CNN Commentary: Why is the GOP scared of black voters?

And outside of people like Rice and Powell, black conservatives have to be paid to tow the party line. Anyone remember when it was discovered that Armstrong Williams was paid 241,000 in tax payer money from the Dept or Education to shill the no child left behind program?
 
And outside of people like Rice and Powell, black conservatives have to be paid to tow the party line. Anyone remember when it was discovered that Armstrong Williams was paid 241,000 in tax payer money from the Dept or Education to shill the no child left behind program?

I was so pissed.

Hurray government funded propaganda!
 
And outside of people like Rice and Powell, black conservatives have to be paid to tow the party line. Anyone remember when it was discovered that Armstrong Williams was paid 241,000 in tax payer money from the Dept or Education to shill the no child left behind program?

Yes, I'm not likely to forget that one. Even though it is hard to keep up with these people, and I do forget half of what I knew about them.
 
You don't' fight on someone elses turf. African Americans support democrats up to about 90%... most are from the inner city and are of a lower socio-economic status. To put it bluntly, it's a waste of time. Why would you spend money, time and effort defensively trying to pull some people into your fold when you could be firing up your religious base?

Blacks are Democrats.

How many elections have you seen where one party decides to spend important campaign time on wooing the OPPOSITE PARTY?

This question is just plain stupid. It's like asking how come democrats don't try to cater to Christian fundamentalists.
 
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/09/25/roland.martin.gop/index.html

By Roland S. Martin
CNN Contributor

Join Roland Martin on CNN.com Live Video at 11 a.m. ET Wednesday when he will respond to some of your "Sound Off" comments.

(CNN) -- That's right, I said it. And I mean it.

The GOP as a whole is completely scared of black voters, and the actions by the front-runners for the party's 2008 nomination show they are continuing the same silly political games the party has played for years.

Oh, don't bother tossing out the appointments of Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state by Bush. Yes, they are African-American. But I'm speaking of the party.

Ever since Richard Nixon ran for the White House, the GOP has run on a "Southern Strategy," meant to alienate blacks in an effort to garner white voters. They've worked the strategy to perfection. When he was head of the Republican National Committee, Ken Mehlman apologized for that strategy as he sought to make inroads among black voters.

Republicans will tell you they are the party of Abraham Lincoln, who signed the Emancipation Proclamation, but their outreach efforts to black voters are lacking.

Oh, yes, I know. Democrats have a stranglehold on the black vote, receiving upward of 90 percent in national elections. A significant part of that is a result of the party seeing blacks as the backbone of the party. But the reality is that when you have only one party that truly makes a play for those voters, of course you will see such disparities!

That's why it's dumb, dumb, and dumber for the leading GOP candidates to skip Thursday's debate hosted by Tavis Smiley and airing on PBS.

Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson and Sen. John McCain have all cited "scheduling conflicts" as the reason for their lack of attendance to debate at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland, even though Smiley personnel tell me they began discussions with then-RNC head Mehlman in February 2006. When the debate was announced earlier this year, along with a Democratic forum held in June at Howard University, the RNC promised their candidates would speak.

But those of us who follow politics knew that wasn't going to happen.

This summer, all of the Republican candidates, save Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo, skipped the NAACP and the National Urban League conventions. OK, I get the former, but the Urban League? President Bush has spoken there several times as president!

The GOP keeps blowing a big opportunity by ignoring blacks. And what about the debate sponsored by Spanish language TV station Univision? Only McCain accepted the invite.

Today's generation of blacks and Latinos shouldn't be seen as the same as their parents. An increasing number of people are refusing to identify themselves with a party, and looking at issues. Latinos have been a huge part of the Republican outreach, but the immigration debate is turning that in a different direction.

Why should the GOP talk to black voters, and what would they talk about?

First, I can tell you that immigration is huge in the black community, and gets folks riled up in a hurry (you ought to see my talk show lines when this comes up). Education and health care are also major. And every GOP debate has been about faith in the public square, and we know that plays well with black voters.

Now, when it comes to the war in Iraq, the GOP can forget that tune. No one is listening. And they are completely uneven on the issue of civil rights.

Here is an example that further explains the GOP's stupidity on this topic.

