Dashed Hopes for Black GOPers

[Demeter]

Dashed Hopes for Black GOPers

By Earl Ofari Hutchinson, AlterNet

Posted on November 6, 2006, Printed on November 6, 2006

http://www.alternet.org/story/43962/



Black Republicans crash against a hard political fact of life. Though blacks grouse at and bash the Democrats they overwhelmingly vote for them, and even when they don’t they’re more likely to stay home rather than vote Republican. Their rock solid loyalty to the Democrats is not simply a case of blind and misguided loyalty. The entire Congressional Black Caucus are Democrats, and so are the leaders of the mainstream civil rights organizations. Despite the shots they take at the Democrats for “political plantationism,” the black Democrats and civil rights leaders are still highly respected. Most blacks still look to them to fight the tough battles for health care, greater funding for education and, jobs, voting rights protections, affirmative action, and against racial discrimination.

Black Democrats still accurately capture the mood of fear and hostility the majority of blacks feel toward the Republicans. Even when black Democratic politicians stumble, or are tainted with scandal, that won’t guarantee they’ll be knocked from their perch. Scandal plagued Louisiana Democrat William
Jefferson is considered the front-runner in his reelection bid for Congress. If he is beaten, it will be by another black Democrat. It took another black Democrat to defeat Georgia Democratic Congressperson Cynthia McKinney.

The biggest obstacle to black Republican’s hopes for breakthrough wins is their own party. The endless foot in the mouth, racial insulting gaffes, racially loaded campaign ads, by Republican officials and politicians and the refusal by GOP brass to loudly condemn them, or worse, defend them, continually ignites black fury. The fight of House Republicans against the Voting Rights Act renewal, Iraq war expansion, the slash and burn of job and education programs, and Bush’s Katrina bungle and his five year snub of the NAACP and Congressional Black Caucus deepened black suspicions that the GOP is chock full of closet and unreconstructed bigots.

The tormenting public finding that many white Republicans would rather vote for a white Democrat than a black Republican doesn’t help much either. Though many white Democrats won’t vote for a black Democrat, the top-heavy number of black votes that a black Democrat would get offsets white vote reluctance. In the Maryland Democratic primary, Cardin barely nudged out former NAACP President Kweisi Mfume. The black vote kept the badly under funded Mfume in play. Few of those black voters are likely to switch their Democratic Party allegiance to Steele.


Earl Ofari Hutchinson is a political analyst and social issues commentator, and the author of the forthcoming book The Emerging Black GOP Majority (Middle Passage Press, September 2006), a hard-hitting look at Bush and the GOP's court of black voters.


View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/43962/

[louis-t]

1. Good analysis.

I guess most black people don't believe the Repug rant that "they" have done more for black people than Dems.