Wendero wrote:
TheValuesVoter,
Let me explain: Blacks (and other minorities) vote democrat mostly because they are so reliant on government.
No offense meant to you, but, in my opinion, this is the most misleading and one of the most commonly expressed beliefs about why most blacks vote Democratic. The reality is that most Republicans don't have an understanding of why blacks don't vote for Republicans and thus have no clue about how to change the voting pattern.
I've written a lot about this before and still am working on my book on the topic. But, the reason that blacks and many other minorities don't vote Republican is more about a perception that the Republican Party is hostile or apathetic to them in addition to the fact that, for the most part, Republicans no longer bother
asking for our vote. It's hard to win votes from people whom you don't bother asking to vote for you. And people don't ask because they have convinced themselves, without really understanding or having much familiarity with black voters, that blacks want "big government" and "handouts" - the latter of these being a notion that I find somewhat offensive but that I've heard countless Republican candidates repeat as though it were a fundamental and unchallengeable truth.
Most blacks don't vote Democratic because they support Democratic ideals or policies. In fact, many black voters struggle with the idea of voting Democratic because they actively oppose many of the things that Democrats support. But they don't see the Republican Party as a viable option because they think that Republicans are either hostile to them or not even interested enough to bother reaching out to them. And when I say "reaching out" I don't mean reaching out in terms of "pandering." I mean just asking for votes - the same thing that every politician does with every other group - farmers, business leaders, factory workers, suburban whites, rural communities. They show up and campaign. They are willing to be seen there and willing to bother asking for support. They don't just do it once or twice in the waning months of a campaign. They do it continuously and use those repeated contacts to build relationships. But for some reason - and probably because of assumptions like the one you are making - Republicans aren't willing to do the same thing with African American voters.
And because of this as well as their continual fading clout with other minority groups, the Republican Party faces an increasingly insurmountable demographic uphill fight in every major election. It's like starting a football game in which the Republicans start every drive on their own five yard line and the Democrats start every drive on their own 35. You can't hope to continually win elections when you write off 20-30% of the population as not worth contending for - even when a large percentage of that population actually agrees with you on the issue.
If the Republicans lose, I'm hoping that someone who actually understands why it is that people vote the way that they do - someone like Mike Huckabee - has a chance to remake the Republican Party into a conservative coalition of people who actively reach out to fellow conservatives of every race. If this doesn't happen, the GOP will eventually become completely unable to win national elections.