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Monday, September 25, 2006
Blacks and the GOP
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Six weeks before November’s general election Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean told a group that casts itself as the DNC’s African-American Leadership Summit that their party can no longer wait until three weeks before an election to solicit minority votes. “In many ways,” said Dean, voicing the truest words he may ever have spoken, “the Democratic Party hasn’t moved itself out of the 60s and 70s.”
Of party appeal, he said: “If we don’t get smart about having folks on the ticket that look like the people whose votes we’re asking for, in meaningful positions of authority, then we’re not going to win. And the party that gets to do that first is the party that’s going to win.”
Without question, to be successful both parties need to broaden their base. And without question too, Republicans need a steady, long-term outreach to appeal to the growing middle class of minorities who don’t see politicians and government programs as the link to their financial security. Democrats, along with business, colleges and media outlets too, tend to measure diversity with a camera. It’s the “look-like” standard. It’s smart of the Democrats to make virtue of what they have as a constituency, but the party would be more successful if it allowed an occasional conservative, too. It’s not Kodak diversity, but it would help Democrats “look-like” America.
But that’s a lead-up, actually, to a more important question: What can/should Republicans do attract blacks and Hispanics? This is not a question about the election six weeks hence. We’re in the Pandering Zone now. The question goes to the next 5-10 years. My belief is that it doesn’t change core beliefs and it doesn’t do what national Republicans just did in pandering on the Voting Rights Act. It stands for something that appeals to all, and explains and recruits blacks and Hispanics who share its philosophy.
