A poll in the L.A. Times today found that, at least in Los Angeles, black and Hispanic voters are more likely than whites to identify themselves as conservative.
I know many Hispanics, including some within my own family, whose attitudes would fit in well with the GOP worldview - hate big government, want low taxes, religiously conservative, pro-death penalty and an independent, pull yourself up by the bootstraps ethic. But many don’t want anything to do with Republican Party because of what they see as race-baiting and an overemphasis on illegal immigration by some of its more outspoken supporters.
And likewise, a lot of other minorities I know would be right at home in the GOP, but tend to vote Democrat.
Every now and then the Republican Party will give lip service to attracting minority voters and even put someone like Michael Steele in at least a nominal position of power.
But what do they really need to do to get minorities to feel more comfortable within their ranks and, more importantly, to pull the lever for their candidates at the polls?
Not entirely - it could dig the ‘small government’ and ‘fiscal responsibility’ out of the landfill where it dumped them and keep those. But most of the rest has got to go.
Throw out the bigots; stop trying to appeal to them. More than that; make a big show of it, burn their bridges as publicly and dramatically as possible. Most members of minorities aren’t stupid enough to vote for people who hate them ( or pander to those that hate them ) regardless of how much they agree on other issues. The Republicans have spent decades making themselves into the party of choice for white racists; they’ll have to undo that image.
A lot of hispanics, especially Mexicans, have values similar to older Americans; family, religion, hard work, personal freedom, the value of a dollar, etc. I find it so weird and mind-boggling that those same older Americans who should feel camaraderie with these people are very often pretty vocal about hating, fearing, or just mistrusting them. Yet they’re perfectly ok with younger Americans who often openly mock those values. These people IME tend to be Republicans (though the Democrat Party is absolutely not devoid of them.) I don’t know what the Republicans can do to correct these kind of weird misunderstandings. Time, I guess. Time and perhaps just a smidge of genuine compassion and inclusivity.
I think they could also question what, exactly, the Democratic Party has done to earn the huge majority of the minority vote - especially the black vote.
One of the biggest levers a person has for personal improvement is education. And the education offered to inner-city blacks, via the public education system, is one of the most godawful institutions ever created in America. And the Democratic party is about as deeply embedded in the pockets of the teachers’ unions, who are completely resistant to change and performance-based evaluation, as possible.
The D.C. voucher case is a real-time example of how this creates an opportunity to offer new ideas to the inner-city community.
I think the Republicans should play this up more. A lot more. With school choice and vouchers. They could also speak more about privatizing Social Security, and address the regressive payroll taxes that hit low-income earners a lot more than high income-earners.
But it has to be done without ridiculous religious overtones and nativist sentiment.
That one didn’t gain them much traction even before the market meltdown. Now? Do you really think the Republicans can ride (what will be perceived as) a Madoff-in-hell Ponzi scheme like that to electoral success?
I am sorry, but I have seen this meme over and over till I could puke. Where the hell do you guys get the bizarre idea that teachers are into this just to mess up kids? The teachers union did not create the mess in the inner city, and I sure as hell do not see the suburbs falling all over themselves to carve up their school districts and hand out the tax money to anyone walking down the street who says he has an idea for a school.
We have been doing this charter/choice in Milwaukee for years. All research available says that the best charter and choice schools have students that perform about the same as those in the Milwaukee Public Schools. Most of the charter and choice schools test worse. We have had at least two of these schools closed due to embezzlement and fraud and one school where the administrators disappeared in the middle of the night taking all money and records with them. A couple hundred kids had to repeat at least one grade because all their transcripts were gone. But private is always better doncha know.
The teachers unions are not entirely opposed to the idea of performance pay, but the devil is in the details. Say you and I each had classrooms.
My students come to school every day with breakfast in their tummies. They got enough sleep the night before and someone bought them school supplies and made sure they got to school on time.
Half your students don’t show up until 10 o’clock because mom works the night shift and their older sibling is supposed to get them out the door which doesn’t always happen. Most of your kids are living in single parent households about 1/4 of them live with people who are not their parents, either grandparents or foster parents. Only 1/4 of them have any contact with their biological father, and most of those are in jail. In the unlikely event any of them have had breakfast it was sugar filled and cause a crash in a moment. At least one of your students has PTSD and many of them know someone who was shot to death. Most of your students do not believe in education because they have never seen anyone that it helped.
Who’s classroom is easier to teach in? Who has an easier time keeping control? It is hard enough getting anyone to take that second classroom, but what happens when it also causes a pay cut? Eventually the only people that would take that second classroom would be the brand new teacher and he or she would get the hell out of there as soon as possible. Which classroom needs the better teacher? Can the same shining teacher from the first classroom actually make a difference in the second? All of those are questions that need to be answered before the facile answer of performance pay can be utilized.
Democrats support proposals such as more generous welfare and affirmative action, which represent net transfers from rich to poor and from white to non-Asian minorities. As long as the Republicans oppose these reforms, it doesn’t make sense for those minorities to vote against their own interests. Cultural affinities, such as black opposition to gay marriage and Hispanic Catholicism, can only go so far when both groups materially benefit from the Democrats’ policies.
Republicans can do well either if they abandon their opposition to interracial transfers, or when a numerically and culturally significant black and Hispanic middle class appears that does not benefit from wealth redistribution. (Non-urban Asians are already half and half but they represent an insignificant voting bloc.) Far easier, of course, is increasing their percentage of the white vote.
Not really; that’s the horse they’ve been flogging for decades, and it’s one tired horse by now. And it simply exaggerates their problem of driving away non-whites, by being seen as the White Racist Party.
Vouchers do not hand the money to someone who says they have an idea for a school. That’s how the present system works.
Vouchers hands the money to the parents, who then choose where and how to spend it as they see fit.
It is irrevelant to me what a particular teachers’ motivation is, and how I should judge him/here. It is up to the parents with the voucher to make whatever decision they want.
Exactly right. Lots of people lost lots of money on their 401(k)s in the stock market’s collapse, or know people who did. Pushing the privatization of Social Security would be – well, I can’t decide between “insane” and “imbecilic” – as a strategy to win back voters who already harbor deep mistrust of the GOP.
It would definitely take some good communication skills.
For example, to communicate that many SS contributors now will see a negative return on their investments by the time they withdraw, and to compare that with (supposedly) even the most riskless option. Just sticking your 15% deduction in a money market fund would outperform many people’s SS ‘investments’ over the next 30-40 years.
Scaremongering and nonsense need to be fought with clear-headed reasoning and facts.
Unfortunately, all of those were in extremely short supply during the last few rounds of SS privatization talks. That would definitely need to change, for it to have a chance.
I think you’re making a mistake in how you construct the GOP. The GOP is not a “conservative values” party with a lot of whites. It’s a white party with some “conservative values”–implicitly including a stand against changes in relative power, like electing Negroes & mestizos to high office.