That’s the title of a fairly predictable article by Mary C. Curtis for AOL. Curtis is a black woman, who quotes black Republicans on why the GOP must give blacks more race-based goodies, er, I mean, must reach out more to blacks, and make them feel “valued.” (Note that to Curtis, “minority” is synonymous with “black.”)
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Linda Jones knows the GOP has a problem, and she wants to do something about it. As president of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Republican Women, she would like her group of 200 to have more African American members; she said she doesn’t think it has any right now. So, in the name of minority outreach, last week’s meeting featured Toussaint Romain, and his topic: “Why I Became a Republican.”
At least Curtis mentions that black Republicans catch hell from black Democrats, and does quote one (white) Republican, Linda Jones, as lamenting that “We’re too PC and it stifles dialogue.”
Jones’ remark came in response to Curtis’ question,
“… if [Jones] thought that the party itself sometimes gets in the way of this message – such as when Sarah Palin defended Dr. Laura Schlessinger ’s N-word-laced rant on First Amendment grounds (and was chided by black GOP groups) or when Newt Gingrich recently excoriated the president’s “Kenyan, anti-colonial” mindset.”
Curtis leaves no doubt as to her own pc racial assumptions, but at least she doesn’t engage in deception or rancor. But she doesn’t question whether “minority outreach” (racial pandering) is in the interest of the Republican Party, or its overwhelmingly white base.
The GOP has been reaching out to, and sucking up to black and Hispanic voters for years. The results include the minority mortgage meltdown and the election victory of the John Doe calling himself “Barack Obama.”
Blacks and Hispanics have always demanded and gotten race and ethnicity-based handouts, at the expense of the party’s white base. And still, they vote overwhelmingly Democrat, and always will. The more the GOP reaches out to minorities, the more its white base will stay home on Election Day, as occurred in 2008. And black Republicans, most notoriously today racist Party Chairman Michael Steele, consistently bite the hand that feeds them.
The article has an accompanying picture of Colin Powell, the ultimate embodiment of the black Republican. When his military career was on the rocks, due to a lousy evaluation, Ronald Reagan rescued him. The Party was willing to make him its standard bearer in 1996, when he likely would have won, but he chickened out. When the RNC made him its keynote speaker at the 1996 convention, he stabbed it in the back, with a pc speech more appropriate to a Democratic National Convention. Ronald Reagan made him national security advisor, George H. W. Bush made him chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and George W. Bush made him secretary of state. Powell repaid them by leaking like a sieve, in order to harm them and increase his power with the media, and ultimately by giving the party the Judas kiss of endorsing “Obama,” as did just about every other major black Republican I can think of, whose career was based on Party support (J.C. Watts, Armstrong Williams, et al.).
Mary Curtis inadvertently shows why pandering to blacks is a waste of time for Republicans.
“Black folks are by and large conservative people,” and should be attracted to the GOP, [“C. Morgan Edwards, a black Republican who is running for the North Carolina state Senate with the backing of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Republican Women”] said. However, in terms of signing up recruits, neither his comment that too many African Americans relate to the Democratic Party because “you can get something free,” nor Romain’s remark that he was taught “never to ask for a hand out” but to always “have my hand out to help” seemed likely to help.
If not even having black Republicans criticize the black welfare mentality is acceptable, there is nothing that Republicans can do to attract blacks, while remaining recognizably Republican. And imitating Democrats hasn’t worked, because black voters will always prefer real Democrats to imitators.
The notion of blacks and Hispanics being natural-born Republicans is a canard that is kept alive largely by black and Hispanic GOP consultants.
Minority outreach has nothing but negatives for the GOP. As Steve Sailer has pointed out for 10 years, its viability as a national party depends on its engaging in “in-reach” to its white base. Unfortunately, the Party has long been run by people who have neither the intelligence nor the fortitude to do that. If that doesn’t change, demographics will, to the point where even if whites stay with the party, there won’t be enough left of them to elect a Republican dog catcher. When that happens, which at this rate will be during our lifetimes, the Party will simply die. As will America.
