At Human Events, D.R. Tucker posts a thoughtful reaction to my Guardian commentary on conservatives who are willing to give President Obama a chance.
Tucker detects wistfulness on the part of conservatives who wonder how things might have turned out differently if the Republican Party hadn’t spent two generations driving away African-American voters. He writes:
Obama and other post-civil-rights-movement black leaders came of age in a time when they were told, in ways direct and subtle, that the GOP wasn’t really interested in them. Perhaps if the GOP had attempted to attract black support in those days, charismatic and gifted figures like Obama would have become conservative Republicans instead of liberal Democrats.
There’s a missing ingredient here. The Republican flight from empiricism, embodied in such divisive figures as Sarah Palin and George W. Bush himself, has at least as much to do as race when it comes to the GOP’s failure to attract people who like their politics reality-based.
But there’s no doubt that the Republicans have finally shrunk their tent to such an extent that it can no longer hold a majority — at least not as presently constituted.
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With half the party squarely behind Sarah Palin (or at least the Rove/Sarah Palin style of Republican politics,) which is marked by contempt for empiricism and liberals in equal measure, I think it may take more than one cycle to correct.
I’d wait and see what two years of Obama and Rahm Emanuel look like and you may find the GOP tent not so small and good many Liberals with Rahm’s shoe prints on their backsides.These guys will try and run the country the way Daley’s run Chicago… African Americans have probably suffered more from that style than anyone else, but it’s the only way Obama, Raham, and Axelrod know to govern.It’s not going to be pretty and Liberalism in for the greatest shock.
Funny, but I remember watching “Tony Brown’s Journal” as a teenager, I think (too many years ago to contemplate) and he had a special about blacks and the Republican Party. The thinking, then, was that Democrats had failed to fully live up to the promises of the Great Society, and that the GOP under Reagan’s watch might better serve the desires of African-American entrepreneurism and culture in general, I guess.Again, it was many years ago, and I’m about the whitest guy on earth, plus I was a kid at the time, so I’m not sure I fully absorbed the discussion. But I detect something of the same wistfullness, now.
Democratic tent shrank in the ’90s under the withering attacks of Newt Gingrich and the self-serving corruption of the likes of Dan RostenkowskiIt seems as if the victor are less gracious in their victory than the vanquished are in their turnover of their power……and they ask the question as to why partisanship remains the rule of the day.
Just want to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the NYT endorsement of McCain as the Republican nominee. It was the first tell of the MsM ingenious plan to boost and then bust him as Bob Dole II and relieve the Dems of that nasty negative campaigning stuff. Worked like a charm. It is about even money that Giuliani or Romney could have flipped the necessary 3.6% of the popular vote.
One headline on Rush Limbaugh’s site today reads: “Reich: No Stimulus for White Males.”Limbaugh knows his audience, a.k.a the know-nothing populist base of the GOP. He understands that many of today’s rank-and-file Republicans respond to resentment and bigotry. It’s a pretty safe bet that those who shouted “Kill him!” when Sarah Palin spoke about President Obama are lighting up Limbaugh’s phone banks every afternoon.
There’s a difference between driving away from, and not pandering to.
In this new post-racial era, the GOP should avoid the primitive, narrow and patronizing goal of trying to recruit “more blacks.” Instead, the GOP should return to its core principles and re-charge the magnet that attracted voters of all races who delivered 7 out of 10 presidential elections to the GOP pre-Obama.Obama’s election is a mixed blessing for the GOP. A bitter pill for now, but certainly a signal to all minorities that the days of permanent victimhood and an iron chain to the Democrat party are over. Minorities, now shown they can be anything they want to be will eventually realize they can be any party they want to be, too. Returning to our core beliefs of low taxes, less spending, strong military and strong families, the GOP will grow in all racial categories, including blacks. Black voters being the deciding factor in the protection of marriage in CA, despite voting in droves for Obama, should be a building block for GOP growth. Lastly, the GOP must learn from the showmanship of Obama and utilize black Republican pioneers like the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Sen. Ed Brooke, Justice Clarence Thomas, Sec’y Condoleeza Rice and Rep. J.C. Watts in an aggressive “All Are Welcome” message to all races. The fact that I continue to make money on bets from those who wrongly insist MLK Jr. was a Democrat means that the GOP is failing miserably in the PR war.
In this new post-racial era, [which Republicans rejected in favor of a variation on the southern strategy pioneered in ’60s by Nixon and replayed in the 80’s by Reagan which exploits the fear of the “other”, in this case, the muslim, the marxist, the terrorist or atleast he who pals around with. And in the 80’s it was the “welfare mother” (your image was single black women with children, wasn’t it? Right, that’s the welfare mother Reagan talked about. “It was the core principles that won election in 6 out of 10 elections” (2000 was not won by the ballot,it was won by the lawsuit that terminated recount.)I find your “iron chain” metaphor an unfortunate choice of words for three reasons, slaves were shackled, convicts are shackled, and people don’t shackle themselves, they are shackled by others to deprive them of their freedom. How do you argue that minorities are not free to choose between R + D?If minorities are choosing to vote Democratic by an overwhelming majority, its because they don’t consider Republican a viable alternative. If you think fiscal conservatism is the pivotol issue, you don’t get it. Beside the argument Republicans walk the walk on fiscal conservatism has no data to support if from 40 – 43. Check the numbers. If you want to hang the “All Are Welcome” sign you have to walk the walk, and I haven’t seen anything in the Republican playbook that says “All are welcome.” To the contrary.
