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How the GOP Can Win Black Votes: Play the Blame Game. Hard.
3. Play The Blame Game
Democrats are exclusively responsible for the current state of the Black community. It’s time they’re held accountable.
This needs to be hammered home repeatedly – live before black audiences and in ads online and on national television. There’s not one single black majority or even black plurality constituency in America that has not been represented by the Democrat Party at every level of government for at least 50 of the last 60 years. There’s probably not even one right now that is represented by a Republican.
Remind black voters that the most violent, blight-afflicted cities, in which the largest numbers of African Americans are living in near third-world conditions, like Baltimore, have not had Republican mayors since the 1960s.
Hammer this point home; Republicans have had zero political power and zero political influence in the black community for 60 years. For the past six decades, election cycle after election cycle, African Americans have sent Democrats, and only Democrats, to sit on their school boards, to represent them on the city council, in the state legislatures and Congress. Black people have successfully sent Democrats to the mayor’s office in every large American city. Black votes have sent Democrats to the governor’s office and even the Oval Office multiple times. So 100 percent of the blame and 100 percent of the responsibility for failed schools, for crime and trash on the streets, for failing businesses, etc., belongs to the Democrats.
This is the point where it would be helpful to contrast the lifestyles of the members of Congress representing these blighted areas with the lives of their constituents. If they opposed school choice for poor black kids in their districts, while sending their own kids to private schools, let that be known.
The media will howl “racism” and you’ll hear disingenuous mewlings from supposed “moderates” who will try to argue that “both sides” are responsible and that somehow, even though Republicans have zero political power in places like Flint, Baltimore, Chicago, etc., Republicans are as much to blame for not doing anything to “help.”
I have seen a progressive argue that Scott Walker, then governor of Wisconsin, was “partly” responsible for the violence in Chicago – in Illinois. To prove his “point,” he demanded evidence that Walker has ever offered any “help” to Chicago to lower its crime rate.
If you think this bears a striking resemblance to numerous journalists like April Ryan insisting that Donald Trump should take exclusive responsibility for the appalling conditions in West Baltimore because he had not offered to “help,” you’re correct.
You’ll also hear sanctimonious pleas, every single one insincere, to “put partisanship aside,” to stop the “blame game,” and calls for “healing” and “bipartisanship.” All will be directed exclusively toward you, and not the Democrats in positions of power who would simultaneously be calling you a “racist” – who are not only responsible for these problems, but have failed to address them since.
Don’t let up. Double down.
Published in Politics
Don’t double up. Quadruple up.
Is there only one Black community?
I don’t think this will be seen as helpful. It is a turnoff. I think the GOP should focus on a message about what the GOP stands for, because nobody of any race/creed/color seems to know. Start with running ads in Washington, DC, where members of Congress can see.
Members of Congress could speak up and say newsworthy things to let the world know they are alive. Unfortunately, this means they have to allow themselves to become targets of the hate media.
TheOnion has a lovely article on Dem getting-out-the-vote methods:
Yes, but no.
To whom would this be a “turn off”? And who still thinks voters care about being “helpful” more than knowing who to blame, and punish?
This is politics, not some genteel policy tete a tete with tea, crumpets and napkins arranged just so.
Why do you think the Mayor of Chicago and other progressives are blaming the high crime and murder rates in Chicago and other Democrat-run cities on Republicans in Texas and Indiana?
During George W. Bush’s hapless second term, his incandescently stupid communications shop (misled by Nicolle Wallace) thought it could blunt the Democrats’ criticisms of the Iraq War by accusing them of not being “helpful”.
It didn’t work. Democrats declaimed all responsibility and the voters punished the GOP because they (in the person of W) were in charge.
We have a similar situation here; every major black constituency is represented at every level of government exclusively by Democrats.
Your notion that Republicans now have to appear “helpful” instead of pointing out their opponents’ undeniable failures is basically saying that Republicans are supposed to publicly share responsibility with Democrats for the conditions in areas in which they’ve had no say for decades.
I think this is ineffectual DC consultant-speak. Worse yet, this is an unoriginal refrain about the GOP that is decades old.
Again, this is politics, not a kumbayah circle. If you think the GOP would ever be able to win a higher share of the black vote without making hay of the Democrats’ failures, you’re being naive.
The RNC is in desperate need of a powerful leader who knows how to work the press. Instead, we are stuck with Romney’s niece who is ten pounds lighter than a straw hat.
How they allowed the old ‘switched sides’ lie to take root for 50 years infuriates me , the mealy mouthed inarticulateness of Republicans failing to defend themselves is another item in the list of how we got Trump. So Jeb! Your brother’s fetal crouch policy may have cost you any chance at the nomination.
Huh.
This could be a point of ‘attack’; if a bunch of klansmen ‘switched sides’ just to keep black people down, would you consider switching sides to stop keeping black people down?
My formulation is no good, but I think there’s maybe something there.
