Posted on 10/09/2002 1:57:31 AM PDT by kattracks
What's missing here? You decide.
It may very well take a generational change. I've seen how my parents (who are Jewish) have always voted for Dems, more out of tradition than out of a rational understanding of what they're voting for, because they don't understand that the Dem party that they remember from the Forties and Fifties and even part of the Sixties is no longer the Dem party of today (ditto for the Republicans). Their parents were Dems and therefore they are Dems, and they remember when FDR "saved the world" and when Republicans meant country clubs that they couldn't join.
There have been powerful forces acting to keep the new generation in the Dem party as well, but since many of the younger ones see a party that quite clearly has lost its moral compass and routinely acts against their interests, a lot of those folks in their twenties and younger understand that it's not for them.
I know that young blacks also receive tremendous pressure (from peers, from trusted adults whether in school or in church, etc.) to toe the Dem line and way of thinking, but I've been encouraged to see signs (such as here on FR) that the message of individual freedom and worth is penetrating the haze and starting to make an impact. But it may still take years and years to get there - good luck in finding ways to speed it up...
I've heard some nice things said about Rice. Powell is a virtual nobody, at least in this neck of the woods. Condi won some type of NAACP Image award this year, for whatever that's worth. I think that this was just a jive way to gladhand the Bush Administration. They've gotten nothing for this effort I'm glad to say.
I gotta believe there is a lot of pride about them reaching such leadership roles.
Now, listen carefully. Please don't take it the wrong way. You have fallen into the Left's trap here.
It's like this. Black people recognize good leadership when they see it. It has very little to do with race. Condi Rice has shown wonderful leadership in her role. It shows.
Now, read this article about a school district in Brooklyn. It's from The New York Slimes, but I linked it through FrontPageMag.com so NYT won't get the hit. Anyhoo, you will see what I mean when I say that blacks, like anyone else, recognize leadership when they see it, no matter what race that leadership is found. In short, you don't have to look just like us. That's a Leftist myth.
You don't have to earn this right, it's God-given.
Well, la-de-freakin'-da! Someone give that man a whoopie cookie.
I said welcome them, not patronize them.
You apparently aren't ready. At least your words don't indicate it. Conservative blacks - I would dare say the mainstream of black America (even though their voting and support pattern doesn't reflect it) - want the same things you want: safe neighborhoods, good schools, more opportunity for better work, clean streets, decent places to shop, freedom from worry...
And you know what? Even though they don't deliver, that's what the libs promise them. That's what the Gypsy Jacksons and Owl Sharptons promise them.
That, plus they - yes the liberals and the poverty pimps - get to tell the masses what the conservative message is. Don't forget - they are the ones in the media. Yes, yes, I know that we've got Fox News in our corner to help get a more balanced message out there, but Fox News is preaching to the choir. Black America is listening to the mainstream. When you ask them where they get their news, they will tell you, repeatedly, that they get it from CNN, from Peter Jennings, from Tavis Smiley. That they listen to what their talking heads have to say.
If you ask them about Fox, the response, almost univerally, is that Fox News Channel is "controlled" by the "evil Right Wing Conspiracy™." And because we've allowed Jesse Jackson to tell our policy to the masses, they truly believe that we are evil. They don't find out otherwise until they hear someone like me. Someone like rdb3. Someone like trueblackman. Someone like mafree. When they see that we aren't evil - far from it. That we have the same concerns they have. That we aren't being led around by poverty pimps who are using tin-foil lies and innuendo to keep their charges in line.
All we're asking; all I'm asking is that we be treated like anyone else when we come calling. When we come to ask questions. When we are deciding whether or not to leave the "liberal plantation." Because when you patronize us. When you generalize all black voters - which is what you and some others here have done - you turn those people off. You tell those black voters; those potentially new conservative black voters that all of the lies, innuendo, tin-foilage and half truths that the Al Sharptons and Cynthia McKinneys of the world have sold them is real and true.
When you do that, you give them more power. You make their job easier. You do their job for them.
I don't know a conservative soul who wants that. I dare say that you do not want that.
Let me boil it down to the least common denominator. Which would you rather have, an 8% conservative black vote or a 10% conservative black vote next month? And to put it even more succinctly, if your attitude marked the difference between an 8% electorate and a 9% electorate, how would you feel? Don't answer yet - because if, during the 2000 campaign, it slipped the other way, from 8% to 7% - more specifically, in Florida and Tennessee, as a result of your views, do you realize that Al Gore would be leading us today as we consider war.
Are you ready for that?
Also, Republicans seem to be damned if they do and damned if they don't when courting the black vote. If they do not court the black vote, then they are labeled as racist. If they make an effort to court the black vote, they they are labeled of putting on a show. What do you think?
What do I think? No shorts, no losses. It's like this. The GOP needs to approach the black vote with the subtlety of swinging a Louisville Slugger across the bridge of someone's nose. Something quiet just like that. ;-)
Seriously, it's all in how they do it. For instance, there are two issues that blacks would love to have truly addressed that are tailor-made for the GOP and that the RATS only pay lip-service to: School vouchers (the SCOTUS has now answered the Constitutional argument) and crime. There are others, but I'd like to start off slowly.
Gearing up towards '04, President Bush needs to find a current voucher program that is successful, and campaign with them about how these children are finally getting an education and also how their parent(s) appreciate their children finally getting one. On crime, GOP candidates should find those truly victimized by crime and address the issue with a realistic approach.
The GOP needs to highlight these things and shove them down the RATS throats so that their failures can be demonstrated so vividly that Stevie Wonder would look and say, "Damn!"
Fearless. Subtle. Louisville Slugger. Just like that, ya heard? All we need is ten to twenty percent. Never forget that.
Agreed.
What we need to do, on the other hand, as opposed to allowing the libs to keep their bully pulpit monopoly, is to take the message to them. If confronted with the truth in a way that eliminates the middleman that the libs have become; not patronizing, mind you, but moving forward in a positive way, then blacks who would have traditionally been considered to be in the mainstream begin to think. We then get to erode - albeit slowly - that stranglehold that the libs have on black America.
Trying to influence the "majority" of black America, and using that as the yardstick of whether successful or not is not the way to go. A better measure is a move from 8% of voting blacks to 9 or 10%. We have to start with baby steps. My 11 month-old is trying to take her first steps. Admittedly, she tries to run - which is when she falls on her face - but when she takes slow, deliberate steps, she moves forward, much to the delight of her mother and I.
This is no different. We have to move with baby steps. Otherwise, it won't happen, and we will (as we have in the past) fall on our face.
This wasn't discussed within the bounds of the article. And your additional assertion is out of line. "address them as Sir?" Please!
I don't know a soul that falls into that category. Not one.
Lose the broad-brushing and the attacks. It's unbecoming.
Put that puppy to music! 'Cause that's the honest truth!
The gentleman speaketh the truth that bears repeating - a lot. Thank you.
The accelerator is to take the undiluted message directly to them without fear. If conservatives believe what they say they believe, then it shouldn't be a problem in spreading that message, right? Conservatives must decide if they want the base to remain static or grow. If they want it to remain static, continue with the status quo. If they want it to grow, then by all means get busy convincing and selling the conservative idea. It's that simple.
Thank you. I know of no other way to tell it.
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