And Ronald Reagan was a Democrat who supported FDR. So what? You don’t think King would have seen the GOP’s Southern strategy and switched parties? It has been fairly well established that the African American vote didn’t ensure the success of Proposition 8. Mormon money did however, but I don’t hear you talking about how Abraham Lincoln and the Republican party pledged to destroy the Mormon religion.Clarence Thomas for outreach? The man who goes entire Supreme Court sessions without asking a question? He’ll be a great salesman for the GOP.Finally, fiscal responsibility hasn’t been a core value of the Republican party since WWII.
William wrote: “Clarence Thomas for outreach? The man who goes entire Supreme Court sessions without asking a question?”–William, Barack Obama, more than anyone, proved that it’s not what you say or do at work, it’s merely being present (and voting present) that counts. The problem that Obama causes the Democrat party of the future is that now there’s no turning back to the politics of, as J.C. Watts said, the “race hustling poverty pimps” intent on keeping many blacks dependent on government handouts.–O’Reilly, if indeed Reagan talked about black single mothers on welfare, what is your problem with that? Just 13.5% of the population is black, but blacks make up about 37% of welfare recipients. For Reagan, to raise the issue and try to solve it seems like a good thing, unless you’d like to keep that disproportionate number of blacks dependent on the government.
I’m not going to defend Clarence Thomas, but William O. Douglas, one of the great justices as well as a liberal icon, never asked questions, either.
I think what the Republicans will do is to re-emphasize fiscal restraint (I know, bold prediction on my part.) With Obama and the Democrats now primarily controlling the military and military spending, the Republicans can vote for various spending packages and play it as doing what’s best for the country (and being bipartisan in doing so.) And since they’re ultimately powerless to enact their own military agenda, they can’t be blamed for being soft. They can treat votes for stimulus packages or bail-outs similarly. To me, that’s their best chance of winning over the undecideds who will be up for grabs in coming elections without angering the quasi-Christian Right that they still need to stay afloat. The Republicans don’t need to win over the majority of the country, they need to win over the small portion of the electorate that isn’t staunchly in one camp or another. And pledging to cut spending and lower taxes is a pretty effective way of doing that.In many ways Obama’s victory will be a boon for Republicans, as it largely frees them from being saddled with the massive war spending that has undermined their fiscal conservative sales pitch the last 6 or 7 years.And let’s not forget, the Republicans ran a candidate who didn’t have strong support from the religious base (as opposed to Obama, who clearly energized the left to turn out in huge numbers), they had a laughable V.P. candidate (exacerbated by McCain’s age and questionable health), they were largely blamed for an extremely unpopular war, the economy was collapsing (not to mention that the overt villains of the collapse were the kind of corporate rich that Republicans are seen as being arm and arm with), and they were represented by a President who was just a tad unpopular. So I’m not sure the Republicans need to do a lot of reinventing.
Boy, that Republican Convention in MN really hung out the welcome sign to all Americans. I bet many blacks and Hispanics thought: I want to party with that crowd!The convention reflected the true Republican: old, white and mostly male. As long as Rush is their spokesman, they’ll stay that way and watch the country pass them by.O-Fish, I love how you say: “the GOP should avoid the primitive, narrow and patronizing goal of trying to recruit “more blacks.” Then in the next paragraph you say: “Black voters being the deciding factor in the protection of marriage in CA, despite voting in droves for Obama, should be a building block for GOP growth.”Love your declaration that we are in a “new, post-racial era.” With your extensive knowledge in the area, I’ll have to take your word for it.
if indeed Reagan talked about black single mothers on welfare, what is your problem with that? Just 13.5% of the population is black, but blacks make up about 37% of welfare recipients. For Reagan, to raise the issue and try to solve it seems like a good thing, unless you’d like to keep that disproportionate number of blacks dependent on the government.Reagan didn’t campaign on the issue because he wanted to fix 37% of the welfare system, he did it to exploit race for votes at the expense of black people. It is a divisive and polarizing strategy that works because it relies on racist beliefs held by the electorate. If Reagan talks about Welfare mothers (all, not just the black ones) and then pursues welfare reform, I give him credit for his integrity. If he talks about welfare mother as code for lazy black women with multiple children living on the dole, it’s race baiting. Your inability to appreciate the the difference explains a lot.
It’s not going to be pretty and Liberalism in for the greatest shock.That’s funny, coming on top of 8 years of Conservatism in all aspects of the federal government.
Republicans showed that what really bothered them during their years in the minority, was that what they really didn’t like what the budget was spent on and the fact that they didn’t have control over it, much less than how much money was being spent. Once they got tight control over Congress and the White House, they spent like proverbial drunken sailors. The big difference is that it was spent on things they liked. The concepts of smaller government and ‘tax and spend’ were just manifestations of their lack of control.
Dan:No one was suggesting Douglas should do outreach for Democrats. The very idea that someone would suggest a Supreme Court justice should shill for a political party is nauseating.
The link on that page to another, “Senate Republicans from states with Democratic governors,” contains even more ominous language. And I do wonder if the clutch of people who keep referring to President Obama’s middle name did likewise with previous presidents (e.g., William Jefferson Clinton, George Herbert Walker Bush, Ronald Wilson Reagan, James Earl Carter, etc.). Seems superfluous, unless, of course….
Jerry,I knew a retired professor long ago who insisted, tongue-in-cheek, that every colleague of his had a middle initial of “J.” And he would refer to colleagues as if they did, to the point that another colleague, who was editing a series of editions of old texts, listed (on the title page of the book) an editor’s name with “J.” as his middle initial — which it wasn’t.Which is a long way around to get to my point that we could all adopt Hussein as our middle name, and that would kind of diffuse things, yes?