Jonah Goldberg had a column recently where he compared the election of a black left-wing President coupled with the end of the Bush era as the left-wing equivalent of the end of the Cold War—i.e. a victory that wound up leading to a massive unraveling of what held the team together (defense hawks, social conservatives, economic libertarians, going their separate ways).
Looks like it’s happening already. The gays, the socially-conservative blacks, the feminists, etc., won’t have as much to be unified about.
If the Republican party starts reaching out more to the black community on social issues, we might just split their vote. Probably a pipe-dream, but it’s the only major Democratic bloc I can see as reachable without compromising on our core positions.
It worked with the Prop 8 referendum in California, so maybe we can start by pushing for Republican sponsored referendums at the state level that would appeal to them. They will be more inclined, I think, to warm up to Republicans again gradually, by voting for a ballot initiative here and there, then maybe some local black candidates challenging white Democratic machine politicians in cities like Chicago.
Colon Powell and Condi Rice weren’t much appreciated I think because they were labelled by the media as Uncle Toms, and weren’t as visibly involved in the black community as the many black Democrats. If we can get some locally known people to come over to us and run in local races, people will not buy that media tripe as easily.
Not saying we should stoop to identity politics, but we need to take the war of ideas to new battlefields if we want to prevent the Dems and ACORN from repeating this disaster again.