In an article about the identity politics now playing at a Democratic presidential debate near you Lisa Schiffren lays out the simple reason why Republicans have never succeeded in attracting black votes.
In my bleeding-heart conservative youth, I once complained to Spencer Abraham — then the head of the Michigan GOP — that Republicans didn’t try hard enough to attract black voters. He repeated the then-current wisdom of the great, hard-bitten GOP strategist Lee Atwater. Atwater was convinced that the very process of attracting urban black voters would cost votes from the GOP base — not because the base was racist, but because white non-urban voters opposed the big-government programs that typically won black voters’ allegiance. There simply weren’t enough black votes to make it worthwhile for the GOP to court them and risk losing their base. It would be a net loss if it worked. Case closed.
What that means is that Republicans will start appealing to blacks when blacks decide that the politics of government programs is not for them. And right now there is hope on that front.
In City Journal Steven Malanga writes that blacks are suddenly waking up to find that Hispanics are elbowing their way past blacks for a seat at the government trough.
What’s the point, they say, of these quotas and set-asides if they don’t benefit us? What indeed?
Identity politics cuts both ways. It can give and it can take away.
No comments:
Post a Comment