Do you think The Repubs will become more begiling to Blacks? And will blacks fall for it?

[Heather MC]

Chris Shay was just on MSNBC. He lost his New England Seat. He said in one city the Vote was 26,000 to 6 against him. :rofl:
He also said:

"We have to become a more in clusive Party
We have to reach out to the African Americans
and the Hispanics or we will become extinct.

When you run against an Articulate African American, it's hard to convienced African Americans to vote for us"

As a Sistah, History is important to me, I know Lincoln was a republican, but I also know that Jerry Falwall started the Moral Majority, to keep his private school segrated and be able to maintain tax exemption status. I am from Lynchburg, VA I grew up knowing that About Falewell and the Rethuglican Party. It's one of the Main Reason I cannot support The Repugs.

Lynchburg is still a very segrated town, thanks to Falwell.

Do you think the Repugs can shift and become more inclusive to blacks?

[FrenchieCat]

1. Only time and actions will tell.

But what you do know is that Black Folks normally don't fall for the Hokey-Doke....and the Republicans are famous for lying and attempting to hoodwink.

[Skidmore]

2. They cannot become a more inclusive party by putting

lipstick on the same ole pig they've been trotting out for decades. What I've seen in the days following this election is that they are trying to do just that. We need to keep exposing them for what they are. I heard a caller on one of NPRs call-in shows this morning say that he wants most for President Obama to resurrect the "fireside chat" and on a regular basis debunk the lies and propaganda the RW will try to feed the nation. I like that idea. I like the idea of him speaking to the nation in the same way he did to us during the campaign. Lay it out with the sincerity he so aptly uses.

[apnu]

3. He is right, the party that ignores minority groups does so at their own peril.

President-Elect Obama has proved that. Finally, the DNC recognized the minority power of the US, and instead of flirting with it, they harnessed it.

Frankly the Latino's where for the GOP's taking. They've clearly passed on them, even though the Latinos practicly gift wrapped themselves for the GOP. This election, in hockey terms, suggests to me that Dems picked up the Latino vote on wavers and put them on the starting line with African Americans and rode their success all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals!

But time will tell, the Dems need to solidify this new "base" right away. Which will be a bitter pill for the ultra-progressive portions of our big tent.

[AtomicKitten]

4. The Democrats have to once again be the party that moves civil rights forward.

Prop. 8 and similar draconian policies should have been framed as a civil rights issue. I am truly dismayed that the opposition didn't hammer that home.

[Heather MC]

18. Ok you might flame but only discussing

I understand by definition Gay Rights is Civil rights

However, I also understand black people's hesitation in clumping that into the fight "we" had for civil rights in the 60's which the time period the term "civil rights" is most associated with.

I have had girlfriends and boyfriends in my single days, and I personally don't see Gay Struggles, being equal to the struggles of Blacks in this Country.

People don't know you are gay unless you tell them. Being Black isn't something you can hide, unless you are really fair-skin.

Everyone is surprised that Prop 8 got the "yes" support of blacks.
I am not.

It's well known in the black community the being gay isn't something that is necessarily supported.
I remember when My father discovered I had Gay male friends, he had a fit, and scream, "The next thing you know, she'll be likein' girls" He thinks like many wrong think, being around Gays knowing about Gay relationships. Will "make you gay" Sadly, my Father didn't understand, the first relationship I ever saw that made me believe marriage was a good thing, was the relationship between a gay couple I knew very well. They have been together for almost 20 years now. Longer than anyone one in my family has been married. I believe they deserve to be married

Stupid, I know, but the black churches were told, their children would be forced to learn about homosexual relationships by their pastors. SO out of fear and lies and a belief they were doing God's will they voted yes to prop 8.

The Gay community needs their own Mildred Loving.
Someone willing to take the fight to the supreme court. Denying Marriage is unconstitutional
"All men are created equal" the end

[AtomicKitten]

19. I'm not flaming you at all, I just wish it had been marketed better.

I'm just saying it should have been framed for what it is, a civil rights issue, something that I think would have really resonated. When it's presented as a religious issue, misinformation cultivates fear, and that's when people lose sight of what's important. That's all I'm saying. It stripped rights rather than expanding them, and that IMO is unAmerican.

[Heather MC]

23. I don't understand why Our Government is ignoring the constitutions

"All men are created equal, and have certain ... Rights Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness"
Preventing a person from marrying whomever they wish, is a violation to that right.

I also don't see what's wrong with polygamy if all parties involved accept the terms of the Marriages.

It's also a violation of the separation of Church and State. People are voting against this because of Religious beliefs?

[BronxBoy]

22. To Answer your major question....

The Republican party will never, ever get our vote. Especially after this election where their true colors were never more on display. Cameramen just trying to do a job and getting called nigger while Caribou Barbie stoked the fires will leave a lasting memory in the mind of our collective psyche.