I think the best way to break the democrat monopoly on the black vote, is remind the black community where they where when they started to vote democrat and make the comparison to today.
Go through county by county, and make ads tailored to each county from cook to LA, to compare the economic and census data for each county – in the voice over – the visuals would be a montage of photos of the 1960s nightlife and good times in the black community. Refute the accusation that the old days where bad – maybe ignite a nostalgia for the good times.
I was trying to find census data on cook county – to make the comparison to the modern cook county … So the voice over would go – “Since cook county started voting democrat in the last 50 years, the average income was x% of the national average, now its x%, x people where on public assistance, now its X… Their where X more companies, providing X more jobs… In the past 50 years cook county has failed to keep up with the rest of America. Time to catch up… Change your vote”…
Doing this county by county may not swing the election but being competitive for the black vote for the first time in what 40 years? would force the democrats to campaign for their base rather than to compete in the mid-west for the rust belt vote that carried Trump to the white house…
Also Trump should do rallies in democrat districts… Let antifa come out to protest, show the democrats for the thugs they really are.
I’m probably the last kid on the block to reference the Overton Window, but for a lot of black people voting Republican is something they just can’t imagine doing.
Introducing that possibility might be the only thing that can be accomplished at this point.
For that matter, is it even possible for the demonized to build trust before de-demonizing themselves?
Yes, I can see that.
This is why I wanted to tag the ad ‘change your vote’ and not vote republican. They have been immersed in negative stereotypes of republicans all their lives, I can see how they might need a few election cycles to change that mindset. But the first step is ask them to stop supporting democrats.
The democrats need 90% of the black vote to win – that vote can go anywhere else and the democrats loose. This 1 of the reasons that Hillary lost – the black vote stayed home.
When it comes to the political realm, the answer appears to be, yes.
Which old ‘switched sides’ lie are you referring to? Are you denying that African-American voters switched to the Democrats in the 1930s?
Are we not perpetuating the problem by going along with that mindset?
No.
Are you trolling?
I’m puzzled by your statement and am in search of clarification. To aid my quest, I added some clarification of my own: The only switching of sides I know about is what happened to the African-American vote in the 1930s. But sometimes other people know things that I don’t know.
It’s a good question. I actually deal with it in a later post.
That said, it’s a combination of arguing for political plurality in the black community and calling out the race card.
I’ve found that mockery works. I simply recast the Democrats’ “white supremacist” and “bring back Jim Crow” rhetoric as a laughable insult to black people’s intelligence.
The calumny goes like this: on an unknown date in the mid-sixties or thereabouts, the Democrat leadership decided that they would no longer go out of their way to be racist and would instead start including black people in photo ops and mentioning them by name when they invented new social programs. But the True Racists were so enraged by this that they went straight to the registrar’s office and became Republicans. So grateful were the original Republicans that they had these new voters that they completely changed their platform so they could align themselves with neo-racists, Nazis, and Klansmen.
There’s more to it, Gaia ends the world by drowning it because of man’s perfidy then casts the Republicans into a lake of toxic chemicals, but basically, that’s how it goes.
Interesting post Martin. I agree with you.
However for me the crux of the issue that almost all Democratic policies, and we’re talking Economic Policy, Welfare state Policy, Housing Policy, Transportation, Gun Control what have you- have disastrous effects particularly for the poor and working class -those with the least resources – which are disproportionately minority- making those policies actually racist.
But even beyond the fact that almost all Democrat Policies have terrible racial consequences, the basic pitch of the Democrats is to put everyone on the dole and to trap all Americans in a life of dependency from which they can never escape. The Dole is not free – it is a trap with a lot of strings attached. The “Nurse Ratchet Progressive Do Gooders” of the Democratic Party want to take care of every American by taking control of every facet of everyone’s lives and robbing everyone of the “vital essence” of life -the struggle of making decisions to deal with life’s ups and downs on the road to making something of one’s life.
What we should be doing is changing the game so that every American of all colors can have a reasonable expectation that they can experience the American Dream – to have a actual job that gives you dignity, a home you can call your own , a family in a reasonably safe community and to essentially engage in the “pursuit of Happiness”.
The pitch of conservatives should be to frame the issue as a choice: You can vote to give yourself an reasonably good chance of living the American Dream or You can vote shackle yourself and your life as a Welfare State dependent.
Apologies.
Usually when the “switch” is mentioned, it refers to sometime in the mid-60s when all the Dixiecrats supposedly “switched” to become Republicans, at which point the GOP merged with the KKK and thereafter the solidly Democrat South became solidly Republican.
This is a narrative that is wholly believed by NYT and WaPo reporters, college students and Hollywood starlets.
It is also (very demonstrably) a lie.
An excellent series. We indeed must Make. Them. Own. It.
Thanks for the explanation. I hadn’t heard most of that calumny, though I was aware of bits of it. It’s not surprising to me that the left would pull such stunts, as they have done worse, though I hadn’t heard it like this.