In general, I think there is a lot that is right about the article, a few things I am unsure about, and a few things I think are off base.
Though the article doesn't go into this, the subtext is there: if the GOP continues to represent the interests of exclusively white males, they will quickly become a minority party again, as they were from 1930-1960. Primarily because of Latino birthrates, and somewhat due to continued immigration policies, the demographic trends are quickly getting worse and worse for the GOP. In the next 20 years, Texas will be in play. If everything else stays the same (which of course it wont), that alone is deadly to R's. Unlike when Cali went blue, this time there is no South on the verge of going red to balance it out. But of course along with Texas, other states will shift: NM, Iowa, Nevada, and Colorado will likely be as "solidly" blue as states like Washington, blue except in huge wave-election years on par with 1980, 1994, and 2010. A number of other states (Arizona, Arkansas, Iowa, Virginia, NC, Florida) are seeing are going to shift a point or two, making these states shift from Strong R to Lean R or Lean R to tossup. Rough times are ahead without R's making inroads into one of three groups: AAs, Latinos, or women. As the article points out, R's don't need to win these groups, they just need to be able to peel off about 20% (basically make women or latinos a tossup, or shift the AA vote to about 70-30). How much of this will require actually changing stances on issues, as opposed to better marketing (which seems to be what the article is advocating as the biggest problem for the GOP with minority voters) is of course an open question.
So on that question, i think there are three subquestions:
- Is the current stigma that the GOP faces with these groups legitimate and based on problems with policies, or is it simply bad PR (or, from the Dem point of view, good PR)?
- If you believe the problem is bad GOP PR, how critical would it be to get a high profile candidate be towards shifting this?
- Is Herman Cain that candidate?
I would actually address these in the reverse order.
Herman Cain?
Assuming you believe it's a PR problem and that an individual can solve it, is Herman Cain the man? If you're shooting for the AA vote, I think he's pretty good. He's articulate and passionate. He (with a few notable exceptions, noted at the end) seems to believe what he is saying, rather than just saying things because it's what he thinks the base wants to hear. Now, sometimes that's bad, if what he believes is wrong. I still want to throw things at the TV when he and other conservatives outright lie about Obamacare. That law is perfectly critique-able on its merits using the truth; making up (or repeating) lies about "Washington bureaucrats standing between you and your doctor", when the law does no such thing, is really frustrating when I would actually like to see a genuine debate over what I believe to be one of the biggest threats to America's prosperity (i.e. rising health care costs as a percentage of GDP). But setting that aside, he doesnt seem to be a one-trick pony (Alan Keyes), outside the conservative mainstream (Colin Powell), or stupid (Michael Steele). If you believe a high-profile minority candidate will be a big deal, then I think he’s a pretty good bet. I think the only other better pick, if I were pursuing this strategy, would be to be going all in on Latinos and Marco Rubio. But I have strong hesitations about whether an individual will be of much help.
Do Individuals Matter?
If the problem is PR, is an individual high-profile candidate the way to go? I think the answer to this depends. Assuming you believe that R policies on women, latinos, and AAs are either correct (even if this leads to the disagreement of many people within that group, which I would imagine is how you feel about most conservative parties regarding women, family, etc., and seems to be how many R's feel about Latino immigration and all minorities on crime and discrimination) or that R policies are good, but poorly sold or misrepresented, you have to wonder how much an individual candidate can do about that. In either case, that candidate has to be able to do one of two things: 1) direct attention away from those issues onto others, or 2) convince members of their own group that the R position is correct or better for them. I think that in the case of all three of these groups, that's going to be very tough for any one individual to do.
I am sort of a skeptic on the "big man" theories of history, and more convinced by the "big trends" theories. Civil rights was enormously helped by MLK Jr., but it was inevitable with or without him. Ditto many or most trends in religion, science, economics, and politics. Even the exceptional people who made big changes were already “on the right side of history”. Of course, you don’t have Christianity without Christ. But since I am imagining myself trying to persuade a religious conservative on these issues, they ought to be the last person I need to convince that His message was correct, even had it not been Him who delivered it. And other great people who have moved history either just sped up or slowed down the inevitable. I am a liberal who will give Reagan credit for accelerating communism’s demise. But even conservatives, in principle, have to agree that, regardless of individuals, communism would have collapsed under its own weight eventually. I could write pages about this point. Marx was right about the inevitability of history; he just happened to be wrong about what that inevitable history was.
