Republicans should not be daunted by the way blacks, Hispanics and Asians largely spurned their ticket in the recent elections, says one major newsmaker.
Quite the opposite, he says, the “first and most important task for Republicans must be to foster better relations with Americans of color.”
Who said that? Jesse Jackson? Kweise Mfume? Chris Rock?
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No, it was Newt Gingrich, a man who has been called many things but never a knee-jerk liberal.
Appearing in the editorial page of Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, Gingrich disagrees with the racial pessimism that permeates Republican circles since blacks, Latinos and Asians once again spurned the GOP ticket in November, despite the self-professed “compassionate conservatism” of George W. Bush.
Gingrich’s notions caught my eye partly because they help to answer the skeptics who constantly ask me why most black people continue to vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, even though they agree more with Republicans on key issues.
For example, a recent poll Gingrich cites by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies finds black support for some Republican stands actually has grown, while black support for the party’s candidates has shrunk.
Some 57 percent of blacks in the national poll of 1,608 adults favored school vouchers, for example, compared to only 49 percent of the general population. Among blacks with children, voucher support soared to 79 percent.
Blacks also supported Bush’s Social Security plan by a thinner 45 percent plurality, while 42 percent opposed it .
But, as David Bositis, senior research analyst at the Joint Center, told me in a telephone interview, the issues matter less to black voters than one little five-letter word. That word is “trust.”
Since the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and even more since the early 1960s, the party of Abraham Lincoln has lost the trust of black Americans, while the party that used to uphold Jim-Crow segregation gained it.
Gingrich is correct to cite both “moral” and “practical” reasons why Republicans need to win more of that trust from blacks and other skeptical voting constituencies. As the recent election showed, every group matters, especially when the count is close.
But Gingrich does not offer many specifics as to how that trust is to be won.
Perhaps I can help.
For one, as Secretary of State-designate Colin Powell has said, it is not enough for Republicans to talk to blacks. They also must lend an honest ear to black concerns.
Nor is it enough for Bush to pick and choose which black leaders he cares to recognize. As Bositis observed, it is not enough that Bush meet only with leaders who agree with him, as he did when he met recently with black ministers who support his plans to help faith-based social service programs.
He also needs to meet with those with whom he disagrees, like Jesse Jackson, whose post-Election Day telephone call Bush accepted, despite the objections of some conservatives.
It was symbolically important that Bush nominated outstanding individuals who happened to be black, like Powell and National Security Advisor-designate Condoleezza Rice. But it was a major step backwards as far as many blacks were concerned when Bush followed that up by naming Sen. John Ashcroft (R-Mo.) to be attorney general.
Although Ashcroft’s pals in both parties will probably help him to be confirmed, his confirmation is shaping up to be the first big fight of the Bush term.
Ashcroft outraged black voters when he led the fight to dismantle black Missouri Supreme Court Judge Ronnie White’s nomination for a federal judgeship. As a result, Missouri was one of the states in which the black turnout rate on Election Day actually exceeded white turnout for the first time in anyone’s memory, partly to help the state’s late Gov. Mel E. Carnahan, who died in a plane crash before the election, to defeat Ashcroft for the Senate seat.
To go beyond the issues, Gingrich suggests that Republicans will have to get personal. They must learn to explain big policy reforms in language that relates to the voters’ personal lives.
Updating the late Democratic Speaker Tip O’Neill’s slogan, “All politics is local,” Gingrich says, “All politics is, in fact, personal.”
He’s right. Even when African-Americans agree with Bush on issues, he has provided too few reasons for them to trust him personally.
That’s his loss. But in that problem he may yet find opportunities. As governor of Texas, Bush won wide praise for building personal friendships across party and racial lines. It was only when he ran for the White House that his black support plummeted in Texas. The 29 percent of the black vote he won in his gubernatorial re-election fell to 5 percent in his race for president.
That’s what happens when people lose trust in you. It takes time to build that back up. Bush has a long way to go to make his party more attractive to blacks and other minorities. First he needs to make it less outrageous.
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