Blacks Still Await a GOP Welcome

At first glance, the new poll from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies showing that more than 40% of black voters like Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush seems preposterous.

The supreme article of faith in American politics is that blacks are the ultimate Democratic Party loyalists. In recent presidential elections, the Democratic candidate has grabbed 80% to 85% of the black vote. Since less than half of whites vote for Democrats, this black vote is the cushion that the Democrat presidential contender must have to win the White House.

Despite this given in American politics, there are good reasons why black leaders and Democrats should not ignore or ridicule the poll. The center is one of the nation’s oldest and most respected black think tanks. Many elected officials and political analysts rely on its polls and surveys to gauge the mood of African Americans. And blacks are more prosperous than ever and more conservative than many people think.

Two recent polls by the center confirm this. In 1998, it found that for the first time, more blacks than whites claimed they were better off financially than they had been the year before. It also found that a majority of blacks favor stiffer sentences for drug use, violent crime and three-strikes offenses and generally support school vouchers. The bottom line is, many blacks reflexively vote Democratic not because of any inherent belief that the Democrats offer everything for them, but rather because they feel that the Republicans offer nothing for them.

Republicans have no one but themselves to blame for this. They have blown every chance to attract more blacks to their ranks. Take, for example, the Colin L. Powell debacle in the 1996 presidential election. The retired general was popular with black and non-black voters, liberals, moderates and even many conservatives. But he never got out of the Republican box. The major conservative groups ganged up on him. Powell apparently didn’t have the right stuff for many in the Republican Party. If the party had embraced Powell, however, and he had actively stumped for the Republican presidential nominee, many blacks would have been forced to listen to the party’s political message. This would have posed deep political peril for the Democrats.

Blacks make up a big part of the population in the states that control the majority of the nation’s electoral votes. But Republicans ignore black voters because they buy the myth that blacks are doctrinaire Democrats. But the first dozen blacks elected to Congress were Republicans. And though blacks leaped at FDR’s promise of jobs and voted overwhelmingly Democratic during the Depression, they did not totally abandon the Republicans; President Eisenhower sent the first civil rights bill since Reconstruction to Congress in 1956 and the same year won reelection with 40% of the black vote. The Democrats got the black vote in 1964 partly because President Johnson made good on his civil rights pledge, but also because blacks feared Republican Barry Goldwater’s platform of “states’ rights.” Blacks got the same negative signal from President Nixon, and Powell criticized his former bosses Ronald Reagan and George Bush for not showing more sensitivity on racial matters.

Despite this long cold shoulder from Republicans, many prominent blacks, including Powell and Alan Keyes, still vigorously support the party. And in the few places where Republicans have made any kind of outreach to black voters, they have significantly boosted their vote total among them.

George W. Bush can snatch the political and ideological blinders from the eyes of Republican leaders and change the perception that his party is nothing more than a good ol’ white guys club. If he does, he will find that many blacks will join the club. If he blows this chance, no matter how many blacks say they like him, they again will vote Democratic in 2000.