The GOP position on women and minorities
So really, the answer to whether or not you can shift minorities' perception of the GOP via an individual really depends on whether the GOP is on the right or wrong side of this in the first place. If they are, then Herman Cain can speed it up if they are, just as Michael Steele could slow it down. But is the R position actually better for women, AAs, or Latinos? As much as R’s want to believe otherwise, I think they face an insurmountable obstacle in two of these cases (women and AAs). Latinos is another story.
Latinos
I won't have too much to say about this except to say that I think the GOP has the best chance to make inroad amongst Latinos. This takes the demographic trends and neutralizes them, or even makes them work in the GOPs favor. If Colorado, Virginia, Nevada, and New Mexico are out of reach for Republicans, they have to sweep the Gore states (including Florida...) every time. That's almost impossible. Latino's religiosity and social conservatism is an obvious opening, if they can get Latinos to focus on those issues rather than explicitly Latino issues like immigration. Right now, the Republican party seems to want to defy all logic and economic research and go after immigration. It seems crazy to me, and there seems to be no reason it couldn't turn around. Long term D strategists take a deep sigh of relief every time they watch the GOP move further and further to anti-immigrant positions (documented or undocumented).
Women
I think the current conservative position is going to be inherently at odds with women to an extent to guarantee that D's will always tend to get 60% or more of that vote. I really don't think a conservative woman will make ground here. Certainly not Palin or Bachmann. Professional women hate these two, more than anyone. I think someone like Condi Rice could move the needle (on both women and AAs), but of course her politics would be an apostasy in the current GOP. I think the (religious) conservative position or mindset on issues related to women (abortion, birth control, child care, gender roles, enforcement of rape crimes in ways that tend to blame the victim for promiscuity, policies and belief systems that encourage women leaving the workforce, marrying early and having kids early and often) are going to ensure that a large chunk of women are going to have trouble taking a Republican candidate seriously unless they shift on many of these positions. And since these positions are pretty central to the religious conservative worldview, it’s hard to see that shift happening. In the current world, seeking more R votes amongst women seems to be a dead end without first shifting women’s position on the issues listed above.
African Americans
Contrary to the article you linked to, I think the task is just as uphill with African Americans. There are a few policies where the current Republican position is arguably better for African Americans. School choice, if implemented correctly rather than just as a case of government-endorsed crony capitalism, has the opportunity to be one of those. There are plenty of D's (myself included) who would support school choice under the right circumstances. Good drug and crime policies (not to be confused with the toughest policies, just the smartest ones) would obviously be beneficial to all people in low SES conditions, and AAs and Latinos would hugely benefit from safer and more stable home environments. And since a great many of minorities’ issues are either directly or indirectly related to poverty, to the extent that Republican policies actually improve the economy (or can be sold as doing so), this should be a big reason for minorities to vote for R's. I of course won’t go into how ridiculous I think current R arguments are the economy. We can save that argument for another day…
But all these reasons to be optimistic about R’s possibilities with AAs stacks up against plenty of reasons why I think it continues to be the case that AAs can look at R's and think that are being less than authentic. The first is that there is plenty of evidence of continued discrimination against blacks, from a political point of view. Right now, AAs vote D. One thing to do about this is what we have been talking about. Change that dynamic. Another option, the one R’s more often take, is to figure out ways to suppress the AA vote. Sending out fliers in AA neighborhoods advertising the wrong election date; adding requirements for voting (such as not being a felon; I have no idea why people think having made a mistake in your past means you no longer deserve representation. We can forgive to allow into heaven, but not the voting booth?), making it harder to vote because of "voter fraud" even when neutral investigators show that cases of these are rare and not influential on outcomes; going after groups like ACORN and the Black Panthers. Look, I wont defend the goals or methods of most groups like this (mostly because I dont know that much about them). they probably deserve at least some of the attention they get, to the extent that these groups do break laws or advocate violence. But there are few groups that are explicitly advocating for the interests of AAs, and targeting these groups explicitly, and doing the other stuff described above, is broadcasting to the AA community that the GOP doesn’t really care about AAs, beyond how they influence elections. It sends the message that if the GOP cannot get AAs to join them, then they must be (politically) destroyed. But if that is how it looks, its going to completely kill the GOP's ability to convince AAs on the merits, and so all the arguments about stuff like school choice and how R policies might help minority small businesses, are going to fall on deaf ears.
Likewise, the current conservative mantra about how there is no such thing as racism anymore (except of course, reverse racism) is ridiculous. Every time R commentators say this, they continue to guarantee that they wont get AA votes. Find me black republicans who say racism doesn’t still exist. Find me one! You wont. You'll find plenty that say the best solutions to this are not government ones. Great. Push that message (though it’s a loser message if not paired with what we can do about racism as an alternative to the current approach). But drop the "their is no racism" shtick, because while that may make the white male base feel better, it is a killer roadblock to inroads with minorities.