Several years ago, a Republican in the Dallas-Fort Worth area was trying to unseat then-Rep. Martin Frost, a heavily entrenched Democrat. That summer, a series of black churches were being burned. My good friend, Michael Williams, a third-generation black Republican, was planning to hold a fundraiser at his home for the GOP candidate.

He called the campaign and said it would be a good idea for the candidate to make a statement on the burnings, condemning them and saying it didn't make sense. The campaign said no.

Williams called back and made the suggestion again, and the response was they didn't want to seem as if they were pandering to the black community. He laughed at that because the campaign was bringing then-Rep. J.C. Watts, a prominent black Republican, to visit black churches with the candidate. Hello! That's pandering.

So Williams told his wife, Donna, what the candidate said. She replied, "Any man who is such a coward that he can't speak against churches being burned is not welcome in my home."

The fundraiser was called off.

Here was a simple opportunity to actually show that he cared, but the candidate was so scared to say something, he turned off a campaign donor.

Will speaking at one debate turn around decades of black support for the Democrats? Nope. But not speaking will just mean business as usual, and the GOP needs less of that.

Roland S. Martin is a nationally award-winning, multifaceted journalist and CNN contributor. Martin is studying to receive his master's degree in Christian Communications at Louisiana Baptist University, and is the author of "Listening to the Spirit Within: 50 Perspectives on Faith." You can read more of his columns at http://www.rolandsmartin.com

Because they're black. Duh.
 
You don't' fight on someone elses turf. African Americans support democrats up to about 90%... most are from the inner city and are of a lower socio-economic status. To put it bluntly, it's a waste of time. Why would you spend money, time and effort defensively trying to pull some people into your fold when you could be firing up your religious base?

Blacks are Democrats.

How many elections have you seen where one party decides to spend important campaign time on wooing the OPPOSITE PARTY?

This question is just plain stupid. It's like asking how come democrats don't try to cater to Christian fundamentalists.

Hey, you forget this random guy who's column I once read who's not a Democrat and is black!
 
while I do think there are more republican blacks than in the past, I hope Obama/Hillary get them out big time for the dems.
The cons are smart to ignore them right now though, saw a female black republican bitchslap a brother and the CNN host on the issue last night.
 
The obeservation that the Republican party is trapped by "The Southern Strategy" is essentially a correct one. For many years after reconstruction it was a huge obsticle for democrats seeking national office as they had to have a southern strategy in order to get elected and this often forced them to moderate either their views or their principles or both.

Then Nixon introduced the "Southern Strategy" and essentially changed the base of the Republican party from Corporate Managers and Main Street Businessmen to white rednecks. An unnatural coalition in which the former cynically manipulate the obvous ignorance of the later by frightening them with race so that they will vote for an economic agenda that probably isn't in their best interest.

This is not entirely the fault of cynical Republicans. There just presently trapped by this paradigm. One has to ask, how did they get there from here? The reasonable answer is that the Democratic party worked long and hard for many years at ignoring the issues that were important to working class white males. Nixon cynically manipulated this sense of alienation by white male voters in the south with his southern strategy and Regan brilliantly expanded this message nationally. That is, were the average white guy party.

The problem now, is that due to the incompentence of one man, G.W. Bush, the Repulican party is viewed as inept at governenace, exclusive not inclusive and they support an extremist economic policy that does not share fairly the economic pie (One could reasonably argue that Republican economic philosophy of the party elite is "What's good for us is what's good for America."). In order to break from this image the first step is for the Republican party to become more inclusive but to do so would require them to abandon the southern strategy.

If the Republicans abandoned the southern strategy it would probably be in their best long term interest as a political party. However, that would certainly mean short term loss of politlcal power while they reorganize their base and their message and this they do not want to do for obvious reasons.

Essentially it will take the Republicans to be the super minority party (less than 60% in Congress) in government for a generation or two before they will abandon the southern strategy.

But abandon that strategy it will as it is based on an ideology of racism and ignorance and given the state of education and economic oppurtunity and inclusion now present in our nation it is only a matter of time and probably not much time, it could occur in less than a generation if some leader in the Republican party has the courage to move the party in a more honest and rational direction.
 
