Posted by
Longplay on Wednesday, November 05, 2008 9:07:13 PM
On my drive home tonight I was listening to Michael Medved's radio show. in which he cited statistics about the election's voting patterns by race and ethnicity.
The stats were pretty dismal and Medved insisted that the GOP must find a way to bring these people in, a point made over and over in most election cycles. I happen to agree that should indeed be a goal, especially considering demographic trends (and the fact that it is just plain good for them).
I was frustrated, however, that Medved offered no recommendations on how to go about this important and daunting task.
The prevailing GOP strategy has always been the "Democrat-Lite" "me- too but less" approach, which obviously hasn't worked. Just as you can't be half-socialist, you can't be half-liberal. Voters intrigued at all by liberalism want the real thing.
Conservatives need to have a serious and honest discussion of questions such as:
How do you reach blacks who will not listen to black people such as Walter Williams, Ward Connerly, Michael Steele, Shelby Steele, Star Parker, or even Bill Cosby, but will listen to Al Sharpton, Michael Pfleger, and Louis Farakhan? The first group (on our side) didn't come into the fold attracted by the by the "me-too" approach. How did they come to understand? We should ask them.
In his early years, when Jesse Jackson urged the black community to pull itself up by its own bootstraps, he quickly learned they did not want to hear that message. To continue making a living, he switched back to playing the greivance game, and the black community has, by and large, downed that kool-aid ever since.
So how do you reach black voters who will vote for white liberals whose policies have destroyed their communities over the last 50 years, before they would vote for a black conservative? I strongly believe that if a black conservative, even one as hip-sounding as Michael Steele, had been on the GOP ticket, blacks would still have pulled the Democrat lever.
How do you pull in Hispanics when they won't even vote for John McCain, who went totally against the GOP base on illegal immigration and pandered to race-centered groups such as La Raza?
And how do you persuade such people that conservatism is in their own best interest and bring them into the party when, by the time they are of an age to be reasoned with, their formative years have been spent being indoctrinated with leftist ideas and hate for America in an education system (and in some churches) soon to be under control by those sharing the "education" theories of William Ayres?
And lastly, how can this be done without compromising basic conservative principles?
If you can't do the latter, what's the use of the former?
Or are we perhaps relegated to waiting for the realization to set in that, having a man "of color" in the White House hasn't changed a thing.