Which brings us to Niggerhead Ranch... Look up that word and it’s etymology, it means a lot of stuff, but most often it is used to mean terrible stuff like "hard as a rock, just like a nigger's head". And it is still used a lot. Limit a google search to 2000-2010, and you get 3.5 million entries. My job right now is to do a lot of language analysis. I can tell you that term is still in use in the south, and still used in colloquially racist ways. Now, Rick Perry himself may not have had much to do with the ranch. But here's the thing. If MY family owned such a place, even a distant family member, the second I knew about it I would either (if I was courageous) argue with them to change it or (more likely, passive-aggressively) never go back. To the AA community, whether an individual fights or passively abides casual racism like this is meanful. It speaks to character. And it speaks to how deeply and how seriously a person takes issues related to race, discrimination, and the treatment of minorities. Explicit terrible racism such as lynchings or laws against what AAs can do, may be mostly a relic of the past. But casual implicit racism still has consequences. Using words like that that define a person or group of people entirely in terms of their groups and negative attributes about their group leads to having lower expectations for those individuals and to treating them poorly, rather than treating them as individuals and judging them on their merits. It’s very well documented in every branch of social science that has set out to study it, including my own social and cognitive psychology. And casually "looking the other way" as many people do in situations like this is part of what allows racism to persist. So is Rick Perry a racist? Probably not. But should the fact that he comes from a family that was so callously disinterested in their inconsiderateness towards AAs be a factor for AAs when they consider voting for him? You have to really be drinking the koolaid to think that’s not a valid piece of evidence when evaluating a candidate and how likely they are to take the interests of your and your group seriously. If a candidate’s family had a history of bad-mouthing evangelical Christianity, wouldn’t an evangelical be a legitimately worried that this could lead consequences for how this candidate thought about your issues? That would be fair game. Just like Obama’s church and pastor was fair game. Not a deal-breaker, but a legitimate fact that should be weighed when judging how much you trust a candidate.
And so now we can come full circle, to Cain’s initial response to the n-head ranch issue, and to the conservative’s response to him, which I think exemplifies many of the points I am trying to make. Cain, being an African American who has no doubt experience racism, instantly called it for what it was: inconsiderate at best, and a factor that should bear on Perry's character. But other than Cain, how conservatives respond to this? By blaming Cain!
You might have anticipated that Perry would face a firestorm for being associated with the property, but it's Cain whose remarks are drawing the most criticism from the right. At RedState, Erick Erickson concluded, "It also seems to be a slander Herman Cain is picking up and running with as a way to get into second place." Glenn Reynolds remarked that until now, Cain's "big appeal is that he's not just another black race-card-playing politician." Over at the Daily Caller, Matt Lewis called Cain's remarks "a cheap shot, and, perhaps a signal that Cain is willing to play the race card against a fellow Republican when it benefits him."
The key phrase here is "fellow Republican." Because, you see, no one thought Cain was "playing the race card" when he said in the same program that black people are "brainwashed" into voting for Democrats and suggested that black people who vote Republican are "thinking for themselves." Cain wasn't rebuked by conservatives when he previously suggested President Barack Obama was not "a strong black man," implied liberals were out to commit genocide against blacks through support for abortion rights, and said he wouldn't appoint a Muslim to his cabinet.
None of that, in the eyes of the conservatives who cheered him for those remarks, constituted "playing the race card." But when a man who is old enough to recall living under American apartheid gets a little emotional over a piece of land called "Niggerhead," that's where the right draws the line. Not just because Cain is attacking a fellow Republican, but because he stepped out of the proper role of a black conservative, which is to reassure Republicans that their political problems with race are the inventions of a liberal conspiracy. Cain just ran head first into the brick wall of conservative anti-anti-racism, the attitude on the right that accusations of racism directed at white people are of far greater consequence than any lingering vestiges of institutional racism nonwhites might face.
This incident to me sums up the difficulty that the GOP will ever have making inroads with the AA community. For the GOP to make progress with AAs, they need to see the AA community as something more than a strategic token to be used to win elections. They will need to radically rethink and reframe how they deal with issues related to the AA community. Candidates like Herman Cain will need to be free to address AA issues now and then. As with many other issues on the table right now, if conservatives want to make progress, they will need to compromise. It's understandable why they wont compromise on some issues (like abortion, or socialized medicine), given their belief systems. But on race, the only thing that seems to be at stake is pride, and "being right" on issues like the existence of racism. Until they can move past that, they wont move at all.