Take exception to your second point about Gay marriage. It's bullshit that you place all of the responsibility for the progress of Gay rights within our community solely at the feet of Gay folks. You know the 3 civil rights workers that were killed in Mississippi and became an iconic moment in the civil right struggle? 2 of them were White. You too easily explain away our lack of support for a lifestyle that includes many Black folk. Do we not have a responsibility to speak out against prejudice within our community just as certain White people did for our struggle?

Maybe the Gay community needs to approach and interact with us in a different way. But where is the recognition within our community that something is definitely wrong with our giving props up to a "separate but equal" situation for Gay folks?

Peace

[Heather MC]

24. I believe we should fight for everyone in our community, however,

Blacks are very religious, and Prop 8 was preached as an attack on their religious beliefs by lots of black pastors, from what I am reading.

So many blacks don't see it as the same. They view Homsexuality as being against God

Please understand I don't agree, I don't care who marries whom. If I lived in California, I would have voted NO on Prop 8.

But I am not surprised so many blacks voted yes. Stunned maybe, I never though for second prop 8 would pass.

[BronxBoy]

25. Yes

But you placed the responsibility for changing those attitudes squarely at the feet of Gay folks.

A lot of White people based their resistance to Black civil rights and their acceptance of slavery on religion. And a lot of White folks said that that was wrong.

Don't we have a responsibility to open doors as they were opened for us?

[Heather MC]

29. OIC, I meant people who are against prop 8 period. Neither gay or straight.

[NOLALady]

5. Who knows?

Anything can happen. Why, someday we might even see a Black President...Oh wait.

I can't see a Rethug shift of Blacks in my lifetime.

Hopefully, the Republican party will become inclusive and reach out to others. This can only benefit them. Their divisive tactics are unhealthy for our country.

[Uzybone]

6. Not in the next 10 years

they will spend the next 2 years feeding on each other. The 2 years after that running for prez (and losing heavily) in 2012. Then they will spend another 2 years feeding on themselves. At that point they will decide whether they want to be more inclusive, or keep listening to Limbaugh et al and go more divisive.

[cooolandrew]

7. African Americans are true blue Democrats probably likely to be for at least another >

20 years or longer depending how successful Barack is under his tenure. No other demographic has stuck by the party like African Americans and likely to be more so with advent of President Barack.

[NorthernSpy]

8. I dunno about that. Too much of their base truly hates blacks...

If you don't believe me, read the Freeper commentaries on the Prop 8 vote. Even when blacks happen to agree with conservatives on a given issue for religious reasons, the base still rains hot vitriol down upon them.


The hostility has a compulsive quality to it. It's as though they're psychologically dependent upon it, in some way. And that's probably why they haven't so far managed to build any lasting bridges with the black community, even though I can see a number of potential opportunities do that on various issues.

[cooolandrew]

9. They starved their party of air by demonizing virtually every demographic but white males.>

I think even their chunck of white males will work it out pretty soon as well.

[old mark]

10. The GOP may be the party of Lincoln, but that was some time ago.

They are more Trent Lott, Lester Maddox, Newt Gingrich, Rush,Tucker, even Ol'Patty Buchanan recently.
Personally, I am amazed there is anybody left in the Republican Party at all aside from the "religious" right.

mark

[enki23]

11. It'll take a long damn time. We are the party of civil rights.

We are the party that nominated, then elected the first black president of the United States of America. I saw some schmuck republican dreaming of using black opposition to gay marriage as a wedge. Good luck with that one anytime soon, assholes. You'd have considerably better luck trying to drive the wedge by appealing more to gay and lesbian Americans who many Democrats, to their (and our) shame, let down. Only, to do that would completely decimate your own base. You have no options in that area. You are firmly on the wrong side of both, and the great majority of your voters will never allow you to be otherwise.

Yours is the white nativist, racist party in a nation that is becoming less white. That's the only faction in your party that is growing, and it is antithetical to virtually *all* other groups of Americans. So long as you are unwilling to cut them loose and rebuild from the ground up, you will continue to shrink. Your "quiverfull" nutbags can't save you.

At least for the time being, Republicans... You. are. fucked.

[ecstatic]

12. It would take decades for them to pull that off

They still use so much "code" when they talk. The current republicans will never change. They can't help it.

[uponit7771]

13. This election was the last straw for a generation of blacks going to the GOP, there's NO WAY blacks

...are going to fall for anything they pull seeing the non-inclusiveness the GOP shows towards Muslims and gays

[Poseidan]

14. they must stop being racist

The Republican party will die unless it stops being what everyone, except deluded Republicans, knows it to be - a white supremacist group. The old way of spin no longer succeeds in the face of undeniable, self-evident truth. With the landslide election of Barack Obama, the United States has clearly declared, within its borders, it will no longer subsidize racism or government-sponsored racial supremacy.

