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Why the GOP Can't Win With Minorities (Excellent Column)
WSJ ^ | 3/16/09 | Shelby Steele

Posted on 03/16/2009 4:14:41 AM PDT by RangerM

Today conservatism is stigmatized in our culture as an antiminority political philosophy. In certain quarters, conservatism is simply racism by another name. And minorities who openly identify themselves as conservatives are still novelties, fish out of water.

Yet there is now the feeling that without an appeal to minorities, conservatism is at risk of marginalization. The recent election revealed a Republican Party -- largely white, male and Southern -- seemingly on its way to becoming a "regional" party. Still, an appeal targeted just at minorities -- reeking as it surely would of identity politics -- is anathema to most conservatives. Can't it be assumed, they would argue, that support of classic principles -- individual freedom and equality under the law -- constitutes support of minorities? And, given the fact that blacks and Hispanics often poll more conservatively than whites on most social issues, shouldn't there be an easy simpatico between these minorities and political conservatism?

{more at link}

(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...


TOPICS: Editorial; Front Page News; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: blackvote; conservatism; elections; gop; hispanics; hispanicvote; identitypolitics; minorities; politics; racism; republican; shelbysteele
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To: pnut22

Most of the demo that you’re referring to is too lazy to cook a fresh Chilean sea bass, “with frikin’ lazers on their heads”.


61 posted on 03/16/2009 6:05:36 AM PDT by MrB (The 0bamanation: Marxism, Infanticide, Appeasement, Depression, Thuggery, and Censorship)
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To: MrB

Had I been given them for free.. already cleaned cooked and boxed.. why would I want to catch any. I do know how to catchem, cleanem and fryem, but I still have to provide them to those “less able”


62 posted on 03/16/2009 6:08:47 AM PDT by pnut22
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To: RangerM
The one party system is a failure.
63 posted on 03/16/2009 6:09:20 AM PDT by mad_as_he$$ (Nemo me impune lacessit)
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To: Mad Dawgg
You don't pander to minorities, you win by advancing an idea.

Agreed. Utilizing technology to get our message out there, though, is paramount. We have to use all avenues of communication because there are people out there who don't watch the news, or don't read newspapers, or don't go online. We have to use everything to get people to know what we stand for and the truth about what Democrats have done/are continuing to do to hurt our country and them.

64 posted on 03/16/2009 6:13:23 AM PDT by Heartland Mom ("Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives." - Ronald Reagan)
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To: jveritas

That’s the problem, you can’t even discuss ideas without being cast out. I’m no Obama voter, I’m pragmatic.

Discussion of reality does not make me a RINO or liberal it makes me honest. Why do you think the Democrats wanted to link our party to Rush? Women...women..women 53% of the electorate. Insulting the groups you seek to include feels good but does nothing to advance a cause. Must this be a echo chamber or are ideas ok to discuss?


65 posted on 03/16/2009 6:14:15 AM PDT by Evoter
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To: jveritas

Ok, you win, ignore the shifting demographics of the country and look back at how we won in the past.

I’ll ask you to not assign a liberal tag on me just because I had the temerity to suggest the “minorities only vote for welfare” meme was a self fulfilling prophesy. I don’t understand how people don’t get that. It goes to the central point of the article, minorities need to accept conservative principals as freedom and conservatives need to discontinue the demagoguery.


66 posted on 03/16/2009 6:14:15 AM PDT by Evoter
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To: Evoter

Where did you go Racist Liberal Troll?


67 posted on 03/16/2009 6:14:15 AM PDT by jveritas (God Bless our brave troops)
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To: jveritas; Evoter

Don’t make me pull this thread over and spank you both.


