florida’s 29 electoral votes by 74,309 votes. To win the Sunshine State, Romney needed to swing just over half of that total, or 37,155 votes. Boosting Romney’s black support from 4 percent to 5 percent would have won him 11,106 votes. Lifting his white support from 61 percent to 61.5 percent would have won Romney 28,308 votes. These additional votes would have totaled 39,404 — enough to win Florida.
• Obama won Virginia’s 13 electoral votes by 149,298 votes. To take the Old Dominion, Romney needed to shift just over half of that amount, or 74,650 votes. Raising Romney’s black support from 6 percent to 9 percent would have yielded him 23,124 votes. Hiking his white support from 61 percent to 63 percent would have given Romney 53,962 votes. These additional votes would have totaled 77,086 — enough to win Virginia.
• Obama won Ohio’s 18 electoral votes by 166,277 votes. To grab the Buckeye State, Romney needed to switch just over half of that margin, or 83,139 votes. Boosting Romney’s black support from 3 percent to 5 percent would have added 16,742 votes. Expanding his white showing from 57 percent to 58.6 percent would have given Romney 70,540 votes. These new votes would have totaled 87,282 — enough to win Ohio.
• Obama won Colorado’s nine electoral votes by 137,858 votes. To score the Centennial State, Romney needed to convert just over half of that sum, or 68,930 votes. Increasing Romney’s black support from 6 percent to 9 percent would have delivered 2,313 votes. Augmenting his white showing from 54 percent to 57.5 percent would have won Romney 70,147 votes. These added votes would have totaled 72,460 — enough to win Colorado.
These 69 additional electoral votes would have totaled 275 and spelled President Romney.
This scenario assumes that a Romney outreach to black voters would have allowed him to edge past Obama. Of course, such an effort also could have transformed Romney’s persona so much that he could have beaten Obama handily and sent him back to Chicago with his tail between his legs.
Rather than duck and cover when Democrats lie about Republicans’ so-called racism, the GOP should stand and fight. Top Republicans terminated slavery, wrote the Brown v. Board of Education decision, broke the Democrats’ filibuster against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, signed the Martin Luther King Jr. national holiday into law, extended the 1965 Voting Rights Act to 2031, and appointed both of America’s two black secretaries of state.
What a racist party!
Black voters deserve to hear the Republican vision of growth, opportunity, prosperity, and personal responsibility rather than the Democrat formula of profligacy, indebtedness, and redistribution (unforgivably, also advanced by GOP socialist G. W. Bush).
A muscular, year-round appeal to black voters would benefit the GOP and black Americans alike.
— Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News contributor, a nationally syndicated columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service, and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.
Maybe.
Maybe not.
Probably would not be as helpful as seeking the votes of their base, which they have obviously abandoned and have wanted to abandon for quite some time.
What are is National Review smoking?
It's a possibility. I have no idea if GOP candidates even personally campaign in black areas. If they don't, I'll have to say I'm surprised. And I don't consider showing up before the race hustlers at the NAACP campaigning.
Yeah, that’ll work.
Drop the principles, or at least make them changeable based on who you are talking to.
That’s going to prove how trustworthy you are.
The GOP is dead!
I do not like the concept of “courting the XXX vote”. Using that terminology implies that we are going to do something different and special for this group of people. The conservative message isn’t meant to promise this group X, and that group Y. It should stand on its own, and apply equally to all. The republican party did not me to court my vote for special white stuff. I chose them by evaluating what they “supposedly” stand for, and rejected the democrats for what they obviously stand for
Where we are lacking is in articulating the message, and countering the democrats brilliant machine that demonizes every thing a conservative sais. Get good people who can show the way, rather than promise special rights, and explain why promising special rights to each group reduces the rights of all groups.
If the republican party tries real hard, they might garner 05% of the black vote instead of 04%.
Worth trying, but (way) better would be a GOP effort to find and retain good conservative women as well.
The GOP is far, far out of touch with quite a lot of moderate women.
My feeling is a lot of those women would be amenable, if approached correctly.
Do not lose sight of them.
Not if they (Republicans) start supporting “gay marriage”; they won’t!
I think we should exploit the gay marriage issue as much as we can with minorities. I have friends who live in Latino and black communities, and the amount of animosity toward the homosexual agenda is palpable. Just listen to some rap lyrics and you’ll see where I’m coming from.
While ‘gays’ might be niche for Hollywood bimbos, art students, and girls who watch Glee, most average males still don’t like them, and I include young males in that. They might try to sound tolerant in public, but when they’re screwing around with their buds, they’re attitude changes, especially in minority communities.
It doesn’t even have to be obvious. We just need to quietly slip into these places and sow some seeds of discontent. Let African Americans know that to Democrats, they’re yesterdays news. It’s all about homosexuals now. They’ll leave you to rot in your crumbling communities.
While I hate pandering to interest groups, we can put special emphasis on some of our core values when it benefits us. They’re good values.
The GOP gets the majority of married women. The rats get the majority of single women.
The GOP is far, far out of touch with quite a lot of moderate women.
The country has been pulled too far to the left already. How do you think we amassed all of this debt?
Post of the day.
We don’t need to court anyone. Even orange people.
We need someone who can EFFECTIVELY articulate the conservative message of freedom and liberty. That is all that it will take.
I am infuriated over the idea that the right has to try to woo such-and-such group because of the results of the November election.
We don’t need to embrace immorality or lawlessness in order to bring others to our side,
We just need one simple person who can effectively alliterate conservative values and the rest will fall into place. Because the values and ideals of conservatism win every time. I am praying for someone who can fulfill that position “for such a time as this”.
Yeah right... lets just do what the raciest Democrats suggest that we do.. After all it worked for them.
Yes I do give up on Republicans and am going Libertarian or any other party that has a clue..
Now we’re talking ping.
No they don't. They need someone to get in their face and ask "WTF have your Democrats done for you lately ... bring in illegals to eat your lunch and take your welfare check, too."
Probably too much to think of African-Americans all-of-a-sudden returning to the party that freed the slaves. It's enough if we can get a few to put on their think caps and if not vote for us, at least stay the hell home on e-day, just the way confused white Republicans do.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=83zsdo_XbRM
Why?
The Democrats are dumping the elderly! They're cutting MediCare because they want those old conservatives to die! Why???
Because they've got a new constituency. They've got Latinos. Now, sukkah, after forty years of voting 90% Democrat, after wrecking black families with welfare and aborting tens of millions of black babies... How long do you really think it will be before they don't need you?
My Black friends all blame Republicans for whatever is wrong and only give Democrats credit for whatever is right. How can Rinos be so stupid to think they will ever get any of their votes. Yet about 30% of Americans are registered Independent (and can’t vote Republican in primaries); I think most want to vote for a conservative but the Rinos General election candidates are always socialist. The GOP is incorrigibly stuck on NYC stupid; I can’t even hold my nose and vote for them anymore. I’ve lost all hope and sympathy for the GOP.
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