[TheKentuckian]

15. The GOP is hardly even capable of inclusive rhetoric

John McCain is according to the wingnuts a liberal and even he couldn't even utter the term "middle class" much less speak to minority issues and all policies are dominated by the Reich. They have locked themselves into a death spiral that can only be avoided by going back to the drawing board and doing a serious ideological refit. That takes some level of acceptance that what they are doing is not working and the rank and file Republican is far, far, far from there. They will have tremendous trouble putting the toothpaste that is the likes of Phailin and SammiJo the Stooge back into the tube.

[knixphan]

16. They won't shift.

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20081106_Editorial__The_Southern_Strategy.html

http://www.newstatesman.com/north-america/2008/11/obama-liberal-conservatism

[AspenRose]

17. Psst....GOP....here's a clue

Fight to keep the few decent, moderate, sane people in your party.

You know, the ones who didn't bring stuffed monkeys to the McCain/Palin rallies.
The ones who didn't circulate "Obama is a Muslim!" emails.
The ones who didn't accuse Obama of being the Antichrist.

Kick the dominionists and neoconfederates out of your party. Let them form their own batshit crazy party instead of taking over yours.

I doubt you'll heed the advice, though.

[TheKentuckian]

20. You do have to acknowledge that kicking your base out

is pretty ballsy.

They don't have an effective voting base without the Reich and they allowed them to get rilled up with Palin and SammiJo the Stooge. They let them take the lead to an extent at least in figurehead sense and now it will be very difficult to get them off that track and back in line.

[political_Dem]

21. I don't really know.

It seems a mystery to me why anyone would want to vote against their best interests. But there are always people of color who are well paid and happily shill for the Republican party.

[Dr Fate]

26. It would be a welcome change, actaully. Too bad they are incapable.

About 2 more generations of their low information, rural white base needs to die off b/f they could even attempt such a thing.

[BronxBoy]

27. I heard that

there were 37 Black delegates at the RNC. 37

And this was before the hate-a-thon that appeared during the campaign.

So a follow-up questions are how much they are being paid or are they THAT delusional to think the Republican party represents an alternative path for Blacks

[qwlauren35]

28. YES.

But it would be very uphill.

It started 4 years ago, when Bush won a lot of the born-again Christian vote. It can happen again. Huge numbers of black voters are conservative. All that would be needed would be for the Republican party to hunt down and champion black Christians, and get them nominated... and a lot of us would defect.

I'd actually like to see it happen. We should have never aligned to a single party. It has hurt us more than it has helped.

[theothersnippywshrub]

30. Probably not any time soon. Opposition to the Civil Rights Acts and the adoption

of the Republican Southern Strategy are what drove black voters away from the GOP. Prior to the enactment of the Civil Rights Acts and the subsequent adoption of the Republican Southern Strategy, the black vote was split between the parties. In 1956, Eisenhower got 39 percent of the black vote. In 1960, Richard Nixon received 32 percent of the black vote. In 1964, LBJ got 94% of the black vote.

The huge swing between 1960 and 1964 was because of Barry Goldwater's, and other conservative republicans' opposition to the the Civil Rights Acts and because Martin Luther King Jr. changed from being officially neutral in the 1960 election to opposing Goldwater in 1964.

King's neutrality changed dramatically by 1964. King declared that though Barry Goldwater was not racist, his positions gave aid and comfort to racists:

I had no alternative but to urge every Negro and white person of goodwill to vote against Mr. Goldwater and to withdraw support from any Republican candidate that did not publicly disassociate himself from Senator Goldwater and his philosophy.

http://www.nationalreview.com/george/george071200.html

In fairness to republicans, the Civil Rights Acts were opposed by most Southern democrats (of which there were many) and by Southern republicans (of which there were few). However, many of the then prominent democrats are now known as republicans; Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, Trent Lott, Phil Gramm, and many other racist "dixiecrats" switched parties.

In 1970, one of Richard Nixon's political strategists, Kevin Phillips, talked about the Republican Southern Strategy in the following terms:

From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

And one of Ronald Reagan's political consultants and later head of the RNC, Lee Atwater, described the Republican Southern Strategy as follows:

You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

How republicans can change their history to appeal to black voters is a mystery to me. For every black vote they gain in the future, they will risk losing a racist white vote. And many of the most bigoted and racist republicans now are dedicated to alienating the Hispanic vote. The republicans have made their bed out of evil and hatred and they may have to lie in it for another generation or two.

[Orsino]

31. Oh, they'll try.

In their tone-deaf little ways, they'll try.

Because you know African-Americans will be hungry for rich old white men telling them what a lousy job Obama is doing. It'll be a magical meeting of the minds. It'll just click.