68 posted on 03/16/2009 6:15:33 AM PDT by MrB (The 0bamanation: Marxism, Infanticide, Appeasement, Depression, Thuggery, and Censorship)
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To: Evoter
What shift in demographics? Blacks are now the second minority in the country after Hispanics, so their influence on the elections is less than ever before. As I told you before you liberals are the racists because you have destroyed the black families in the last 40 years and have made a majority of them depending one way or another on government welfare, entitlements, and affirmative action. You racists have succeeded and now you have all the black votes locked. There is nothing Republicans can do to bring back even 25% of the black vote. The minority that Republican can focus on are the Hispanics but you liberal racists are working very hard into turning a majority of them dependent on welfare and entitlements.

You are not a Conservative or a Republican, you are an Obama voter and a liberal troll so do not try to fool us here. I have reviewed your posts since you joined few days ago and it is 100% certainty that you are a liberal.

69 posted on 03/16/2009 6:21:36 AM PDT by jveritas (God Bless our brave troops)
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To: RangerM
[So, paradoxically, a certain chauvinism develops around one's sense of grievance. Today the feeling of being aggrieved by American bigotry is far more a matter of identity than of actual aggrievement.]

This “sense of grievance” is taught to children by parents or other elders in the community and is reinforced by public education and the mass media. The narrow, defeatist mindset this indoctrination creates is a major impediment to personal advancement.

70 posted on 03/16/2009 6:23:40 AM PDT by Brad from Tennessee ("A politician can't give you anything he hasn't first stolen from you.")
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To: jveritas

very true. Even at the height of the GOP when Reagan won in 84 he only got 9% of the black vote. If the dems had an actual black guy to vote for like they did last year, he’d have done no better than McCain did. Reagan got 34% of the Hispanic vote in 84, about the same as McCain got.

The difference is he got 66% of the white vote vs 55% of the white vote and the white vote itself shrank from 86% of the total to 74%.

The GOP will never get more than around 10% of the black vote barring some massive change in politics or them running a black candidate. Even then a conservative black guy won’t get more than around 20-25% at most. See Steele in MD, Swann in PA, Blackwell in OH, etc... A moderate black guy like Powell would do better but I think even he would have gottena round a third of the black vote at most.

Hispanics are somewhat similar. W was an exception being from TX, having Jeb in FL with his Hispanic wife, etc... and he did make inroads but the immigration thing hurt the party badly. I don’t see them topping 35% or so any time soon.

We just have to a better job of maxing out the white vote. McCain still got 55% in the worst anti-GOP yr since 76 and the worst economy/recession in a generation. But it will be tough. Even in 2004 with a good economy, having terrorism/natl security and moral values as major issues, and outspending the dems, W still topped out at 58% and that just won’t cut it going forward. McCain could have replicated W’s totals last year and he’d still have lost by 2 or 3 pts.


71 posted on 03/16/2009 6:23:55 AM PDT by jeltz25
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To: Evoter
how can that group expect minorities to not see it as racist and against minorities when faced with generalizations like that?

As a rule, rational 'generalizations' become such as a result of truth as defined by readily observable empirical evidence.

PC doubletalk and/or wishful thinking changes neither evidence or the truth comprised of same.

It is what it is.

72 posted on 03/16/2009 6:26:24 AM PDT by tomkat (lexington, concord, flyover)
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To: jeltz25

Excellent post.


73 posted on 03/16/2009 6:26:54 AM PDT by jveritas (God Bless our brave troops)
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To: RangerM

If one must abandon one’s principle to “win”, maybe “winning” is not worth it!

Broadcast the new acronym:

O ne

B ig

A ss

M istake

A merica!


74 posted on 03/16/2009 6:27:34 AM PDT by 2harddrive (...House a TOTAL Loss.....)
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To: RangerM

Good article. Thanks for posting it. I agree with others that telling the truth should be enough to win people, as long as the truth is told in love. Too often it is obscured by the hateful overtones and bigotry of the person telling it.


75 posted on 03/16/2009 6:30:31 AM PDT by justsaynomore
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To: Evoter
...The larger issue is Women. Women make up 53% of the electorate, Obama won them by 13%, you do the math...