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/09/25/roland.martin.gop/index.html

By Roland S. Martin
CNN Contributor

Join Roland Martin on CNN.com Live Video at 11 a.m. ET Wednesday when he will respond to some of your "Sound Off" comments.

(CNN) -- That's right, I said it. And I mean it.

The GOP as a whole is completely scared of black voters, and the actions by the front-runners for the party's 2008 nomination show they are continuing the same silly political games the party has played for years.

Oh, don't bother tossing out the appointments of Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state by Bush. Yes, they are African-American. But I'm speaking of the party.

Ever since Richard Nixon ran for the White House, the GOP has run on a "Southern Strategy," meant to alienate blacks in an effort to garner white voters. They've worked the strategy to perfection. When he was head of the Republican National Committee, Ken Mehlman apologized for that strategy as he sought to make inroads among black voters.

Republicans will tell you they are the party of Abraham Lincoln, who signed the Emancipation Proclamation, but their outreach efforts to black voters are lacking.

Oh, yes, I know. Democrats have a stranglehold on the black vote, receiving upward of 90 percent in national elections. A significant part of that is a result of the party seeing blacks as the backbone of the party. But the reality is that when you have only one party that truly makes a play for those voters, of course you will see such disparities!

That's why it's dumb, dumb, and dumber for the leading GOP candidates to skip Thursday's debate hosted by Tavis Smiley and airing on PBS.

Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson and Sen. John McCain have all cited "scheduling conflicts" as the reason for their lack of attendance to debate at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland, even though Smiley personnel tell me they began discussions with then-RNC head Mehlman in February 2006. When the debate was announced earlier this year, along with a Democratic forum held in June at Howard University, the RNC promised their candidates would speak.

But those of us who follow politics knew that wasn't going to happen.

This summer, all of the Republican candidates, save Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo, skipped the NAACP and the National Urban League conventions. OK, I get the former, but the Urban League? President Bush has spoken there several times as president!

The GOP keeps blowing a big opportunity by ignoring blacks. And what about the debate sponsored by Spanish language TV station Univision? Only McCain accepted the invite.

Today's generation of blacks and Latinos shouldn't be seen as the same as their parents. An increasing number of people are refusing to identify themselves with a party, and looking at issues. Latinos have been a huge part of the Republican outreach, but the immigration debate is turning that in a different direction.

Why should the GOP talk to black voters, and what would they talk about?

First, I can tell you that immigration is huge in the black community, and gets folks riled up in a hurry (you ought to see my talk show lines when this comes up). Education and health care are also major. And every GOP debate has been about faith in the public square, and we know that plays well with black voters.

Now, when it comes to the war in Iraq, the GOP can forget that tune. No one is listening. And they are completely uneven on the issue of civil rights.

Here is an example that further explains the GOP's stupidity on this topic.

Several years ago, a Republican in the Dallas-Fort Worth area was trying to unseat then-Rep. Martin Frost, a heavily entrenched Democrat. That summer, a series of black churches were being burned. My good friend, Michael Williams, a third-generation black Republican, was planning to hold a fundraiser at his home for the GOP candidate.

He called the campaign and said it would be a good idea for the candidate to make a statement on the burnings, condemning them and saying it didn't make sense. The campaign said no.

Williams called back and made the suggestion again, and the response was they didn't want to seem as if they were pandering to the black community. He laughed at that because the campaign was bringing then-Rep. J.C. Watts, a prominent black Republican, to visit black churches with the candidate. Hello! That's pandering.

So Williams told his wife, Donna, what the candidate said. She replied, "Any man who is such a coward that he can't speak against churches being burned is not welcome in my home."

The fundraiser was called off.

Here was a simple opportunity to actually show that he cared, but the candidate was so scared to say something, he turned off a campaign donor.

Will speaking at one debate turn around decades of black support for the Democrats? Nope. But not speaking will just mean business as usual, and the GOP needs less of that.

Roland S. Martin is a nationally award-winning, multifaceted journalist and CNN contributor. Martin is studying to receive his master's degree in Christian Communications at Louisiana Baptist University, and is the author of "Listening to the Spirit Within: 50 Perspectives on Faith." You can read more of his columns at http://www.rolandsmartin.com


More millionares than ever before. :clink:
 
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