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GOP attempts at black outreach are inconsistent and repeatedly undone by inadvisable strategic communication choices and a basic callousness about the black experience in America. Jeb Bush’s recent comment that he would give African Americans “hope and aspiration” instead of bribing them with “free stuff” is a prime example. This sentiment–one that casts the black electorate as a soulless and indolent bloc up for sale to the highest bidder–is as pervasive among some Republicans as it is spurious.
But the blame does not fall solely on the Republican party. Black voters have allowed themselves to be cordoned off into the Democratic party. Obviously, it was an easy choice for any rational, well-informed, and newly empowered black voter in the 1960s to prefer the Democratic party once President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society legislation further enshrined into law blacks’ equality and rights of citizenship. But since then, partisan loyalty has kept blacks from confronting both parties with policy demands and from forcing a competition between the two parties for their votes.
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But here’s the good news: We’re approaching the dawn of a new, post-Obama era, when blacks vote at higher rates than whites do and are frustrated that neither party has paid adequate attention to their concerns. The votes of citizens dissatisfied with both parties are up for grabs. Without the first black president in the equation, an engaged black voting bloc is primed for a pitch from new faces in both parties. The Republican who is strong on bedrock conservative principles as well as civil-rights protections will win the support of black voters at levels the party hasn’t seen in generations–I call him the civil-rights Republican.
Everything the Republican party needs to know about the African-American electorate is bound in this one truism: Once civil-rights protections are guaranteed, African Americans will feel free to vote in accordance with their varied economic and social interests.
This simple truth is mostly obscured by the party’s fundamental misunderstanding of black people and what motivates their voting decisions. Many Republicans have largely accepted, and even perpetuated, the false narrative that black Americans are beholden to the Democratic party because it supports them with social-welfare programs and unearned benefits. Blacks’ overwhelming support of Democratic candidates is assumed to be proof that the policy views of black voters are identical with those of the Democratic party. That assumption could not be more wrong. ...
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