The press talked about the "angry white male," they never mentioned the "bitter single female."

These women need to realize that the policies they vote for hurt the men in their life: their brothers, their fathers, and their current boyfriend. Policies that make it harder to build wealth make it harder for a man to build a family starting nest egg. When they gleefully punish men with high taxes they are punishing their future husband.

As it gets harder for men to build the wealth needed to start a family they drop out of the marriage game. These women complain that they cannot find a good man, but they already made their choice of caregiver (government).

76 posted on 03/16/2009 6:32:19 AM PDT by evilC
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To: jveritas

“The residents of DC do not give a damn about school vouchers. They want welfare.”

Correct, those going to the “Man’s” school are “Uncle Tom’s.”


77 posted on 03/16/2009 6:32:45 AM PDT by A Strict Constructionist (I'm studying Voodoo...curses cast daily. Landrieu be gone to the devil...)
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To: jveritas

That strategy can’t work forever...minorities are outbreeding whites.

I say this as a new dad (who is white) - the percentage of babies in the maternity unit in our hospital who are white is a much smaller percentage than the white adult population...it’s anecdotal but also supported by statistics.


78 posted on 03/16/2009 6:33:02 AM PDT by RockinRight (How do you like your Savior now, libs? Looks like Jimmy Carter is no longer the worst President...)
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To: RangerM
I always secretly loved Malcolm X more than Martin Luther King Jr. because Malcolm wanted a fuller human dignity for blacks -- one independent of white moral wrestling. In a liberalism that wants to redeem the nation of its past, minorities can only be ciphers in white struggles of conscience.

Liberalism's glamour follows from its promise of a new American innocence. But the appeal of conservatism is relief from this supercilious idea. Innocence is not possible for America. This nation did what it did. And conservatism's appeal is that it does not bank on the recovery of lost innocence. It seeks the discipline of ordinary people rather than the virtuousness of extraordinary people. The challenge for conservatives today is simply self-acceptance, and even a little pride in the way we flail away at problems with an invisible hand.

Yes, this nation did what it did, and you nor I were there when "it" - say rather, individual people in a particular cultural and economic context - did "it." But what was the "it" that they did? On the one hand, (Democratic) slave owners followed the traditions of their fathers even though they could certainly see that they were being brutal. But after all, they were born holding a tiger by the tail, and they knew it. How, exactly, did one let go if one wanted to? And on the other hand there were the Republicans, who were not Abolitionists either - abolition was considered an extreme position because everyone knew that the white southerners had a tiger by the tail. And Republicans were as, or nearly as, racist as the Democrats were because the cultural differences between blacks and whites were extreme - and when culture and race are closely correlated, it is human nature to conflate them. So the Republicans thought in terms of "back" to Africa for blacks (who were native-born in America).

The real racism today is held by those who are self righteous enough to think themselves incapable of the sort of "moral failure" endemic to whites in the antebellum South. I put "moral failure" in scare quotes because although slavery was a "peculiar institution" in America, slavery was in fact an ancient and pervasively accepted - at least by nonslaves - institution globally and throughout history. That only changed after the Nineteenth Century decision of white European Christians, particularly Protestants and most especially English Protestants, to reject the institution of slavery and to oppose it on a global scale. Slavery was only delegitimated - to the extent that indeed it actually has been, which is not absolutely universal - by the successful opposition to the practice of the British Empire with its global reach.


79 posted on 03/16/2009 6:33:07 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion (The conceit of journalistic objectivity is profoundly subversive of democratic principle.)
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To: nathanbedford

Ain’t gonna happen.
One problem we have is that the Democrats can always promise more “free stuff” and they can always give minorities excuses for whatever they have failed to achieve on their own.
The most conservatives can offer is freedom and opportunity. And that doesn’t sell to people mired in perpetual victim-hood.


80 posted on 03/16/2009 6:33:20 AM PDT by Little Ray (Do we have a Plan B?)
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